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Sun, Mar. 20th, 2005 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterWah, reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telophase's visual analyses of manga and watching Fruits Basket seems to have reawakened my long dormant desire to read manga! I am doomed. I hit the peak of my anime/manga obsession around senior year of high school, and I actually bought the entire set of Rurouni Kenshin and brought it over to America! That's a whopping 28 vols. Someday I need to ship over my collection of X, Mars, and assorted Yazawa Ai manga. Although maybe I'll just succumb and re-purchase all of her Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai in Japanese at the Kinokuniya here.
It's sort of funny, because I know people around me on LJ have been getting into manga for quite some time now, but I always sort of stood off to the side. It's still a little strange watching people go through the first stages of obsession, mostly because I remember doing it myself back in high school. I would think I'd be more nostalgic and happy about it, the way I am when people I know start to get into Buffy and Angel for the first time, but it's just so strange because all of my old favorites have just started to be published here, or people are reading all these new manga that I haven't heard about. I suspect my knowledge of anime/manga is still stuck in 1999. It is very strange though -- Rurouni Kenshin, the manga that got me started on manga, has only really recently started being published here. I still remember eagerly awaiting book 21 to come out in Taiwan, 6 years ago. For me, it's long concluded and over, but for people here, it's still new. Same with X. Well, not concluded for me, but prematurely ended! Grrr. And I look at all the shelves of manga at Borders and Barnes and Noble, and I don't know what to pick up anymore. It also doesn't help that they're still so expensive here. Used to be about $3 a volume back in Taiwan, and I can't quite justify shelling out so much yet.
So I've been reading people's entries and being very happy about that, but not quite getting into the spirit myself. But then I found out Nana by Yazawa Ai, possibly my favorite manga series, has finally been licensed! Joy! Celebration! I keep wanting to make everyone read Yazawa Ai, but only Paradise Kiss is translated right now, and that's far from my favorite of her series. Now I've been hankering to reread Nana and to finally read vols. 6-9. Except I lent vols. 1-3 to someone and never got them back before graduating.
Today I ventured out to Kinokuniya in search of the first three books and discovered it's up to vol. 12 now! Yikes! Of course I got them. But the store didn't have vols. 1, 3, or 10, so I have special ordered them from the SF store. And (you see where this is heading) I found that there is a Nana artbook!!!!!! I am so excited!!!! It's a Yazawa Ai artbook!!!! The only other one I have is from Gokinjo Monogatari, which I like, but not half so much as Nana! Also, I adore her artwork, because it's so different from typical shoujo style. I spent much more money than I should have because of that artbook. But... it's so pretty! And for some reason, buying them in Japanese makes me feel a little better because they're imported and still cheaper than the translated versions. So far... Plus, this way I don't have to wait for them to be translated, hee. And I shall also sort of justify this as a way to practice my extremely rusty Japanese.
You know, with all this talk of manga going around right now, I was sort of contemplating ripping off my thesis and cobbling together a brief history of shoujo manga/shounen ai, or a brief intro to the Japanese language or something, but I'm not sure if that would be entirely pretentious and telling people things they already know, or what. I think I researched so much for my thesis that I can't tell anymore. And it's sort of odd because I remember first getting into anime and people online spouting their "credentials" and the like, which is partially how I ended up in East Asian studies, but I really don't want to go off and sound like I am some know-it-all, because I am far from knowing much about it at all...
