The Diary of Somebody

Hello there!

Of course, who I'm saying hello to may be myself.  That's fine; this blog is for me as much as it is for anyone else.

The point of this blog, if the little description on the side didn't do a good job, is allowing me a place to write down (and or share) my ideas and thoughts about manga, and possibly other mediums.

For some history, I've been reading manga for about 20 years now--I started when I was 10, after discovering it (and anime) through the Sci-Fi channel and my local comic shop, which had started to import, at the time, "Japanimation."  It's been something I've loved and enjoyed for years, but I never really thought of doing anything with it.

Flash forward, I'm currently engaged in my PhD in Literature and Criticism.  One of the interesting things that I've floated in my mind since moving up in my studies, and one of the things discussed here in my program at length is the issues the English (and Academic English, I mean) field currently has with the battle between "Literature" and "literature," the big and little l.  What some of you might already guess, is that the English field is currently facing a split, or a tear, in the ways in which it studies, or what it studies, when it comes to literature--we're rapidly approaching the point in which the field must admit that works such as comics, television, film, and video games deserve not only attention, but can be used to better understand our world.  Comics, here meaning "Western," have already started trickling into the classroom and academia, however doing so only in terms of again big and little L--what people call "Graphic Novels," titles like Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Maus, etc.  That's good, but the problem is again creating a binary that excludes others through the hierarchical constructions of binary systems--you cannot have an "equal" binary, and one thing must always be better than the other.

Manga, in many ways, exists in a liminal space here--it is neither big L or little l, because most westerners, and perhaps even many native Japanese, have never through of the medium as anything more than a diversionary art form.  That may be over simplifying the existence of manga in Japan, but in the West it gets very little, if any consideration outside of being "comics from Japan that feature lots of schoolgirls and ninjas."  Thankfully, and perhaps due to market maturation, Western readers are now being gifted with things like the full Tezuka library (thanks to Vertical), works of a more mature nature (like Viz's SIG line), and obscure titles that probably would not have appealed to readers here years ago (Yen Press here does a fantastic job with things like Otoyomegatari, the Haruhi novels, and again Viz and Vertical, as well as Dark Horse).  Still, while that's good, I feel there's a vacuum of people writing about this medium, of experiencing it above the level of pure entertainment; once again, the big and little l.  Manga has few, if any, boundaries--it is one of the most expressive mediums, perhaps, in the world, rivaling the creation of novels in the 20th century.  While many stories may be similar or repetitive, that's true of almost any creative medium that exists.

So, what I've decided to do is put my foot down in the wet soil of the medium, to perhaps be the first, or one of the first, to consider manga as more than just "comics that you read backwards," and perhaps further not only people's enjoyment of it, but perhaps make them think, or think about their enjoyment, a little more deeply.

I also think I'll do the occasional review, but most of the content here will be essay format; I really do hope that, if you stumble upon this place, you come back and see what's going on, and I hope that it may perhaps give you things to think about, manga to read, or at least expand upon the ways in which you can not only have your cake, but eat it too, and begin to, in some small way, close the gap between that big and little l--to create an academic workplace in which all works are examined, read, enjoyed, and discussed, not because they are "works of fine art," but because they are all Texts to be decoded, understood, and considered.