Manga Authorship Crisis

Manga authorship is the aesthetically and conceptually unique identity a mangaka develops, through a collaborative effort with their editor(s) and publisher(s), which exercises their right to free expression without violating any copyright law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According Sharon Kinsella, author of the book Adult Manga: Culture & Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, psychologically speaking, many mangaka tend to fit into a nonconformist category.

            ~ p 18

 

They create their work either to express the own societal views, to distinguish themselves amongst other mangaka, or for their own, personal gratification. Still, many does not mean everybody. The following is a simplified list of the types of manga that exist with some form of manga authorship (according to the definition I have constructed).

 

 

TYPES OF MANGA INDIVIDUALITY:

“amateur manga may contain less individual expression”      To learn more about amateur manga, please visit the Amateur Authorship page.

            ~Kinsella 1

 

 “Story manga expanded rapidly during the 1960s, when it also became linked to political radicalism and counter-cultural experimentation.”

            ~Kinsella p 4

 

“‘border art’, a new type of democratic medium accessible by cultural amateurs which could transgress the boundaries of low and high culture”

            ~Kinsella p 5

 

Post-war Manga: its “focus on how people feel [gave them] a clear humanistic value”

            ~Kinsella p 7

 

 

WEEKLY CHALLENGES

A manuscript published every week for mangaka often means they have to consistently come up with new cliffhangers and introductions to keep their readers interested. It is unusual to come across a manga chapter without a legitimate ending. Especially for lesser-known, amateur mangaka, maintaining and gaining readership partly depends on giving any story a little mystery at each end.

 

The following is the final page (44) of Sato Kentaro’s manga Mahou Shoujo of the End (2012) volume 1, chapter 10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Volume 1: Ch 6 p 53-54

Remember to read right to left!

 

Without needing to know the rest of the story, the clear question hanging in the air is “What is in the room that the father seems so menacingly suspicious of?” Cliffhangers like this are a tool of the trade in the manga industry. To persuade readers to move on or buy the next chapter, endings like this can be planned as far ahead as the first draft of the story.

 

 

AUTHORIAL STANCES ON ANIME

A wise fan once said, to understand anime (Japanese cartoons) – one must understand manga. On the other hand, Gen Sheuo Hui, author of “Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series,” says that to understand manga authorship – one must understand anime. Hui described that a manga can have a special significance. The meaning of a manga to a reader may not be the same meaning the mangaka’s intended to convey.

            ~Hui p 222-223

 

However, in the manga industry, a fan’s interpretation of a mangaka's story is not the only source of misinterpretation of manga authorship.

 

“Examining the relation between anime and manga is critical to assessing possible authorial stances”

            ~Hui  p 223

 

Anime adaptations of manga are often condensed versions of original manga stories to leave room in the span of an episode to focus on visual and sound effects. Anime with a preset number of episodes are the most likely to place minor to major limiters on the original manga content that gets displayed.

 

WARNING! SPOLIER ALERT AHEAD!

 

An example of a major limitation anime sets for manga are series’ endings. Higashimura Akiko’s Princess Jellyfish (2008) had about seven volumes of 39 chapters condensed to an animated series of thirteen episodes around twenty minutes each. Since Princess Jellyfish is an ongoing manga, the anime was made with its own ending. As a result, some of the major plot points that were shown in the anime were mixed versions of the actual plot points in the original manga. Where the manga settled the matter of not demolishing the main characters’ house by changing its owner, the anime settled the matter by the original owner simply not deciding not to sell the house at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Volume 12: Ch 64 p 31

WARNING! ANOTHER SPOLIER ALERT AHEAD!

 

In contrast, the 2015 animated adaptation of Ishida Sui’s Tokyo Ghoul (2014) ended on a similar cliffhanger as the last page (16) of chapter 139 in volume 14 of the manga. In order to keep the story suspenseful, the final shot of the last Tokyo Ghoul fight only has the antagonist, Arima, and his weapon present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Season 2: Ep 2

 

As shown below, in the actual manga page (16), Kaneki is stabbed, from the eye to the brain, with the same weapon the antagonist stands by in the anime’s final scene. Since he is the protagonist with a body that is able to heal itself, it is unsure to the audience how, or if, he will be revived again. This particular strategy is partly responsible for the rise in readership of an anime’s original manga story because viewers want to know how things are supposed to end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Volume 14: Ch 140 p 15

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The page below is only shown in the manga at the end of the chapter when Kaneki’s life flashes through his mutilated eyes. At this time, the manga is an ongoing series and Kanreki has yet to return to the story from the chapters translated in English. Fans have been making theories about how the story may continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Volume 14: Ch 140 p 15

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COPYRIGHTS & AUTHORSHIP

In the manga industry, a fan’s interpretation of a mangaka's story is not the only source of misinterpretation of manga authorship.

 

If you have read the Publisher & Editor Issues page prior to this one, you now understand that copyrights, along with written contracts, were not always a respected norm in publishing companies.

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“In practice publishing companies have tended to sell the copyrights of manga works without the agreement or even the knowledge of the artists, though the increasing fee charged to foreign publishers, film, animation and advertising companies for the right to use manga stories and characters has encouraged artists to demand that publishers protect their copyrights more effectively, in the 1990s.”

            ~Kinsella p 55

 

Things were even worse in “the late 1980s [when] many best-selling manga series were being illegally copied and translated by foreign publishing companies based in East Asia”

            ~Kinsella p 160

 

 

AUTHORIAL STANCES ON ANIME – DRAGON BALL

Finding an anime that tells every detail of a manga in the correct order rare. Anime have even been the cause of battles with mangaka in defense of their authorship well-known in the anime/ manga community.

