Transcript
Faisal
Welcome to the 日本語 (Nihongo) Project today joining us. We have Rayne from the United States, a masters student in East Asian studies at Stanford University. So glad you could join me today. I first just want to start off with if you are able to tell us a little bit about. What we refer to the discipline of digital humanities as well as East Asian studies to provide a little bit of a background.
Rayne
Yeah, so first for digital humanities with essentially studying the human condition and rather than being limited to the physical world and the tools with physical world utilized digital tools and materials
Rayne
To understand this, so an example from it’s a history of Maps would be having the map be digitized and then you and then having other maps of the same region we digitized and creating a multi layering effect to show someone how a region has changed. Um with myself with what I do called Manga Studies, and then I’ll talk about Manga studies, or rather you said East Asian Studies sorry. So for East Asian studies it is pretty much very broadly just studying East Asia. And then what is East Asia is actually one of the questions from this point, usually referring to the Korean Peninsula. So both North and South Korea.
Rayne
Japan, China and Taiwan, but in certain interpretations it can expand to include Vietnam as well as overseas Chinese in Singapore and other parts of the world. And so it’s essentially studying anything at all that’s going on in this region or anything at all going on in this region which is affecting other regions of the world so that’s what manga studies actually does.
Faisal
Wonderful explanation there, and yeah, definitely I, I think I’ve seen a quite a few interpretations, you know, Vietnam being one of them where depending on who you’re asking they may classify more as a country within East Asia versus Southeast Asia. So yeah, it’s quite actually interesting to see that even those definitions do vary.
Faisal
And, so first? What is manga generally speaking? So what is it actually and what is the basic fundamentals of manga?
Rayne
Manga just means, um, some former sequential art. So comics coming from Japan.
Rayne
Uh, another way to look at manga is through the art style of manga. So just pick your favorite anime or manga and the distinct art style used and then we have artists utilizing that art style in their own work outside Japan. And then the question becomes if that is longer as well, and then if we think about categorizing Manga within the framework of history.
Rayne
We can view manga as a continuation of ancient rituals in Japan, which were also a form sequential art or people read images right to left, and that’s what moves the narrative along. So while we have, we flip through pages for manga nowadays when way to approach it is just another, a piece of a long line of work that began with scrolls.
Faisal
Oh, perfect. And so when we think about manga, I think oftentimes we think about. At least from the general public perspective, definitely it’s from Japan, So what? So, is manga only from Japan? Or can Manga be from a variety of other countries?
Rayne
I would say that manga can definitely come from other countries. Specifically, I’m thinking about it campaign that Tokyo Pop did in the early 2000s where they recruited artists from across North America to submit their manga. And what categorized as Manga was, again the art style and the another, And within the art style. It isn’t this how we draw the characters instead of and so forth.
Rayne
But how we tell the story and presented within those pages? So for example, choosing to make the story be read right to left would be another characteristic of trying to copy or not really copy, but be influenced by this manga style. So well for my work manga is really coming from Japan, because that is what I study. I would definitely make the argument we have things like Canadian or American Manga
Faisal
Oh okay, that’s very interesting. I think that’s something that you know a lot of people that are interested in Japanese culture or even the literature may not know that Manga could comprise of other series that are not necessarily, you know, from Japan.
Faisal
And well, how aware do you think the general public is about manga itself? So this is people that are outside of the manga industry, not necessarily studying, in academic streams of East Asian studies or even history, for instance. So how well do you think the general public at large you know is aware of Manga?
Rayne
I think they’re quite well aware of it. Recently we’re having a bit of a boom of Western comic books and so forth in North America, but before that Manga was pretty much the dominant player in the market. You know, this is the point where you have to join Manga with Anime because Anime is usually an adaptation of a Manga, and I think most Americans are very familiar with Anime and as a result they become more familiar with Manga. So, I think that well, sadly not all Canadians and Americans have read Manga, I think they do know what it is.
Faisal
And just kind of going back to that point. Um, again, as an American, there is a long history of comic books, and even in certain social circles, it’s very prominent. We see it’s actually kind of, the resurgence of geek culture, where certain comic books are very either kind of the mainstay, or they become very popular and, uh, well, from your perspective. What are some of the key differences and similarities of, let’s say, your typical American comic book and a Manga series?
Rayne
Well pertaining to my research, one of the biggest differences is how it is produced in terms of what is it physically look like.
Rayne
So manga is usually about the same size as a paperback book, and it is read right to left. So, the images you read them right to left, right. And, that is very and also within this paperback book there are about 150 pages, so there’s multiple chapters in this. We have manga magazines, but those are almost.
Never translated to English, so I’m going leave that discussion, but that’s essentially Manga is like a book, um, but with Western Comics they’re more sterilized, so the release issue by issue and then bound to trade paperbacks. But most importantly is that they’re physically size different. I’m trying to remember the exact dimensions and I don’t but essentially, if you hold a Western comic next for a manga, even if you don’t are unable to read the texture for some reason, interpret the images well to see the aesthetical differences. You’ll physically see that the sizing is different and another distinction between manga anime besides things like size and page count different ideas of serialization is the use of color pages. So, with Western comics, we often have every page be colored, especially if it’s something produced by Marvel and falls under that generic superhero genre. But with Manga color pages is much more limited.
Rayne
I’m sure there exist manga that has all card pages for the whole series, but it’s very uncommon. Usually with manga it is really only the cover and the title page and this title page could be the title page for the whole individual volume or the title page for the volume as well as each chapter that are colored and instead they use a black and red gradient.
Rayne
So we now begin to enter the visual differences. One thing I did not mention though, is story. So this is the part of where I think manga and Western Comics actually have a lot of similarity. They tell all these different types of stories, and if there’s superheroes in comics, we usually think of superheroes coming from North America, but there’s superheroes in Manga too.
