Japanese Authors Take Heed- Entry 02: Manga is killing Anime
In continuing this spurious series which 'hopes that some outside perspective will help shape otherwise ridiculous anime practices that are woefully unsuccessful in their intent' I'm moving forward with yet another entry- as before I'm amusing myself and any who care to read (I hope), and really don't expect 'it will work', as 'who the heck am I, really?'. In any case, Here we go...
There are a bunch of 'jumpstart technique' which allows manga authors to start a story easily, and those same techniques are often exactly the ones that actually require more setup/preparation than most. We'll get a bit into that more later, but some authors are really good at trying to do this- 'fleshing out' their creations. Some just build a skeleton at best, keep it in the dark, and try to dress it up along the way.
Anime in a sense fall into three categories:
1. Anime constructed well enough that you have to pay a fair amount of attention to in order to notice overlooked or conflicting issues. Some genres have more of these than others, due to familiarity/ease of maintenance.
2. Anime which 'pass' the 'glance test' of audience appeal, but can't stand up to even a small amount of scrutiny. Some anime fall into this group by taking 'shortcuts' with 'less important' issues/scenes/effects- this also becomes a genre divider, where anime which have a sci-fi, fantasy or supernatural/horror/drama elements require more thought and planning to remain cohesive.
3. Anime which just kind of do whatever they want, almost challenging anyone to say anything about it. This doesn't really have much of a genre divisor- it becomes more an issue of author or studio effort/arrogance (IMO).
I don't mind so much the first two- though of course all anime striving toward #1 would make for great viewing- but depending on the story, #2, and even #3 can work well- so I'm not passing any quick judgements. I would say at this point that having someone explicitly on retainer to do continuity checks and the like isn't beyond the ability of most production houses, or even to add as part of the editors/author process if it was considered important.
If you've stuck with me so far, I appreciate your patience. This review of a small chunk of what may be factors in the 'creative process' is actually important to the material at hand, because:
* Authors write what they know about and
* Authors are lazy
I should actually put 'people are lazy' there, but I suspect authors think that because 'a creation' is 'theirs', they don't need to do research/planning/review except on their own terms- which is of course true- but only to a degree. I'm not drawing that line, but I will suggest it shifts mostly when motivated by profit- which isn't really happening here.
Back to the creative process..
So an author has a great idea for a manga, does some background work and a little planning, gets accepted to a weekly publication, and quickly exhausts in a few issues everything they had decided so far.
And they have a new issue due in a week.
Where this goes next is very much up to the author and their habits in story construction. Practiced authors will develop a few habits to resolve these issues, some which they will favor more than others- a lot of these are often cliche, but sometimes genuine & effective storytelling:
* comic interlude/tempo change. Switch tone via spurious comic event
* unpleasant surprise/tempo change. Switch tone via some spurious unpleasant event
* scene shift/exposition. Switch scenes to explain things to the audience- often from the villain's point of view
* narrative/inappropriate exposition. Explain stuff to pre-justify other stuff you decided to do, or post-justify the same.
* rescue solve. Someone comes in and 'fixes' the problem. This is not necessarily Dues ex machina, but is often close.
* cliffhanger/dues ex machina solve. The crappiest of constructions. This includes various 'lucky break and 'co-incidental' solves. Unfortunately almost as popular as the actual...
these are often signs of some level of competent narrative, as they are difficult to perform/maintain consistently.
* romantic interlude/tempo change. Switch tone via spurious romantic event. This is here because acceptably 'genuine' events of this type are very hard to construct- it's faked all the time though, so if you like, pretend this is defined differently & put it on the earlier list.
* scene shift/resolution delay. Switch scenes to elsewhere to buy time to solve problem. This requires more than one character of note, and managing multiple plots/points of interest.
* clifhanger/planned brilliance solve. Rare- A cliffhanger leaves everyone wondering, then is resolved in a perfectly logical, but not easily seen way.
I suppose that's good for now.
Wait- one more thing:
Speed Chess versus Chess:
(from Wikipedia)
"Many top professional chess players do not take rapid, blitz and bullet chess as seriously as they do chess with standard time controls. Some dismissive quotes from top chess players on the topic of it are the following:""Playing rapid chess, one can lose the habit of concentrating for several hours in serious chess. That is why, if a player has big aims, he should limit his rapidplay in favour of serious chess."– Vladimir Kramnik
"Blitz chess kills your ideas."– Bobby Fischer
"I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol."– Nigel Short
There are more, but I trimmed for impact.
