I’m on my way to present at an event tonight, so don’t have time for a review, but I wanted to share something I’ve been thinking for a while…and open it up for discussion.

When I was a kid comics readers were also book readers. Voracious book readers. Kids who read comics read pretty much anything that had words on it and for ages every comic fan I knew read way above their “appropriate” age level. We were the only kids not surprised in sex ed class, because we’d all been reading books for adults for so long that it wasn’t a shock to the system how that all worked.

I can’t help but notice that many manga and anime fans these days seem to be…pretty bad readers. They don’t get literary or artistic references. In fact, if it’s not games, they often miss that anything all was referenced. They haven’t read classics in mostly any genre. If it wasn’t a movie, they’ve never heard of it.

I’m not saying every reader of manga is a bad reader or every watcher of anime is a bad watcher, but based on comments here and on forums Internet-wide and in fansubs, where references are often missed in herds, some folks really need to crack open a book without pictures from time to time.

So, here’s the discussion part.

If you were going to suggest *two* novels for a manga reader to read to extend their understanding of the world they inhabit, which novels would it be? It can be any genre, history, myth, sci-fi, non-fiction, anything. If you are suggesting a book like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it might be helpful to suggest an edition or ISBN, as well.

My two suggestions are:

Summer of the Ubume, by Natsuhiko Kyogoku, recently translated by Vertical. It covers a *lot* of ground through Japanese religion, mysticism, the world of Yokai and science. All very useful information if you want to understand tons of references in anime and manga. And there was, gods help us, an anime based on the next book of the series, Mouryou no Hako. Yes, it’s that author.

My second suggestion may seem totally off the wall, but trust me there’s a reason I’m suggesting it. If you haven’t already read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I beg you to do it now. It’s a brilliant tale of human nature. Which is *exactly* what manga and anime fans seem to lack – a critical understanding of human nature. Not only does a little dose of Stalinist Russsia make you realize how wonderful your life is, Solzhenitsyn is simply a great writer.

I’ll take the best and most cogent comments (suggestions with commentary on why it’s a good choice) and move them to the body of the post with links for easier access.

And let me remind you that classic literature is often found for *free* in your local library. So you don’t really have an excuse to not at least try a book or two.

So..let’s have ’em – what do you think people ought to read in order to be better readers of manga and watchers of anime?

***

WOW! What fantastic suggestions! Here are a few that are either extremely popular, or just amazing, “You really ought to read this” kind of books. I’ll break them down into a few categories for ease of understanding the motivation behind the suggestion. But don’t limit yourself to these – read all the comments and read all the books. I’ve added a few to my own to-read list, in fact. And please remember, you can find almost all of these and the ones suggested in the comments at your local library – for FREE.

Japanese Literature

Kwaidan – A must-read for understanding of Japanese spirits and monsters, known as yokai.
Summer of the Ubume – a must-read for psychology meets yokai
Tale of Genji – Aside from being the oldest novel, it’s the oldest josei work. You’re read this a million times even if you’ve never read it once – it’s about a pretty boy, the women he treats like crap and his clothes.

Russian Literature

Crime and Punishment – As Kate mentions, many Japanese manga artists went through a “Russian” phase. This book is a classic of psychology.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – because this lesson of managing expectations is timeless.

There are no new plots

Shakespeare – He did it all.
Decameron – Boccacio did it all first.

Classic Girl’s Literature

Anne of Green Gables – intense friendship between girls, echoed by practically every schoolgirl story ever. Got your souer right here.

Little Women – Classic, classic, classic. And mentioned in every third school play.

Little House on the… – no one mentioned this, but this, along with Little Women *defined* American girls’ literature for a century, in the same way Hana Monogatari defined Japanese girl’s lit.

Human nature

1984 and Animal Farm – These two brutal, ham-handed allegories on politics make sense every day in every place on the planet.

Tale of Two Cities – Deception, love, self-sacrifice and giving one up for the team maps perfectly to just about any anime or manga.

and in a category by itself;

Just READ this already

Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass – These stories have been ripped, stomped, shredded, parodied in too many anime or manga series to count. It has instantly recognizable visual imagery and is, after the Bible and Shakespeare, the third most quoted book in the *world*. If you haven’t read the original, you’ve missed.

Read. It’ll make you a better person and a better fan!

No, I am not avoiding doing a review. If anything, I really need to do a review, because I have piles all over the place. But no. I am weak. Jason Thompson said that he would like to see my shelf porn and, weak-willed fangirl that I am, I obliged. I’ve always avoided this, because my collection is spread out through the house. Now, here’s selected pieces of it.

