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Friday, September 3, 2010
The Flipped Interview
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson has read a lot of manga, partly in his professional capacities as an editor, adaptor and journalist, but mostly in his long history as a manga junkie. Years of manga consumption have resulted in the upcoming book, Manga: The Complete Guide, scheduled for release Oct. 9 from Del Rey. The book offers hundreds of concise reviews of Japanese comics available in English, and it’s a wonderfully readable reference for any manga fan looking to expand their horizons (or to keep those horizons free of one-star clutter). Thompson is also the Manga Editor for Otaku USA, and an accomplished webcomic creator to boot.
David Welsh: What motivated you to take on a project like this?
Jason Thompson: I've had the idea for a manga encyclopedia since around 2000, when I was working at Viz. My original idea was for a book which would be organized by artist/creator, and which would list every single translated artist, as well as a selection of significant untranslated ones. At the time interest in manga was much smaller, so I envisioned something more like a coffee table art book aimed at indy comics/small press folks; a sort of "Smithsonian Collection of Manga" which would increase critical awareness of manga. I did a lot of research and pitched the project, but there wasn't much interest in it, so I ended up shelving it and concentrating on other things. When the Shonen Jump launch started in 2002 I had to work on that full-time, and instead of trying to make a case for the respectability of manga as an art form, I found myself working on manga-as-a-massive-entertainment-property. Which is also a fun, although sometimes frustrating, process to be involved in.
Then in late 2005 Del Rey -- whose manga director Dallas Middaugh had been at Viz when I was first talking about the manga book – approached me and asked if I'd like to do the manga book for Del Rey, almost identical to my original 2000 pitch. So I jumped on it. Of course, the amount of translated manga had risen exponentially since 2000, so the project ended up being a lot bigger than I originally planned, but researching and writing about manga is an incredible privilege.
DW: How long have you been working on the guide?
JT: In 2000 I did my initial research by tracking down everything which had been translated up to that point, including short pieces like the excerpts in Mangajin magazine, the Go Nagai issue of Epic Illustrated, and so on. At the time I was also editing the manga review sections of PULP and Animerica magazine, which influenced the style of the reviews in Manga: The Complete Guide; although in retrospect some of my PULP reviews are embarrassing to read because they're so unforgivably snarky. It was a learning process. I was officially approached by Del Rey in 2005 and ended up working full-time on the book through most of 2006 and early 2007.
DW: So how much of that period when you were working on it full time involved just sitting and catching up with translated series you hadn't read yet? I guess what I'm asking is how much unexplored material did you have to peruse? (I can't decide if getting paid to read that much manga is a dream or a nightmare, to be honest.)
JT: Actually, I spent from February to November 2006 doing pretty much nothing but reading manga all day, with breaks for writing. In order to make my schedule, I had to read between two and three complete series per day. In some cases, in the more densely written series, this was difficult and I had to spend more time to appreciate a title, but actually, most shonen and shojo manga read very quickly, so I could read the typical shojo or shonen graphic novel in between 20 and 30 minutes. In the case of some untranslated series which I knew would be translated in the future, or series which were really long and had only been partially translated, I bought untranslated tankobon to keep up with what was going on in the narrative. So it took a lot of reading. I did also hire some other writers to do pieces in the book; Patrick Macias handled all the Ryoichi Ikegami titles, Julie Davis and Mark Simmons reviewed a bunch of older science fiction manga and all the Gundam books, Derek Guder on adult manga, Shaenon Garrity on Osamu Tezuka, and others. In some cases, like with the Tezuka and Ikegami, these were things that I'd read already and I just wanted a fresh perspective. But they did also read some things I hadn't read before (I'm now trying to go back and fill in the gaps), and I couldn't have done it without them.
DW: You're obviously a manga omnivore, but where do your tastes generally lie? What are some of your favorite series and mangaka?