Rayne
And in the same way we have magical girls in model that you can find these magical girls in a Marvel work as well. So even though there’s a lot of tangible differences in terms of narrative, there’s a lot of similarities, yeah?
Faisal
And, Yeah. I mean, that’s one thing that to me it strikes me as very interesting about, the the use of color. Uh, like I can pick up any manga and it’s going to be pretty much black and white with some greys like a gradient and something that I also thought about was just. Comic books tend to be.
Faisal
Almost always in color, um, if they’re available in print, you order them directly. You know, like a DC or Marvel comic book, they’ll tend to be in full color, which is also a key difference, but I think you’re right because it’s very, the comic books tend to be a lot shorter, so perhaps. In the end, the cost is about similar. I don’t know, I’m not. I’m not quite sure, but maybe there’s a certain reason why manga is predominantly greyscale black and white versus you know the comic books being in full color and again so being a Canadian I do remember.
Faisal
Very well growing up watching some popular series Pokémon, everyone knows it’s still ongoing. Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. That’s kind of got a restart as well. Cardcaptors, Digimon, you know just a few of the series that I grew up watching and my wife as well. She’s watched shows like Doraemon when she was younger living in Indonesia.
Faisal
So with this massive global reach that that Anime has, and in some cases it localized or not. So how accessible has the manga been during your research is that accessible? Have you found maybe that some of the selected anime series are more widely accessible than their manga counterparts?
Rayne
So, that’s going take me a bit to answer this and digest this question. So I’m going to speak on this accessibility in general of these materials and then talk about how it pertains to my research. At least try to with the question. So, with manga and anime, it is much more accessible today than I think it has ever been in North America.
Rayne
But also across Southeast Asia or Latin America. Those are the regions that I’m most familiar with. I know very little about the European market . Um, so with anime we have multiple streams platforms, popular ones are Crunchyroll that make animate accessible.
Rayne
So with your wife’s lived experience, she most likely watched it on the TV.
Rayne
There is no streaming platform back then right? And with your little experience he was also watching it on TV and we still have Anime broadcasting on the TV throughout North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia. But through to the rise of streaming platforms and lessening the digital divide and making it possible to access high speed Internet too that can support these streaming platforms. You’re getting fans seeing things officially, legally and easier than it has ever been. So in terms of unofficial platforms, that distribution hasn’t been as effective within the last of 20 years. I would say, obviously, the Internet, and the availability of high speed Internet has affected things, but with the, really what’s becoming the dominance of official channels. It’s just making anime so much more accessible, but.
Rayne
There’s a second story going on here that really applies to manga, so I’m going to go back to Crunchyroll example, because it’s nice to talk about that.
Rayne
So Crunchyroll also has manga and what’s interesting here is two things. First that it’s available outside North America, so you’re able to access Manga on Crunchyroll if you’re in North America for example.
Rayne
And I should sort of clarify this with Crunchyroll the reason why it has this global reach is because it produces subtitles in multiple languages like English, Spanish, Russian and so forth.
Rayne
So that makes it much more accessible linguistically than having to wait for your country to localize it in the local language or something, Crunchyroll already did that.
Rayne
So with manga, um, you’re able to access digital manga easily through a platform like Crunchyroll, and you’re also able to do something, and this is more new, with the rise of simultaneous publication where you can read the newest chapter. So this is where I can connect my own research, a bit more.
Rayne
So I particularly work with Cardcaptor Sakura, and recently Cardcaptor Sakara became available through Crunchyroll, so we just had a chapter come out yesterday, you can read it on Crunchyroll. That was the same exact time as it came out in Japan.
Rayne
That is really to me, as someone who’s been a fan and a researcher, that’s amazing to have a work come out in Japan and have it accessible to people outside Japan more or less at the same time. And also in various languages. So for Cardcaptor Sakura in particular, with Crunchyroll I know it’s available in English, but you can also read the Cardcaptor Sakura sequel in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, I think it’s all of them, through another digital platform called CLAMP-FANS, and this is officially published by Kodansha, so there’s much more access through digital platforms then there have been when we were limited to using physical materials.
Faisal
And yeah, absolutely. I think because more and more regions of the world are developing in a way that the infrastructure is being rapidly invested in and you’re seeing fiber optic cables being laid and the general public having access to fiber optic cables, and internet that’s a lot faster than dial-up used to be, and I know in many countries your mobile service, so that 3G or 4G LTE connection, that is now fast enough for you to actually stream some of these. You know, anime series and even it might be one’s only hotspot into the Internet. So if they’re using like an LTE network, which is fast enough, it’s definitely and more people are you know, getting into smartphones and that sort of thing, so it’s definitely I think also become more widely accessible through maybe some of those means.
Faisal
So for now, let’s shift the discourse in the conversation a little bit to Manga localization and domestication within the US. So starting off, we talk about that term. So what is localization? Are you able to give us kind of a nice neat definition of localization?
Rayne
I think, um, previously, before we had things like simultaneous publication and simultaneous subtitling and so forth, We were really thinking about how can we bring this work today to a place outside Japan, and when we do that, how do we make it palatable for the local audience. So, one example of that is simply translating into English or whatever the languages of the area it’s coming to, that’s usually when people think about localization, I think that’s kind of where they stop. They think, OK, we translated the text to English, we’re done.
Rayne
That doesn’t work for Manga. Because manga it’s an entire text. It has images, it has notes, it has cultural references that may not be known to the audience in North America for thinking about this Japan to North America localization right? So that’s when you get to a long, long history of American publishers, sometimes joint Japanese American publishers publishing manga in a way that it physically does not look the way it does today, so they used to actually publish it in a what we call floppy comic format, which is the same format we use for something like Marvel. So, they would cut it up. They would make it be read left to right, not right to left, and they released it chapter by chapter.