This picture is the one shelf I have of English-language manga. The bottom shelf is two books deep. I don’t keep much of the English stuff I read, because I prefer to read in Japanese. Not because I’m a purist (although I am) or elitist (guilty as charged) but because it takes me way longer to read it in Japanese and so I feel like I get my money’s worth. :-)

Click on the pictures to see a bigger version, but don’t come whining to me when it’s just a bigger version of my crap piled on a shelf. lol

This is a picture of my old shelves. These came built-in to the room and every shelf except the bottom one is two-deep. The top shelves are mostly my wife’s stuff, with some of mine mixed in.

The middle two shelves have a lot of Yuri, a lot of other and a lot of really other. And some of my slightly less beloved anime.

The bottom shelves are my art books, and random items that had no home that fit there back in the day when there was room on that shelf.

There’s no rhyme or reason here. Just a lot of books. I can *usually* find everything I’m looking for. Except when I can’t.

 This is my beloved new set of shelves, built for me by my father-not-in-law and covered with all the things I love so much I want them practically within arm’s reach of my sofa.

As you can see, I’m way out of space, but I don’t want to go two deep yet. I’m just not ready to go there.

Also featured on these shelves is my filthy little habit of collecting 4-inch plastic dolls and other random goods.

What you can’t see at all in this picture is that the bottom row on these shelves has all the Yuri Shimai/Hime/HimeS and Monogatari volumes. Tsubomi sits awkwardly above them, because it doesn’t really play well with the others.

This isn’t the greatest picture, but you can just about make out all the Yuri anthology mags, and the talking Kero-chan my wife bought me years ago for my birthday and the Asamiya Saki figurine she got me for another birthday (standing in front of my original run of Sukeban Deka, of course.) I even unboxed the Sachiko and Yumi mug Bruce broughtback from the Maria-sama ga Miteru event last year in Japan, just to  incite jealousy share.

These innocuous looking piles are my Mist and Morning 2 collection. I just don’t have anywhere else to put them. :-(

These next two pictures are the pride and joy of my collection. These are my doujinshi bins. They are labeled because we brought them all to the Yuricon 2007 Yurisai event. I love my doujinshi. Thanks to contributions from Hagiwara Mami-san, James Welker and Rica Takashima, my historical collection is probably pretty priceless. (Because who else would *want* them? lol)

That’s it for my collection. My wife has her own shelfporn, but I’m not sharing her dirty secrets with you. This is the bulk of my collection, although you really never see the stuff in the back of the two-deep shelves. You’ll just have to imagine. :-)

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my collection. The gift shop is just around the corner. Please come back soon!

10/8: Whoo-hoo! Jason T. responded with a fabulous bit of double entendre’: “Thank you for sharing! It’s even bigger and more impressive than I imagined! :)”

With sincere apologies to everyone that really does support the manga industry, I offer for your entertainment and amusement, Fantitlement, Volume 1, a story of Fan Delusion.

Last week Kate Dacey wrote a very interesting Manga Hall of Shame post (a post that was picked up by the New Yorker, so a round of applause to Kate!). It inspired me to write one of my own. (The wife says, “In the *hopes* of getting picked up by the New Yorker.” lol)

Kate’s list dealt with English language manga only and I decided to do the same for myself. I’m a little challenged by my own brain’s self-preservation tactic of wiping away memories of emotionally scarringly bad reading material. So here’s the ground rules I chose for this list.

1) No hentai.

Hentai is almost always awful. Either laughably bad or repulsively bad. Yes, there’s a couple of decent titles, but it’s not hard to find really awful hentai. The trick is to find *not* awful hentai.

2) Translated titles only.

I read *so* much manga that it would be an enormous list if I included Japanese-language titles.

3) Titles with Yuri.

Because I can’t remember most of the really truly awful stuff I’ve read, I’m relying on my reviews here to serve as my external memory.

Therefore, without further ado, I am going to steal Kate’s schtick and present my Yuri Manga Hall of Shame.

Dishonorable Mention
Tantric Stripfighter Trina

I don’t have the vaguest clue what possessed Tokyopop to publish this. Books cost money and I can think of dozens of writers and artists off the top of my head who are more talented than these. The story was a lame parody, if it was meant to be parody, it was an ill-conceived mess if it wasn’t meant to be parody.

Senseless, cliched, tedious, with tortured sentences, really average art and a plot that belittled women with every panel. Tokyopop should have paid us to read it.