Now, chess is a game where you stage an offense which is designed to offset your opponents defense. The pivotal nature of it's strategy is to over time control a series of moves through bait, anticipation, planning, and most importantly not falling into the trap of your opponent who is attempting to anticipate your strategy as well. Both players have the same resources and options, and (purely theoretically) the same foundation of skill at later levels. The decider begins to be who can plan more moves ahead accurately, preferably with the most flexibility.
In other words victory becomes an aspect of long term goals over short term gains.
Now manga is explicitly not chess...
but consider any manga which has a protagonist and an antagonist (and in the strict sense, 'fate' can be an antagonist) can be considered (to a degree) a 'battle'. This battle may actually *be* battle- but more often it is repeated events of obstacle and solutions or conflict/resolution. I'm not saying manga is really chess- but I am saying that it is very likely timed constraint demands could similarly undermine the ability of authors to see, practice, and develop truly impressive story construction skills and the resulting long-term interwoven story arcs.
This of course is speculation- which I think evidence suggests may have some basis in reality (but that's another debate). This particular point is that with a weekly deadline always looming over an authors head, many are going to compensate by borrowing 'debt' (bad habits/literary escapes) than by banking 'savings' (good habits/planned construction). We end up with a lot of anime that is 'acceptable', and some that is genuinely good- but there is a lot that is pretty bad. Of course what sells may have nothing to do with any of this- the best art may sell regardless of content- but again- another debate.
So I've burdened you with a large amount of information, just so we can be here:
Many manga stories are... not particularly original. There is a certain emotionless, unskilled, under-confident oft 'parentless' male MC that is overused to death- even if he could be visualized and re-imagined so many other ways.
Being a hero for being thickheaded.
Being a hero for being steadfastly devoted.
'Convincing' an enemy to change their ways.
Giving a person a second chance to do the 'right thing'--
these are great story ideas that are repeatedly implemented, far too often in tragically underdeveloped ways.
With always predictable results.
Gravitation to writing techniques that boil down to literary 'soundbites' is not surprising. Shoehorning in, conveniently cutting out, outright overlooking or forgetting key points to progress the plot- these all have to do with bad writing which I'd suggest is frequently the learned process of writing under deadline- though I don't doubt a number of authors just plain legitimately suck.
Then of course there is 'popularity', and needing to maintain a certain appeal to your audience regardless of the story. I could be talking about 'fan-service'- which is of course an issue, but instead I'll talk about 'unnecessary' dramatic changes- like a sudden unmotivated change in personality, the change in plot to incorporate heroic dynamics or action, or (rarely) a change in story tone designed to appeal to a broader audience. I'm just touching on some points here, but the point is these are all 'ongoing' needs that manga metrics could and probably 'helpfully' do impose on writers- some of which may have had a good or interesting plan, but may need to scuttle it to keep their dream alive.
or just to keep paying the bills.
Now, my title 'Manga is killing Anime' is of course outlandish. There is a lot of good if not great anime out there. I could counter with 'the exception does not disprove the rule'- but instead I'll agree- but I will assert that better manga would be developed with a different creative process. Encouraging creative minds is better than demanding they be creative on a schedule.
Many authors don't do their best work that way.
Plain & simple. I think that a good example of a lot of these points is Code Geass. First and foremost, Code Geass was not a Manga first- but it was developed 'as the series ran', evolving and changing to percieved needs- particularly:
(from wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Geass#Manga"When the series was being developed for broadcast on Mainichi Broadcasting System, it had been given the network's Saturday evening prime time slot, which was later changed to a Thursday late night time slot. Due to this change, the overall outlook and some elements of the series were changed and further developed to suit the more mature, late night audience.[1] The supernatural "Geass" ability finally came into the show at this point and was first conceived as a special power granted by an "angel" to the main characters, though this last part was also modified.[1]"
I don't doubt many other things were modified during the run time of the show, which led to many inconsistencies, and a certain bravado and laziness I think is best demonstrated by the shadow of a story that was to become R2. Not a bad work either- but with clearly less effort put into it than the first season.
Some of the writing shows great planning and clarity, while other parts are Deus ex machina contrivances and overlooked plot holes. This is quite a good anime- one that I don't doubt would have been better if the author had been allowed the convenience of a single cohesive vision and time to develop it.
Surprisingly, all this is to a degree created as a lead-in to JATH 03, though it can stand as it's own entry.
Feel free to comment.
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