Rayne
And that looked very different than Manga is today and very different from what Manga looks like in Japan but they were thinking when we localize this, we want to tell people it’s comics, so we’re going to put it in this comic packaging, and hopefully they’ll buy it right?
Rayne
That didn’t work out.
Rayne
They tried different methods to localize Manga, and in 2002 we have Tokyo Pop which does it’s 100% authentic Manga campaign where they stopped trying to put it into this floppy comic format, they stop flipping the pages to left to right. Rather they make it right to left and they have it be more or less the same size is a Japanese manga volume, and additionally to this, they in this localization process, this new localization process they include things like honorifics and cultural notes, and they no longer edit out the Japanese katakana sound effects and so forth.
Faisal
Oh the onomatopoeia
Rayne
Yeah, and so now when we localize manga it’s much more. It’s very different than it used to be and it’s much more closer to Japan. But really what I want to end with here is that localization kind of was like it started in Japan. There’s an end point for the work and then it starts up again. In North America, when they start adapting the work for North American audiences, but we have simultaneous publication occurring so works are being published and made available at the exact same time, and often through the same medium. So an example of that would be the Shonen Jump plus platform, which allows users from around the world to access Shonen Jump manga magazine in English or Japanese. In terms of the user experience with that website, you’re not seeing many differences between the Japanese user experience and a North American user experience, because it is the text that is being translated, but they still have the same platform.
Rayne
So in that case we get what is localization when the publisher is just really translating their website.
Faisal
Right, and I actually think Shonen Jump to is still the most popular. I don’t know if they are a publisher or kind of a series of different collections that they have under their branding. I still think that’s probably the most popular in in Canada perhaps North America as well Because they’ve covered very famous, well the Manga text of very famous anime, and we’ve all, I think, seen an anime that was from the Shonen Jump domain I guess I could say.
Faisal
And, so is there actually kind of a basic timeline of when Manga first emerged, you know, in Japan itself, and then maybe up until the localization of the very first manga series or thereabouts in the United States? So, kind of from Japan up until it arrived in the US.
Rayne
So with manga, like I said, we can make it a very early start date by connecting it to ancient picture scrolls. Another start date of manga is – and this a more much more debated, is thinking back of Hokusai manga, which is a collection of sketches that Hokusai produced and he titled it Manga and this was done in the late 19 century. So, was that Manga? Well, there’s sequential art, but it looks very different than the manga that we have today. The narrative Manga that we buy in stores in Japan or North America. So really I would say we can start with the Hokusai manga, we can start with picture scrolls, but I think the biggest thing was the advent of manga magazines that occur in the early 20th century when you started having these telephone book size anthologies of various different comic book like series.
Rayne
And so, with Manga coming to America, um, there was, I think, two periods of time that I want to mention here. So, like I mentioned manga came to America in the 1990s, so when Sailor Moon was first published in English in 1998, it looked like a Marvel comic, again it was a thin floppy comic form right.
Rayne
And this is where I focus my research. But if we go back to actually 1962, we have a publisher called Gold Key, which is an American publisher, and Gold Key lasts until 1984. Their focus is mostly North American comics, but they do publish Astro Boy, and when they publish Astro Boy, something interesting happens.
Rayne
They change the photos. They change the art, the illustration.
Faisal
That’s interesting.
Rayne
Yeah so, they changed it so much that I’m not sure if I would call it Manga.
Rayne
But that’s still the next date we have to think about, is 1978 when Barefoot Gen is brought over to North America and they translate it, but they do not alter the images.
Rayne
So it’s much more closer to the original work, but I think the most important date for really manga is actually in North America. In 1986, when Viz is founded.
Rayne
So in 1987 Viz gets publishing Manga and it’s founded as a joint venture between Shogakukan and American investors. So that’s when you really, I think, bring Manga to America. You bring it in a way where you’re trying to make it remain manga and so forth in a way that publishers like gold key, which were not doing.
Faisal
And that’s Viz media, right?
Rayne
Yes, Viz
Faisal
They’re still around, I think.
Rayne
Yeah, they’re still the major publisher of manga, and that’s really why I wanted to bring that up because they, if you like Boruto because you watch Naruto, they’re the ones who publish it and so yeah.
Faisal
And so, well when we go through localization of manga. So is it really the highly successful ones and series, the ones that garner a lot of attention that actually do end up getting localized? Or, you know, maybe some that are not so popular still get localized?
Rayne
So let’s start with the first one that came right Barefoot Gen. While Barefoot Gen is very popular. It’s one to look at because it handles very difficult aspects for war. It isn’t popular in the same sense that Sailor Moon is popular so it came here. So I think when we look at Manga early on in North America, we’re bringing things that are either important for a cultural or educational purpose? Or we’re bringing things that are simply popular and hopefully will make its way.
Rayne
And also if there’s an Anime on TV because this is very important for Sailor Moon with the magazines I’m looking at, they referenced the TV show in the comic in the very first issues that are coming to North America. So they’re saying I’m so happy you like the Anime, now read the comic.
Faisal
Interesting,
Rayne
Yeah, exactly.
Rayne
We don’t really have that because with unofficial translation that was extremely common, people were accessing manga that way in early 2000s. It kind of shifted, and it became a lot more fan driven. I think in terms of acquisition and what they would publish, but also with simultaneous publication for example with the Shonen jump plus platform.
Rayne
We’re having these come into English just because it’s in the magazine there. It’s like we’re transfer bringing this entire magazine anthology over to America, so it doesn’t matter if it’s popular or not yet. This is a new series. We have – the series might just be coming out today in both Japan and North America. There’s no idea of popularity, just hopefully it will work out because Shonen Jump was willing to publish it.
Faisal
Right, so in that case it’s mostly, you know the case of just we’re going to – I don’t know if it’s indication is the right word, but we’re going to have them both in both markets in North American and the Japanese market. And, well, I guess in that case it wouldn’t really matter so much if it’s popular. Because yeah, if there’s a wide enough appeal, and I mean Shonen Jump is a pretty big name. People are still going to pick it up right so?