telophase's visual analyses of manga and watching Fruits Basket seems to have reawakened my long dormant desire to read manga! I am doomed. I hit the peak of my anime/manga obsession around senior year of high school, and I actually bought the entire set of Rurouni Kenshin and brought it over to America! That's a whopping 28 vols. Someday I need to ship over my collection of X, Mars, and assorted Yazawa Ai manga. Although maybe I'll just succumb and re-purchase all of her Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai in Japanese at the Kinokuniya here. It's sort of funny, because I know people around me on LJ have been getting into manga for quite some time now, but I always sort of stood off to the side. It's still a little strange watching people go through the first stages of obsession, mostly because I remember doing it myself back in high school. I would think I'd be more nostalgic and happy about it, the way I am when people I know start to get into Buffy and Angel for the first time, but it's just so strange because all of my old favorites have just started to be published here, or people are reading all these new manga that I haven't heard about. I suspect my knowledge of anime/manga is still stuck in 1999. It is very strange though -- Rurouni Kenshin, the manga that got me started on manga, has only really recently started being published here. I still remember eagerly awaiting book 21 to come out in Taiwan, 6 years ago. For me, it's long concluded and over, but for people here, it's still new. Same with X. Well, not concluded for me, but prematurely ended! Grrr. And I look at all the shelves of manga at Borders and Barnes and Noble, and I don't know what to pick up anymore. It also doesn't help that they're still so expensive here. Used to be about $3 a volume back in Taiwan, and I can't quite justify shelling out so much yet.
So I've been reading people's entries and being very happy about that, but not quite getting into the spirit myself. But then I found out Nana by Yazawa Ai, possibly my favorite manga series, has finally been licensed! Joy! Celebration! I keep wanting to make everyone read Yazawa Ai, but only Paradise Kiss is translated right now, and that's far from my favorite of her series. Now I've been hankering to reread Nana and to finally read vols. 6-9. Except I lent vols. 1-3 to someone and never got them back before graduating.
Today I ventured out to Kinokuniya in search of the first three books and discovered it's up to vol. 12 now! Yikes! Of course I got them. But the store didn't have vols. 1, 3, or 10, so I have special ordered them from the SF store. And (you see where this is heading) I found that there is a Nana artbook!!!!!! I am so excited!!!! It's a Yazawa Ai artbook!!!! The only other one I have is from Gokinjo Monogatari, which I like, but not half so much as Nana! Also, I adore her artwork, because it's so different from typical shoujo style. I spent much more money than I should have because of that artbook. But... it's so pretty! And for some reason, buying them in Japanese makes me feel a little better because they're imported and still cheaper than the translated versions. So far... Plus, this way I don't have to wait for them to be translated, hee. And I shall also sort of justify this as a way to practice my extremely rusty Japanese.
You know, with all this talk of manga going around right now, I was sort of contemplating ripping off my thesis and cobbling together a brief history of shoujo manga/shounen ai, or a brief intro to the Japanese language or something, but I'm not sure if that would be entirely pretentious and telling people things they already know, or what. I think I researched so much for my thesis that I can't tell anymore. And it's sort of odd because I remember first getting into anime and people online spouting their "credentials" and the like, which is partially how I ended up in East Asian studies, but I really don't want to go off and sound like I am some know-it-all, because I am far from knowing much about it at all...
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Mon, Mar. 21st, 2005 04:23 am (UTC)I have had a lot of similar feelings re: manga. It's interesting sort of getting back into it again. Over the past couple of years I've watched its popularity and availability grow and thought to myself, "man, if I were still into this stuff, I'd be SO excited." But now I'm sort of cut off from all that. When I first got into it in high school, I had a lot of recently immigrated friends who'd show me the good stuff, friends active in fansubbing, local cons, Fuji TV, and a Kinokuniya. I tell people with complete honesty that for a long time I was more familiar with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and even Indian pop culture than I was with American. Sakai Noriko and Amuro Namie were much more familiar to me than say, the cast of Friends.
I used to think I'd be an animator or a comic book artist. I was very serious about it for awhile. I know now that it probably wasn't meant to be, but reading about this growing industry is fascinating.
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Mon, Mar. 21st, 2005 01:24 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm feeling this funny buzz. Part of me is so excited that it's finally taking off here and people are finally reading it, but the other half is too tired to care. I started up the anime club in my college, as we much have been the only college in America without one, and I had to work like mad to convince all my friends that no, anime was not violence and porn, and I think I sort of got tired of it after a while. So I am happy about the wider acceptance, but probably still feeling a little burned out from all the anime club stuff.