5. Shin Megami Tensei Kahn

It’s almost not fair to make fun of this book. The story is turgid, the characters unlikable, the genre is guro and horror and the art is detailed without being good.

This series has so many cliches that words like “bad” don’t even apply. It’s hard to get really upset about the predatory lesbian demon teacher seducing a student when *everyone* in the book is so thoroughly unlikeable that in doing so, she becomes the only character with a personality at all. My father’s summation of “It stinks” is not only brutally accurate, it again calls into question *why* (WHY!?!) any company would spend money on this piece of excrement. If it was because it was bundled with a good title, I really feel for Tokyopop. If it’s just that someone there thought it would sell, then that reorg they went through could not have come fast enough.

4. Alice on Deadlines

Unfocused narrative, unfollowable art, loads of “funny” sexual harrassment and an obsession with women’s underwear that borders on the pathological. The story is about a pile of really awful people with a lot of power doing really awful things to ordinary humans with no power. That’s nasty, but not really objectionable. What’s objectionable is that the “romance” is a great example of Stochkholm syndrome. Instead of loathing Lappan for all the pain and suffering he causes, Alice rewards this kind of unacceptable behavior with her affection.

It really worries me that people buy and enjoy this kind of thing. If this is “entertainment,” I fear for humanity.

3. Suzunari

Let’s set aside the loli catgirl twincest thing for a second. Seriously.

This is a story about a girl who obsessed about her cat and, when the cat dies, it comes back to life as a clone of the girl it was always hiding from and is now obsessed with wanting to be loved, both physically and emotionally, by her.

I’m sorry but, that simply does not make *any* sense. None whatsoever.

In fact, I don’t know how any reader can make it make sense in their head – unless that reader simply really likes loli catgirl twincest and is retro-justifying this by pretending it’s a cute and sweet story about love.

2. Eternal Alice Rondo: Key Princess.

Kate’s Hall of Shame had a common thread. The stories were really just thinly veiled vehicles of hatred of women, with accompanying violence and sexual violence. My list also has a unifying theme – the stories make no sense.

Alice combines truly atrocious art and one of the very worst stories I’ve ever read. It meanders between past and present, reality and fantasy and all of the plot complications are ignored for service. The ending is ridiculous, ham-handed and inexplicable, but is acceptable because it stops everyone from talking any more.

The only thing that could have made the end good is if everyone in the book died.

Painfully.

And, finally, in the number one spot – the *worst* translated manga with even a smidgen of Yuri that I have read is….

1. My Hime

I liked the anime. I loved My Otome the anime. But oh my goodness, what an utter piece of crap the manga was. Again, a terrible story, poorly executed. The hardly-even thinly veiled hatred of women was galling; the men in this series were weak, spineless, grasping and repulsive.

The art was crowded and hard to follow, but that was all right because we really didn’t want to know the details anyway. I feel bad for the translator, because it’s not their fault that the dialogue was senseless.

The original was not good, translation into English did not add any positive qualities to what I consider the absolute worst translated manga I have ever read.

And now, I open the floor to you, my dear readers. What is your candidate for the worst translated manga you’ve ever read? Share your nominations!

Hello,

My name is Erica Friedman, I’m a publisher of manga, which the rest of the English- speaking world refers to as “Graphic Novels,” even though the New York Times has decided “Graphic Books” fits better.

I am writing because I am increasingly concerned about the obvious bias against manga in your bestseller lists. I have no idea who writes the synopses, but it is apparent to all of us in the manga world that that person *does not like manga.*

For instance… here are two synopses from this week’s list.

This first one is for an American GN:

WALKING DEAD, VOL. 1, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. (Image Comics, $14.99.) The gripping story of the human survivors in a world overrun by zombies continues.

This one is for a manga:

YOTSUBA&!, VOL. 6, by Kiyohiko Azuma. (Yen Press, $10.99.) This series follows Yotsuba, a young girl learning about the world. In this chapter, she recycles, gets a bike and discovers sticky notes. Really.

Yotsuba&! has won awards around the world, and is a truly delightful book about a quirky kid and her worldview. Walking Dead is the millionth book about zombies. Really.

Once again, I *implore* you to get someone who understands and cares about Graphic Novels and Manga to write these lists. At least ask someone who cares about Manga to write the synopses. This damning with faint praise is really annoying to those of us who work so very hard to create and promote this genre. I can recommend several names and I would be more than willing to do it myself.

While we in the manga world all appreciate being included on the bestseller list, we’d be even more appreciative if we were treated with respect.

Cheers,

Erica Friedman
ALC Publishing
http://www.anilesbocon.org