Rayne
Yeah, I also want to mention here, I something that’s very common. If you’ve ever attended an anime convention and gone to the presentations of publishers put out. If you want a comic, officially translated, ask for it.
Rayne
That fan driven acquisition is still a thing, so, even though you may not see what you want in English yet or whatever your local language is, if you ask for it from the publisher, you might see it.
Faisal
Oh, that’s interesting. Well, I learned something new. So ask for it in English or whatever language, because these conventions, I mean maybe not this year, because for instance, Anime North here in Toronto got cancelled. But maybe next year we’re going to be running more of these conventions. And so this one might be a little bit of a stretch.
Faisal
But
Faisal
Are there any manga series that might have been localized into English in general, but not for the American market? So maybe there was a manga that was localized into English for Canada or Australia or something along the lines, but never actually appeared officially in the United States?
Rayne
Yes, I know there are ones I can’t think of anything on top of my head, but especially because, with the Canadian market in particular for my understanding as not a Canadian, someone who doesn’t do Canadian Studies, is that in Canada you really have two major markets. You have the French language market in the English language market and the French language market is.
Rayne
Influenced by what’s going on in France and as a result you might get a manga that was published in French. Come over to Québec and it’s never brought into English. It was only brought up in French so you have that going on in Canada, and the same thing where it might be available at English. But it might not be available in French or, but it’s available in French, it’s in the French spoken in French in Quebecois I totally slaughtered at work.
Faisal
That’s quite alright.
Rayne
Yeah, but so one thing that I have seen is Anime made available in the UK that is not brought over to the North American market, so we have to import those.
Rayne
But I think due to the way that anime is, manga is done now. It’s much more global that is becoming less common.
Faisal
Oh OK, so that’s, yeah again, one of those questions that it’s kind of out there and it’s interesting because then I guess the question becomes, well if it is available in let’s say English.
Faisal
And it’s available in like Australia or Canada. Then why isn’t it brought into the US right? And again, perhaps some of it has to do with I know licensing is still a big thing with manga and anime in general, so it has to be licensed so it could also just be licensing issues or for some reason this manga became very popular in Australia.
Faisal
Again, I just never came over, but yeah, the thing about Québec and the French language Mangas that might actually hit Québec versus that manga just never gets translated into English. It’s very, very possible and very likely given that it is, you know, the official, one of the official languages here and so when we talk about manga and um, and you know your work.
Faisal
We have to talk about archives, right? So I think it’s a very interesting point about archives here and so do Manga archives exist,
Rayne
Yes, they do.
Faisal
like they do in for other in the United States.
Rayne
OK, so in United States I will give a call to the Ohio State University which has the best Manga collection in North America and so with them they have they have so much more raw materials, but it’s interesting because they not only need to select the Japanese language materials, but they also need to select the various versions of Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura that has been published over the years.
Rayne
So with the North America, the collection developed needs of what we can call it Manga archives or much, much more likely an Anime or Manga selection, and a selection is much different. And beyond the Ohio State University, a few universities might buy Manga, primary for academic reasons, so that is they want to serve either faculty or students for using it either in their classes or their research. It might be because the student or the faculty member has requested the material
Rayne
Or because they know that there’s going to be a class on, let’s say animating, religion or rather religion in anime and they need to have materials to help the professor actually teach it to the students and the students do research on it, so we have those collections, so there’s a few different ways to access anime and manga, but I do want to say.
Rayne
Well, as an academic, I think you’d usually think of me staying in the academic library and doing all my work there. Um, the public libraries of North America in both Canada and the United States have an excellent Manga collection. They have it in both Japanese and English.
Rayne
Yeah, so particularly if we if we go hyperlocal with the San Francisco Public Library they have the West Addition branch which is a branch devoted to Japanese language, Russian language, English language materials and of course they’re going to have Manga there because kids read Manga and kids go to that library.
Rayne
So when I think about like getting Manga for my work, I have to think about okay, what can I get at my University? What can I find online? What can I get from amazon.co.jp? Which is my favorite website and what can I get from going to the Public Library? because when I really want to look at older stuff, stuff in the 90s that might be available at the Public Library.
Faisal
And so just one quick little add on that I have. So a lot of these, so what I’ve noticed just in my kind of brief travels in Japan is that bookstores are still relatively common. Maybe it’s just a Tokyo thing?
Or, I don’t know if it’s because there’s some things that you know – I say I didn’t know this about Japan, and then I talked to other Japanese folks and they say that’s a Tokyo specific thing. Or the region that you’re talking about. So I’m curious. The bookstores, and not just not just manga though, but in in general they tend to have them, more, you know frequently as I run into more often versus in Canada, where you know the concern has been a lot of independent publishers are going out of business. A lot of your local bookstores or your Chapters or Indigo are closing down their stores, and these are large commercial chains.
Faisal
So I was kind of surprised to see that small local chains are still, you know, relatively common in Tokyo.
Faisal
And with the manga archives, so if so, for instance, Ohio State University has this collection right, and they’re both – so what if there was no English language version? Would they just keep the Japanese version just to include in the collection or archive? Or would they have somebody maybe localize it?
Rayne
Yeah, so um. In terms of that, let’s picture a work that’s pretty common right now. I believe Golden Kamuy, we did not have simultaneous publication, so when Golden Kamuy first got popular and got awards and so forth, the Ohio State University, really I should be more broad here, Or University that collects Manga, have purchased it because it won this award. It features Ainu characters, so when so-and-so asked for it to include it in their lecture next week – maybe not next week, too soon, like maybe next month or not, but that would be all because they purchased it in Japanese rather than purchasing it in English and really those are kind of the same reasons why they purchased in English too, like when a patron is requesting a work, they could be requested in Japanese or English, but their motivations may be very much the same. They say I have the research need. I want to look at this work. I want to teach with this work. I’m interested in this work. I think it looks fun or it got this award. Those things don’t only change regardless of the language or flying in.
