{"id":67,"date":"2000-03-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-03-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2000\/03\/30\/ask-john-is-manga-the-same-as-american-comics\/"},"modified":"2000-03-30T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-03-30T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-is-manga-the-same-as-american-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-is-manga-the-same-as-american-comics\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: Is Manga The Same As American Comics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nOkay, my two friends are arguing whether manga is the same as American comics or not. What do you think? Please end this insanity!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nSince you&#8217;ve asked, I&#8217;ll present my own personal opinion. I&#8217;ve always believed that manga is quite a bit different than American comics. Manga are commonly presented in either weekly or bi-weekly instalments or in collected books. Therefore it&#8217;s not as necessary for any single issue or episode of a manga story to have the distinct set-up, rising action and climax so common in American super-hero books. Manga often tends focus more on setting and establishment than do typical American comics. It&#8217;s much more common in manga than in American comics to see panels depicting simply abstract images or establishing views of buildings or walls or other surroundings. American comics, largely, have a tendancy to try to maintain a sharp focus on the characters by keeping the characters centered in the panels as much as possible. American comics, particularly super-hero stories, usually tend to focus on depicting action in wide-shots, so readers can follow the movement of the characters. Manga tends to often aim for a more general atmosphere of kineticism, often illustrating action in extreme close-ups that obscure the exact motions of the characters. It can be said that manga also encompasses a much wider scope of subject than do American comics. I don&#8217;t want to offend fans of American underground and independent and alternative comics. I&#8217;m certainly aware that the American comics industry offers much more than big guns, big muscles, and big breasts, yet I don&#8217;t think the American comics industry can claim the range of diversity of manga when there exist such things as economics text-books in manga form, such as Japan, Inc. I&#8217;ve also heard it said that American comics simply don&#8217;t match the dynamic panel lay-out of manga, and that manga strives to present itself as a complete, readable story even without the dialogue. Whether either of these statements is true, I&#8217;ll leave to the reader to decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Okay, my two friends are arguing whether manga is the same as American comics or not. What do you think? Please end this insanity!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}