Thursday, March 23, 2006

General Blog - Purists

Series: General
Subjects: Anime, Manga, Fans
Post Type: Blog

I have been thinking and while browsing ANN and viewing the upcoming manga releases and following forum comments the labels attacked after the names brought up an issue that has been mildly bugging me since anime club at lunch today. The Anime or Simply Japan Purists.

Isn't it enought to simply like the style, the art, and the story? What does it matter what country it hails from so long as it is high quality? What bugs me about some fans is the blind hatred to OELs, Ameri-manga, World Manga, Manwha or whatever other tags we deem neccisary to label perfectly good series with. It took me months to get my friend Hupio to read Megatokyo and that was only after associating it as a webcomic much like the American VGcats I knew he was already a fan to. Granted, I have not found a single OEL I have liked besides Megatokyo but surely they are not ALL bad right? OELs I can understand to an extent as I don't like many of them myself but what really bugs is that I am probably the only person I know who owns Manwha.

I believe the Korean counterpart to Manga, this Manwha can be equally high quality and whose storytelling can evenly match many of their Japanese cousins. Over the past months I had to steadly work to get my friends to even read what I beleive to be great Manwha titles like King of Hell, Ragnarok, PhD:Phantasy Degree, & my personal favorite iD_eNTITY.Even after reading them and having them admit tehy are at least 'good' I am still the only one who dares own let alone display these non-Japanese items on my bookshelf.

Beyond just my anime and manga I heard a deep collective sigh of disapointment from the back of the room as we palyed a newly aquired DVD in anime club and they found it to be a dub after the opening theme.

I dunno the idea of being a "purist" just gets to me. Do you like it simply because its Japanese? Is it because you are "hardcore"? I mean can't we all just like a series for what it is, what it presents us and the series' true substance rather than simply where it came from. I mean maybe I just look for different things in my anime & manga then other people. I myself love characters, story adn plot. I love to see the conflicts, the characters and how they progress through a story. Sure artwork can be a major factor but don't tell me that Manwha is bad so much that it is different comapred to many Japanese styles. I do mean styles BTW because I realize that even in Japan there are many different styles, about as many as there are mangaka. Can't we judge by a series by series basis rather than just the region or genre it belongs to?

I just don't get it. Maybe I am just looking at things differently than most everyone I know IRL.

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