Rayne
Now in terms of a library requesting a work being published into English, I don’t think they would really do that, what we do have and this is a bit outside the world of manga is that with, for example, at UCSF up they have a really cool collection that feature diseases and pandemics, and so forth and medical issues in Japan from the Edo period. They have a digital exhibit of these works with a lot of it translating to English because you know they’re images so you can read a lot of it without having to read the text. So they translate the title and the other information, so it’s accessible to people in both Japanese and English.
Rayne
So there is, libraries sometimes do that type of translation with recording an item, but we usually I would feel not request a private publisher to translate something. You probably just translate a little teeny bit to make it accessible in terms of findability and stuff.
Faisal
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I guess if some you know random individuals from the middle of nowhere wrote this email to a Japanese publisher, they probably wouldn’t localize the manga just yet. But I guess if there’s enough demand for it, it will. You know, eventually get localized, or if it’s super popular, I’m sure that that that that that equation kind of gets into their minds to say should we localize this into English or any other language, for instance? And so for these localized versions of the manga Are the publishers the same? You kind of touched on this, original Japanese publisher, or is it predominantly going to be like US based publishers partnering with them or one publisher, The Japanese publisher, does the Japanese market and then for English for US/Canada like an American publisher will do the localized version here, how does that usually work out?
Rayne
It really depends on what is being brought over. So where was it published in Japan? What Manga magazine was it published in. In terms of rights, it belongs to the person who created it, not the publisher, but I’m going to give an example of Cardcaptor Sakura to explain how even this depends answer can even be within one single series, so when Cardcaptor Sakura was first published in 1999 in North America. It was published by Mixx Entertainment. Mixx Entertainment was an American company. It’s republished when Mixx Entertainment becomes Tokyo Pop, it’s American company there’s no Japanese ownership. In 2010, Dark Horse Comics based in Oregon publishes it again and then we have, a little bit after that, while this is going on, it’s being published in Japan, right? As we recall, this in Japan and all this is by Kodansha, one single company in Japan doing all this, but in America it keeps on changing right? And the next time that Cardcaptor Sakura becomes available in English, it is not an American company thatdoes it, but rather a Japanese company – or an American subsidy of a Japanese company called Kodansha Comics USA. So they published the collectors edition of Cardcaptor Sakura couple years ago. And so that’s where it gets a bit blurry, because they’re based in New York there, but there are subsidy of the Japanese company.
Rayne
And so forth, um, and then with the sequel for Cardcaptor Sakura Fair Card that has only had in one interpretation, one publisher, well Kodansha comics USA makes it available throughout North America and then Kodansha itself makes it available throughout Japan.
Rayne
But we have other works that are being picked up and they’re being handled differently, so if you think about Matahagiyo and her work, they’re being published by Fantagraphics, which is a small comic publisher based in Seattle, so really – and I haven’t even mentioned the context Shogakugon situation now having co-ownership of the company.
Rayne
It’s just really dependent on, I guess, where the work starts, um, an. If that company maybe has an American subsidy like Kodansha does, they probably will be the one handling it, but it really – I think I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. I wish I understood it better.
Faisal
No, I mean, it already sounds fairly complicated right now. Again, even within the same series, that’s quite a quite a joy ride or read to have to go through that. All that history and figure out who actually is publisher of this particular manga, even if it’s the same series, so that’s very interesting, and I think because companies and corporations in general, which ultimately are the ones doing a lot of publishing because they’re so transnational, it’s hard to kind of even pinpoint their own location sometimes so because they might have had offices or regional offices and various cities around the world, so definitely would get very complicated.
Faisal
So in the US, you might have heard of something called the Big 5, though the Big 5 publishers of books also, textbooks in some cases, so is there something like that in in Japan? Like Are there these giant mega publishing houses in Japan that publish manga?
Rayne
I’m actually going to get a term for you, wait can wait a moment from the look it up. So, I mentioned Kodansha on so there definitely a humongous player right? But um, I wanted to be very specific, OK?
Rayne
Here we go.
Rayne
So in Japan we have something called the Hitotsubashi Group. The Hitotsubashi group members include Shogoakukan, Shueisha, Viz Media, apparently, they have a minority stake in Crunchyroll and a ton of other companies, so we do have this idea of having like these major players who have a very large share of the Manga market and publishing a lot.
Rayne
To think that, like because the amount of Manga the Hitotsubashi group publishes would be enormous. The same thing with Kodansha in Japan, but we also have something called doujinshi, published by what’s called circles, which is fan made works, Shogakugan is not controlling that at all or any other major publishers. Somestimes they are just fan made works, sometimes they can get unique story or sometimes they can be pretty much fanfiction of a currently done Manga.
Rayne
Beyond these idea of these, ideally individuals controlling the production and then the huge company controlling the production, or at least highly influencing it, right? We also have digital model. So you can publish, I think you can do this with Line, but you can publish your Manga just on simple apps you can publish on fixit, you can go through Webtoon and you can make it widely available. That’s really why we saw the rise of Webtoons in Korea. So yeah, I would say that the Japanese market for manga and how it goes about being published, either in print digitally is extremely complicated, and there’s big players in small players, and that overall, though, those big players are definitely going to control what’s going on in terms of story and have an influence on longer globally in a way that let’s say, Dark Horse Comics in the United States cannot do.
Faisal
And yeah, I mean, I’m sure that that is also part of the reason why some of the Manga series do get localized into English among other languages. I know where tend to focus a lot on English because that’s what we are speaking right now. Presumably, the ones who are listening are also listening in English, of course, but, so I’m sure, yeah, there’s going be some big players, some small players, but it is sounding like it’s kind of similar to maybe even your traditional textbook publishers where you do have some small players and you have some major, maybe not even corporations like conglomerates, just massive companies that are doing a lot of the publications there as well.