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The Dragon Ball (1984) manga, by Toriyama Akira, is a legendary shounen (for boys) manga in the industry. This manga’s international franchise spans from animated and live adaptions, to games, movies and more. An article from Anime News Network, edited by Crystalyn Hodgkins, is titled, “May 9 ‘Officially’ Recognized as Goku Day”. Yes, the story is so popular in Japan that there are actually two days in May named after the main protagonist, Goku. In Japanese, the number five is pronounced Go and the number nine is pronounced Ku. What does that equal? A Go and Ku day!

            ~ Hodgkins

 

Within this franchise, there is a work, with Toriyama’s name ‘loosely’ attached to it, which has received a lot of negative feedback from a wide-reaching fan base. The work is an anime called Dragon Ball GT (1996), another long series, but this time, without any manga origin. Although Toriyama’s original characters from his Dragon Ball (1984) manga are featured in GT, the fact that no manga can be found by him on the GT anime means that this was not his original idea. Dragon Ball GT was pushed by Toei Animation company, which has always held the copyright for remediating the Dragon Ball stories into anime. In another article from Anime News Network titled “Toriyama Expresses Dissatisfication With Dragon Ball Adaptations” by Eric Stimson, a quote by this mangaka is translated into English from the Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Super History Book.

           

Inside me, Dragon Ball became a thing of the past, but later I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. I guess at some point it became a work that I like so much that I can't leave it alone.

~qtd in Stimson

           

Multiple assumptions about Toriyama’s opinions have been made by many of his fans before this interview quote was even published in this book until just this year. Just like many fans have already assumed Toriyama never liked America’s live-action film adaptation Dragon Ball Evolution (2009), they have also assumed that Toriyama has not liked the GT anime. Although this quote does not say specifically what his direct involvement with Dragon Ball GT was, or share his opinion on it specifically, it does tell us that he has had plenty of negative thoughts about his works’ anime adaptations. The discussion of Toriyama’s true feelings about GT has been a hot topic amongst the manga and anime community for years since its make. When the book is translated into more languages, talk about Toriyama’s authorial stance on anime will most likely gain even more momentum.

 

As Hui describes it, what happened between Toriyama Akira and Toei Animation was a conflict between intention: the mangaka’s initial plans to convey their story’s meaning and the animators' expression of how it is decided to convey the mangaka’s initial ideas. Seeing as how, animators, publishers and editors can all have their own ideas about a mangaka’s work, these conflicts are definitely not uncommon. However, not every all mangaka are dissatisfied with their anime adaptation.

            ~Hui p 237

           

 

AUTHORIAL STANCES ON ANIME – NARUTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of Hui’s article was to confirm how “anime adaptation[s] may influence the manga artists” by comparing how the animators of Naruto (1997) and its mangaka, Kishimoto Masashi, felt about the arrangement of the actual show. Hui points out a few of the key differences and similarities between a couple of episodes of the first season of the Naruto anime which aired in the year 2002. Then, with the addition of using Kishimoto’s autobiography, The Art of Naruto: Uzamaki, as a reference, Hui explains what parts of the anime the mangaka actually admired.

            ~ Hui p 224

 

According to Hui:

“Kishimoto says he is especially fond of episode 17 . . . The revelation of [his character] Haku’s early life [hold scenes that] are some of the emotional highlights of the entire manga. Such highlights into his past are critical for empathizing with Haku, but they were presented on only four ages of facial close-ups in volume 4 of the manga . . . while they became a ten-minute narration within episode 17 of the anime."

~ p 236

 

 

CONCLUSION: THE MANGA GODFATHER’S OWN METHOD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tezuka Osamu, known as the father of story manga and creator of cross-culture favorites Astro Boy (1952) and Kimba the White Lion (1950) was the founder of the animation company, Mushi Pro (1977).

As the first mangaka to popularize the art of story manga, Tezuka sympathized with the mangakas' struggle to make their stories known without the rules of large publishing companies. To support these mangaka, Tezuka also founded his own manga magazine, COM, in 1967.

 

A Magazine for Free Expression

“In 1967 Tezuka Osamu established COM, a magazine devoted to supporting the free expression of its contributing artists.” His founding statement was as follows:

 

It is said that now is the golden age of manga. So shouldn’t works of outstanding quality be published? Or isn’t the real situation one in which many manga artists are being worked to death, while they are forced into submission, servitude and cooperation of cruel requirements of socialism? With this magazine I thought I would show you [the reader] what real story manga is. COM is a magazine for comrades who love manga.

~qtd. in Kinsella 103

 

As the head of his company, Tezuka could make his own decision on the fine details and direction the anime adaptations of his own works took. This was not only possible for him to do because of his influence in history as one of the biggest names in manga, but because of his business and leadership skills.

 

As a mangaka himself, Urasawa Naoki said mangaka “are seen as having the same type of occupation, but each person is like, their own sector, their own genre.” He alleged that not even many popular mangaka have the ambition to be considered masters in their own field. Many mangaka do what they do because it completes them.

            ~Ep 1 Akiko Higashimura of Urasawa Naoki no Manben (2015)

 

So for these self-fulfilling, often wet behind the ears, mangaka, who may be without the means to brand themselves in the industry, they have to rely on their ability as an artist to earn their freedom from authoritarian publishing companies. This is the battle for establishing and defending manga authorship.

 

To learn more about a different type of mangaka and their authorship issues, visit the Amateur Authorship page.