Really Close To Our Last Word on the Subject, This Year

December 30th, 2004 · No Comments
by Booksquare

Here’s how we imagine the conversation:

    Editor: It’s been 24-hours. We gotta do another manga story.
    Reporter: But, boss, what else is there to say? I’ve been on this story 24/7 since last June.
    Editor: Find something!
    Reporter: Ooookay. I’ll try.
    Editor: Do not try. Do.

And so our intrepid hero, balancing his editor on his shoulders, trudges off to the nearest bookstore and stakes out the manga section*. At first, he considers a story on the breadth and depth of the titles. Then he thinks about rearranging the shelves by color. He wonders what in the world Inuyasha is (which, to be fair, is a question Inuyasha wrestles with as well). He toys with the idea of reading every title and writing a top ten list. People like top ten lists.

Then he notices something he’s never seen before**: girls! Girls are scanning titles, picking up books, and, his heart pounds as he sees his hook, buying them. Lots and lots of girls are buying lots and lots of manga. Elated, he searches out a reason, carefully placing the best quotes on separate pages, which allows us to present them out of order:

“I think the most appealing thing for DC with manga is that it’s been decades since comics have been a meaningful medium for females,” Mr. Nee added. “We’re reaching readers that we’re currently not reaching with our regular comics, and it’s great.”

But what is a meaningful medium? It’s quite simple:

“Manga is bringing back the very same subjects, but with a twist, a 21st-century Japanese sensibility,” she said. “The girls are cute, they’re never insulting, and they never have big breasts,” Ms. Robbins said, referring to the overly endowed young women drawn in superhero comics.

While we would suggest that’s not the whole reason, we’ll play along for the moment. We’ll also remind our readers about the fact that the chicks save themselves and the guys. They’re admired for their brains. They are superheroes in their own right. And, because this is a Japanese concept, they turn in their homework on time and get good grades***.

* – Never being one to sit around and contemplate, the editor heads for the nearest bar.
** – In a literary license sense of the concept.
*** – Kagome may be an exception to this, but that’s another issue entirely.

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