Faisal
So what would you say is the impact of localization to individuals who perhaps don’t speak Japanese who might be learning at very early stages, so does that localization improve local accessibility? Presumably if they’re interested in the content, it would, but I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this one.
Rayne
I think localization of Anime and Manga really dramatically change like we can say Geek culture and Geek society in North America in ways that, its, for some people it kind of changed, like their entire life. They read manga as a kid and now they go around the world participating in cosplay competitions and now there are excellent streaming services and that’s all because the work was translated to English in itself.
Rayne
So, in that way, I think Anime and Manga is kind of amazing that I could change not just what you read, but what you do in terms of their hobbies what you do in terms of your skills. So I would say that localizing Manga, especially the way it Manga is localized today, but also with Delroy, Delroy was a publisher who did a great job of localizing Manga and getting cultural norms and so forth. I think it makes Japan more accessible to people who are not traveling as much, obviously not as much as if you simply go there and visit, but I think it makes it just makes people more culturally aware, but there’s also an image of Japan, an image of things presented in Manga that is clearly not Japan. You’re going to probably not going to find Naruto or Pokemon. I tried really hard to find Pokémon they were not there.
Rayne
Really weird stuff people and so like doesn’t those things are going on, but I think it’s with any media when it’s brought over to another country that country feels closer and you learn about that other country, and you might learn things that you didn’t expect. I’m going to turn to an example from Final Fantasy in Final Fantasy 10 they bow a lot. I’ve played hours, every single thing on my body language changed unconsciously because I was seeing stuff and so you’re going to have like, really embarrassing individual stories about bowing in high school I’m like wait why am I doing this?
Rayne
And you’re also bound to have like really cool hobbies or something. And it’s all because of the work was made available.
Rayne
And in that way I think that publishers are kind of doing a really they have to accomplish and making it accessible while also making I not losing the essence of the original work itself.
Faisal
And I mean, that’s great. I think also one thing that, I think of not just when I think about Manga or Anime, but anything that we see that predominantly we can tie back to a certain culture or region in addition to giving you wider accessibility and awareness, I think that it’s also dialectical. So what we see in anime or reading in the manga yeah, you’re right. Perhaps some of it is not necessarily Japanese, let’s say, or it’s um, more of a over the top exaggeration, but it does give you some insight into Japanese culture in the one thing, there is a manga series, Watamote has a very long name, which I don’t remember off the top of my head, but.
Faisal
You know when you look at how the houses are just in general, that is very similar. I find to how they actually look in some parts of Japan. So the traditional houses, how they look. You know the sliding doors and all that, so it kind of gives you an idea, an insight similar to I think how when American TV shows make that, bridge that gap go into new markets. They also provide some idea of American culture to the countries that they you know that they end up in, and for Anime there is just a very passionate community that will create new subtitles for episodes just very fan driven. For manga is there, I guess both of them kind of get into the realm of Intellectual Property Rights, which I actually kind of work on in health.
Faisal
But, as well intentioned as they are, let’s say, is there anything similar for Manga where there is going to be like a fan base officially or not officially, that will be very dedicated to just doing the localization without you know, just doing it themselves and saying here’s the English version.
Rayne
Yes, so it’s called scanlation so process is, it’s being published in the Manga magazine and the person is lucky enough to live near Kinokuniya. They’ll just order the Manga magazines in Kinokuniya. Kinokuniya is a chain of Japanese bookstores that have.
Rayne
They’re growing fast in America, it makes me very happy. Originally, they were really just in New York and LAD but now you can go to their store in Texas and everything, and they have a free subscription program where you can order manga magazines right? So this was before Manga magazines were made available initially. So the idea was you get the Manga magazine, scan it in your house or you get the manga volume. If you’re not too impatient, and you go scan it and then you send it to your friend. Your friend knows some Japanese that they took it in high school and so your friend, is able to copy out the language, not translated, but at least like clean up the files and, you know what to keep in and not keep because they can read the text right?
Rayne
Well they send to another friend. This friend is one who actually knows Japanese and they translate it, and now you have all these multiple files. One with the Manga page without the text, one of the translation and you send it to a few other people. Maybe one person can do all this. They put it all together and they put the English text where it’s supposed to be. They fit it and they pick the font that looks nice. And all those things like clean it up because Manga magazine pages are often low quality so the scan will reflect that and then they make it available online and so they might be making it available through a website. But previously it would be through something like torrents or peer to peer sharing and so forth.
Rayne
And these people who scanlate sometimes can do this work extremely fast because they would go across – assign people in different time zones. So this is extremely illegal, but they would get the manga magazine in Japan because they have that one friend in Japan and they would scan it in Japan and then they would send it to the person who can do the rest of the work. Sometimes an individual is able to do all these different steps that I probably skipped a lot that I’m forgetting, but often it’s a group of people and they’re working across different time zones.
Rayne
Either because they’re online communities and online communities usually stretch across time zones, or because they are specifically trying to get people who can work quickly and or in the next time zone and so forth.
Rayne
So I – from my understanding, I think that scanlation and Anime subtitling groups arepretty much the same. They have obviously different skill sets, but in terms of how the community exists they’re similar but what’s interesting with scanlation is that it’s still going on and while I described an example of a Manga magazine scanlation.
Rayne
We have scanlation of Chinese comics at Korean comics of Southeast Asian comics, anything that people want and or they like and they want to make available in their local languages. So well, my own work is with officially translated materials in talking about their history and how their publication has changed physically, and so forth then.
Rayne
Those types of things, when I read manga, I might very well be reading through an unofficial source because it isn’t available in English and really creating a Japanese today because it has too many words, I don’t know.
