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I'm Lauren Rae Orsini, a graduate student, journalist, infographic designer, anime convention reporter, and documentarian. Welcome.
Movie Night: Manga Mad
Filed Under Anime and Fandom
NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, I had to dip into an earlier backup and lost all comments on this post. Feel free to rewrite your comment… or write something entirely new!
Welcome to a new weekly feature on my blog. In preparation for my latest documentary on fandom, I am watching (at least) one documentary on the subject every week.
This past week I watched Manga Mad, a 2008 documentary by Ray Castle that you can watch on Hulu. I hate to start this column on a negtive note, but if you’ve watched at least five minutes into the film, you can see what I mean when I say that the film was an excellent example of what not to do.
Just one of the unsettling captions in Manga Mad.
The first thing that struck me about the film was the jarring cinematography. In what must have taken ages in a video editor, the screen seems to switch from one manga cover to the next every few seconds. The camera is shaky and pans in, out and side to side in a way that made me nauseous. The same footage was reused over and over- something I learned in my basic film making class never to do.
Sound was poorly executed in this documentary. The nature of the subject involved a lot of interviews with Japanese native speakers, but the voice over translation was barely understandable. The translator was himself a native speaker and his accent was difficult for Western ears to comprehend. The interviews needed subtitles. The music was no better. With the same repetitive clips used over and over during the jarring visual montages of one second shots, I felt dizzy.
What disappointed me most about this film was the content, which was not only difficult to follow but, to me, insulting. Castle’s assertions that manga is all about sexuality (more than half of the film consisted of unnecessary and unsavory stills of cartoon porn) and its readers are social outcasts were short sighted and poorly defended. Shame on Castle, who should know very well that manga genres and readers are far more varied than that.
I have taken out a still from the film that particularly bothered me (above.) Yes, it’s true that manga fans in Japan are still considered on the fringe. The Japanese media nervously reports on violent criminals who watch anime the same way the American media reports on violent criminals who play video games. However, by the time this film was made, it was long established that the otaku stereotype does not truly reflect today’s otaku, who are usually ordinary individuals who happen to enjoy anime and manga (and yes, I consider myself one). I think that Castle is mistaking his portrayal of otaku for hikikomori, or shut-ins (Link goes to a great story on the subject from The New York Times).
For a far more in depth analysis of the otaku stereotype problem, I highly reccomend otaku scholar Lawrence Eng’s academic paper, “The current status of “otaku” and Japan’s latest youth crisis.” But as for Manga Mad, don’t expect to get any insight into fandom here.
Lauren’s Rating (out of five stars)
Cinematography: ★
Content: ★
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9 Responses to “Movie Night: Manga Mad”
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I understand your thoughts on the matter. Akihabara Geeks is a good documentary on the subject from a Japanese perspective. It is being shown Sunday of Katsucon at 7 Am in Video 3. Otaku Unite (I think is in Netflix) is another documentary on the subject from the US perspective.
You are so sweet to recomment, Tom! I was pretty sad when I lost all the comments. I am working on setting up a subdomain on my server and ended up overwriting the main domain. That’s why I had to restore with a backup!
Yeah, I’m going to do my best to be up at 7 am to watch Akihabara Geeks!
Ha! If manga was all about sexuality I wouldn’t have read any of it!
But this does reflect a prejudice Americans hold toward manga. I’m not sure why they dislike it so much – when all’s said and done, it’s just a comic book, one of those great American traditions.
I can’t remember where I read it, it must have been for a class, but it said that American cartoons focus on good vs. bad in a very black and white manner, while Japanese cartoons are more willing to explore the grays of the issue. It said that American producers don’t think that kids can handle anything more than black and white – and yet they’re surprised when kids lean toward manga and anime.
@Jenn
That is a very good comment. One of the more popular Mangas now Death Note is all about the gray space.
I also don’t like the idea of portraying manga as sexualized as honestly it’s not mainstream manga that makes up the majority of the sexual works in japan. It’s work from fan groups and club circles. A lot of the pornographic material isn’t authorized even when it uses copyrighted characters. It’s basically fanfic with pictures…
[...] impressed with the cinematography of this film, but truth be told, anything would look good after last week’s doc. After a while of watching the same sort of quality shots (both interview and B-roll) that I [...]
Hi Lauren, and thanks for the shout out!
Having watched quite a few fandom documentaries myself, I’m curious to know how your documentary watching (and making) project is going. What’s on your to-watch list, and what will your documentary focus on?
I haven’t watched Manga Mad yet, but I’ll give it a try soon.
Hey Lawrence! It’s great to see you commenting on my site since I’ve been a fan of your work for several years. I’d love to do an interview with you some time, if you have a chance!
As a student, my main concern with my documentary work is time, so my last mini-documentary consisted of three two-minute films, and this upcoming one will be similar. My focus this time is on transformation- how people alter themselves physically at anime conventions. I hope, once I am out of school, to do a much longer piece of reporting at local conventions, but I haven’t narrowed in on a topic yet. My to-watch list is growing by the day, from Carlene Cordova’s “Ringers” to Spencer Halpin’s “Moral Combat.”
Don’t bother watching Manga Mad. It is among the poorest portrayals I have ever seen on the subject.
An interview sounds fun! You know where to find me
I have to admit, I haven’t seen either Ringers or Moral Combat, but they both look fascinating.
Re: Manga Mad; now I’ll have to see just how bad is is
[...] It’s interesting to see how Otaku Unite! defines “otaku.” (Remember how Manga Mad did it?) [...]