Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Brief II

This is a really big cop-out, but I need to share these articles with anyone who reads this. They all have great information from the anime source, Anime News Network. The three-part series is called "The Anime Economy" and it taught me a lot about how (gasp) the anime economy works nowadays and how it used to work back when. If you've got the time and patience, then Justin Sevakis can give you a lot more information on the subject that I ever could.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-05

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-07

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-09

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Comic Heroes v. Manga Heroes Part I: Batman v. Naruto

[Editor's note: For the sake of brevity and my own laziness (and ease of comparison), I'll only be comparing Batman to Naruto. This will include Tim Burton's Batman, Christopher Nolan's Batman, Year One, Arkham Asylum, and The Killing Joke. I know this is a shallow pool of Batman to choose from, but it's all I've seen/read. And the Naruto source material will be manga material and its anime adaptation.]

I read an article recently that compared American superheroes to their Japanese counterparts, which are arguably shonen manga main characters. Of course, that's not inclusive, since you could easily make comparisons between, say, Batman and Spike from Cowboy Bebop. But this particular article will focus on two characters in their respective canons: Batman and Naruto.

One of the key differences I found was that Batman was badass to begin with. In Year One, Tim Burton's Batman, and Batman Returns, Batman is a pretty big badass. In Begins, Batman's biggest obstacle that isn't an antagonist is arguably which design to use for his costume and which gadgets to use. However, my memory is fuzzy with the movie.

Naruto, however, starts off as an idiot who can't really do anything right. Sasuke is really the Batman of Naruto, to throw Batman down to that level of badassery (what I'm saying here with my awkward wording is that Batman is way more badass than Sasuke can ever hope to be).

Over the course of Naruto, the character of Naruto grows in strength to overcome a powerful foe (Zabuza, Orochimaru, Sasuke, Akatsuki). He starts off relatively weak. Throughout the comics of Batman that I've read, and the progression of the movie series' I've seen, the physical strength, or battle strength if you will, doesn't change. This is a big difference between character archetypes in the United States and in Japan. The characters in the U.S. oftentimes (and I could be completely off-kilter here) don't grow in terms of physical strength while Japanese antagonists in almost every show I've seen have to go through some sort of power-up in order to defeat their opponents (Super Saiyan, Sage Mode, Nine-Tails Cloak, Shikai, Bankai, Second Gear).

The difference in knowledge of the world has, in every case, been very different between Japanese products and U.S. products. In U.S. comics, the world is our own and something scientific will usually happen to give the protagonists power. Batman is actually an outlier in this sense. But in Japanese manga and anime, it is very frequently a fantastical world like that of Mushishi, Naruto, half of Bleach, One Piece, and a whole lot more. So the Japanese face a difficult task in setting up the politics of the world, the limitations of the world, and the "magic" of the world. This is a task and a limitation that U.S. comics don't have to go through. What Naruto decided to do was have the reader learn the world as the character of Naruto learns the world. This is a good way of doing things, but Masashi Kisimoto seems to be making things up as he goes along rather than creating the world before he sets out on the project.

The characters of Batman and Naruto vary greatly in how they handle situations. In the early going, both Batman and Naruto believed they had to do things themselves. Batman took on Gotham and Naruto took on Konoha. But while Naruto gradually realizes that he needs help from his friends, Batman continues to be a loner-type character. Sure, he has some people that help him out at points, but it's ultimately about Batman. Naruto delves a little deeper into the subject, so to speak. Naruto joins a team by force, meets Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi and eventually proves himself to the rest of the village as a whole, especially Rock Lee, Kiba, Shikamaru, and Choji in particular. He gathers a close-knit group of friends that follow him and protect him. They give each other strength rather than Batman's connection to clean up the city of Gotham. It's really a theme throughout a lot of manga, that friends will help you in the end. And Batman in particular is an exemplary loner-type character in the works that I've read.