Faisal
No, I mean that’s a good point, and that’s the one thing that always against me, like how fast some of these you know, scan translations or scanlations can just be coming out like the manga could come out, it could be a brand new series or a new issue, and then within hours you have like an English version that’s ready to go. Now, the actual quality it’s hard to say, I know some are actually borderline professional like it’s almost as if this has been officially localized, and some of the more. You know some of the more or less commonly used languages or languages that are very rare to be bilingual with the with English might be, you know. Little harder to get ahold of, um, but yeah, I’ve I’m always kind of impressed by what the community can do, be it Anime or Manga an there’s definitely a passion for it. They really do want to make this accessible to their people, their language and yeah.
Rayne
I wanted to mention and actually to follow up to this. There are times when the scanlation is actually much better than the official translation.
Faisal
Oh really?
Rayne
Yes
Rayne
In the olden days that we’ve, we would see that more common, but now that translation is localization is improved, but with some works the person working with it is just so good and has so much cultural knowledge, so I’m actually going to mention this specific work thinking about it’s called A Bride’s Story and the Mangaka is Kaoru Mori. To translate that, you do not need to know Japanese culture. You know Central Asian culture.
Rayne
And I it’s very hard to read in Japanese because it’s using transliteration of common terms that we have in Arabic, and translated terms into Farsi and so forth and for someone to work with that when all they work with is very based in Japan, it’s really hard so whoever is doing that is doing an excellent job and not only making the manga accessible in English, but making the Central Asian culture presented in that manga accessible as well.
Faisal
Oh yeah, that’s an excellent example. Because like you know, we kind of mentioned previously, localizaton is not just translating, you’re done right. I mean, so I’ve taken a basic Japanese, with an amazing professor or Professor Norio Ota, we call him Ota-Sensei, I do believe he’s the reason that the Japanese language proficiency test happens on our campus of all places it could happen in Toronto, and he’s an outstanding guy and one of the things I’ve learned, you know in his Japanese course was, I learned English basically is what I learned because he taught us with this methodology. In order for me to teach you Japanese properly, linguistically, and to understand some of these nuances, first you have to understand them in English.
Faisal
And, now we’re going into the in the language side, but I think it’s important. We don’t learn those nuances when you’re a native speaker, right? If you grow up with English or another language, I grew up with a couple other languages.
Faisal
You don’t know those nuances, so it was great that he was able to teach us that look, you know, if you want to say something in English or you see something in Japanese, it’s not enough that you could just translate it or speak it. There is a lot you know behind the scenes that comes out often in manga because it has so many cultural references with it contained within it. And so I always think back to those days where he said it’s not just about the translation and there are some words you just can’t translate because there is no equivalent English word.
Faisal
And so again, in these circumstances of COVID-19., what are some of the challenges that that you have faced? You and your fellow colleagues conducting this type of research because you rely so much on these actual materials that you need to obtain?
Rayne
OK, so for people in general who are relying heavily on library resources and physical library resources, it could be picture schools or could be comics, but they’re used to seeing that person and physically handling them. It is really problematic. So, Canada has had a much stronger response to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I’m not sure where the situations for libraries where you are.
Rayne
But here our libraries is closed for months, and while they were closed, librarians were not even able to like access the materials to process them, which means they just sat there, which is something that could damage materials. So, before the student or the patron even shows up the on the day that the library opens, they may be unable to access their materials because it got damaged. So, it needs to be fixed up at the library or off campus or its still in its box, and they can’t get it.
Rayne
And so that’s a humongous issue, because that means that it becomes increasingly difficult to do your work in the same way, with the labs being shut down at the library, shut down or and for me, that is including the Public Library that can become really difficult. So, , I’m not sure what other Anime or Manga studies students are doing, but one thing I did was the moment Kinokuniya opened up again was I got a Manga magazine subscription myself, because I can’t wait and I need to access these materials now so I use some of my funding to pay for that. And, I think that’s what a lot of students are going to have to do.
Rayne
Because they need to get because. If it’s something where they can access it at all, like scrolls, you need to go to the library. But with comics, we can just buy the comics. So I’m just going to buy the comic because, thankfully I’m working with stuff that I can get. You can get it through importing or something like that. Now, I do want to make reference digital materials, so we have digital manga.
Rayne
Either it is born digital or it was digitized later and people who are doing anime and manga studies research are able to access those. If you’re working with anime, of course you can also access streaming platforms, or you can purchase DVD’s or whatever it may be, or simply download it from an unofficial and so there’s multiple ways that people were doing it.
Rayne
But there is something that thankfully we were able to access regardless of the library being inaccessible physically. Somewhere we can go or not, which is our digital collections in terms of journals, so anything related to Anime studies on scholarly publications and communications, we’re able to still access those.
Rayne
But in the broader scheme of things with students, and as we begin to fall with many universities, including my own going on line for the entire academic year, we get into the question of, if we’re teaching Anime and Manga, how do we get students able to access it?
Rayne
Because I’m just going give an example, Moto Hagio’s They Were Eleven, was localized and translated in the Mid 90s, no wait – somewhere in the 1990s right? And I have that because I borrowed it from the library and I really liked it and I think if I taught a class I want to include that I can’t.
Rayne
Because I can’t get it from that library anymore and I can’t show it to the students because I can’t see them, and so I’ll just scan it. And if I scan it, it kind of becomes useless as a teaching tool because the reason why I wanted to show it an example of manga early in the United States, and what that looked like.
Rayne
An so it’s like I guess I can show it in the video, but you can become with all these issues and you also have to consider students that were utilizing our archives and libraries as a place to do their work.
Rayne
An now they no longer have that place, so even if they can, even if there’s a way for him to access all these materials if they don’t have a quiet, safe, clean place to use them, it doesn’t really matter.
Faisal
And there was something that you mentioned there that is very important because, I do believe that the general public is – needs to know that libraries are very controlled spaces.
Faisal
There are some very old books that are written on different types of paper that require a constant temperature, and its, there’s an entire like discipline of how do you store materials in an archive, for, you know, long periods of time and with libraries closing the one question that I haven’t seen yet online, at least come up, passively, was what are we going to do with our archives? What if there’s some material that’s lost that this is really the only copy or one of the few copies that exist? So that’s definitely something that more attention should be paid to.
Rayne
I also wanted to mention something before I forget regarding your previous question. We’re unable to access the libraries and archives in Japan. That can be someone studying something fancier, you know, let’s say old Buddhist manuscripts that are only available in Japan. They were going to do the whole dissertation on it, it’s gone. They can’t get there.
Rayne
And we have people who would come to North America. Access materials could be high route, low route, they can’t get here in the same way I can’t go to Canada right now. So that’s a tremendous issue and it is causing people change their dissertation or thesis. My own work was changed like if I can’t access materials in Japan. I have to rely and push my thesis being more American focused for example.
Faisal
Yeah, that can definitely can even change the trajectory of the final paper, dissertation or thesis. I mean it, it’s a big shift and sometimes there’s other ramifications. You got to switch up your committee or your supervisor or advisor. It becomes very, you know, problematic and yeah, that’s something that’s affecting a lot of disciplines unfortunately at the moment, and I mean hopefully as we go through this pandemic, things will get a little bit easier. We’ll be able to open up more a little bit once it’s safe to do so, and you know, hopefully that this condition we do get a vaccine, but that’s a whole other topic as well in of itself and.
Faisal
Now that we’ve been kind of disrupted globally, previously we were more connected, right? We the idea of this global village. So, what are your thoughts on how our increased connectedness, the idea of that global village has changed? How Manga is, you know, bought, stored, read, shared, etc.
Rayne
I think we’re really heavily relying on digital manga, digitized manga, anything than we were before, and I think that, one interesting thing that I hope somebody wrote a paper about is what about Anime on Netflix? Before the pandemic I did not really – I knew, of course I watched it, but I was mostly looking at Crunchyroll or just buying the DVD’s or something like that, but because I’m home I’m looking at other channels so Netflix has been releasing more and more anime and so that means how we, the community how we enjoy Anime changed, and I bring up Netflix in particular because you can have a Netflix watch party and you can all watch the anime virtually together.
Rayne
Before the pandemic, why would I do that? I’d invite people over to my house to watch it. You know, that would be the big thing. Come to my house, I have this. I have this DVD, come to my house. I have this subscription to Funimation, so let’s go hang out, right? And that changed and I think. I also would be curious how this affected, like unofficial localization.
Rayne
And if people, because with unofficial localization they were working from home already. But if official localization was working in the office or well, at least a lot of that work was being done in offices.
Rayne
So Yeah, in terms of concrete things like instead we’re seeing anime.
Rayne
And manga be delayed.
Rayne
Um, specifically in anime where it was supposed to release on such and such a date, but now it’s too late.
Rayne
Or the movie was going to be released?
Rayne
But at that time period theaters were closed in Japan, so they wanted to release it later, and so that’s affecting things quite globally. And then we have another thing that’s going on with the pandemics effects on conventions.
Rayne
So we can, I don’t.
Rayne
Know when we’re going to have Anime Expo again.
Faisal
Next year maybe?
Rayne
Because there it’s you always, because we have this joke in the Anime community that you get sick from conventions. It’s just a thing you’re going come home sick, it’s just what happens. We can’t do that anymore.
Rayne
And so, at these conventions, you not only have people like engaging with their hobbies that they got from anime manga like cosplay, but you had premieres. So with Cardcaptor Sakura, the OVA that was released was premiered at Anime Expo. Anime Expo premiers a lot of stuff they invite the producers of the work to North America to talk about it.
Rayne
That didn’t happen this summer. So what did we not see this summer because it was not at Anime Expo?
Rayne
I don’t know, I don’t work there.
Rayne
Yeah, So what are we not seeing in terms of engagement with the community? And it’s like how do you do cosplay virtually?
Faisal
That’s a difficult one. I mean, yeah, you could try doing it on Zoom or (Microsoft) Teams, but it’s not the same, right? So yeah, and I think, well with movies, what they’ve been doing I think is – so some of them have kind of gone direct to streaming which is saying that we’re going to skip the theatrical release because the theaters are closed anyway.
Faisal
And just go straight to Netflix or like Disney plus for instance versus doing or actually releasing a DVD copy right away rather than waiting. You know eight weeks or six weeks or whatever after the theatrical release, so maybe with anime similar process where.
Faisal
Some of them are delayed. I know some movies are delayed, for instance and then some of them have been just straight to streaming rather than just being displayed on cable networks. Perhaps, so it is a big change. Um, and you haven’t really seen, probably this large halt of global connectedness, Commerce, and travel. Since probably World War Two I would imagine maybe.
Faisal
Yeah, I mean that’s kind of what I can think of because I don’t even remember the last time that everything was shut down.
Rayne
Yeah, I even if we look forward too. If we think about that shut down, we had mass movement of stuff. People and soldiers and so forth. So, it’s yeah it’s a very unique experience we’re going through and it is affecting every single aspect of our lives, and so of course it’s going to affect how people consume, produce, enjoy, and all those things related to Anime and Manga.
Faisal
And, again, it’s been terrific having you on here, Rayne I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure our listeners have also learned a lot about localization and even some of the fundamentals of Anime and Manga. It was a very great discussion and any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with to ponder upon?
Rayne
I guess if you haven’t read manga and you haven’t watched anime, I hope that you would give it a try that there are stories for everyone and that, um, I hope that I will see you all virtually or rather I hope I will see you all in person at Anime Expo very soon.
Faisal
Perfect thanks so much.