JT: My favorite creators at the moment are Kazuo Umezu, Riyoko Ikeda (really just The Rose Of Versailles -- my favorite of the many wonderful '70s shojo manga), Hirohiko Araki (a genius), Rumiko Takahashi, Moyoco Anno, and Fumi Yoshinaga (the best artist to emerge out of yaoi manga). A few other names... Go Nagai, Kazuo Koike, Hideshi Hino, Masakazu Katsura, Please Save My Earth, Moon Child. My favorite genres are probably romantic comedies (or just plain romances) and horror manga. I've always loved horror stories in any medium, and I think manga horror has more of a distinct identity than the other two big escapist genres, science fiction and fantasy. Romance manga made me really appreciate the difference between manga and American comics -- the first anime I ever watched was Ranma ½, followed by just about every episode of Maison Ikkoku. And I do love good ol' battle manga -- I was the editor of Shonen Jump, after all, so I appreciate artists like Hiroyuki Takei, Eiichiro Oda, Shinji Saijyo and Akira Toriyama. Having read a lot of manga, I think genuine originality is one of the most precious and rare things out there, and I especially respect it when someone is able to do it within the constraints of the manga magazine system. I do love underground manga of the type released by Fanfare, but obviously I enjoy mainstream manga as well, when it's well done.
DW: I think, particularly with mainstream stuff, it all comes down to authorial voice. A series can have the most formulaic set-up imaginable, but the right mangaka can really bring these really familiar plot elements and character types to specific life. I was really happy to read the guide's positive review of Sei Itoh's Monster Collection (CMX), because when you break it down, it sounds dreadful -- an adaptation of a card game? Please! But the book itself is really funky and surprising and fun. That's one of the things I really love about manga -- its ability to overturn expectations and get me involved in genres and stores that don't generally interest me.
JT: Absolutely. There's lots of small, wonderful manga like that one. When I get the "what manga do you recommend?" question, there's always the urge to straighten my tie and talk about some "respectable" manga like Osamu Tezuka, or Vagabond, or something. But I don't want to do disservice to the good manga which are created under formulaic conditions. Roger Ebert talked about the importance of judging things compared to other things in their genre and target audience -- I think his quote on Wikipedia goes "When people ask whether the Hellboy movie is good, they're not asking whether it's good compared to Lawrence Of Arabia, they're asking whether it's good compared to Batman." So to use a manga example, I think Video Girl Ai has to be judged in comparison with Love Hina and Ai Yori Aoshi. Actually, originally the book had ratings up to five stars, but then I looked at the five-star reviews and I realized that I was mostly giving five-star reviews to "serious" manga like Barefoot Gen and so on. Too predictable. I felt that I was engaging in a sort of internalized prejudice, so I dropped all the five-star reviews down to four stars and lowered and rearranged a lot of the other ratings. But now I'm getting into a whole ‘nother topic.
DW: But that's an interesting topic too, because I was noticing that the four-star manga in the guide was a really great mix of contemporary and classic titles, different genres and styles and so on. It didn't come across as an attempt to assemble any kind of canon of great literature. Stuff could be four-star because it fell into that category, or it could be four-star because it's just a blast to read and enjoy. I really appreciated that. (Also, you gave four stars to Antique Bakery, which is one of the surest ways to curry favor with me, at least.)
JT: I'm glad you like it. Having everything assembled before me, I spent a lot of time pondering what manga was better than what other manga, and I'm sure that when the book comes out I'll have plenty of angry Amazon comments complaining about how I didn't like such-and-such. Or that I was too soft. There are plenty of manga which I could reassess in the future; a lot of series are still running in Japan, after all, so they could easily jump the shark, or, who knows, be redeemed by a great ending. Of course, since there are other writers in the book as well, their tastes don't always match with mine, but that's inevitable and to be welcomed. (I did end up entirely replacing one or two reviews, after talking it through with the writers.) In the end, I couldn't have done it without them, so hopefully readers will see it as a good point that the different writers have distinct voices.
DW: Speaking of the future, are there any plans in place for updates or new editions of the book? I mean, Tokyopop announced 38 new titles this summer, and there were a lot of series in there that were too new to be reviewed. (Not to make work for you or anything.)
JT: I'm contracted to do two updates, but at the moment, I can't say whether they'll be print or some other format. If it does well enough to become a series of books, that'd be awesome. Right now I'm keeping up with manga through my writing for Otaku USA, and I'm enjoying having more time to work on my webcomic, The Stiff.
DW: Thanks for handing me such a nice segue! I wanted to talk about Otaku USA as well, and your role as Manga Editor. What's your mission in that role? What kind of manga readers does the magazine want to reach?
JT: I'm in charge of Otaku USA’s manga section, and I do most of the reviews. It's very similar to the style of writing I did for Manga: The Complete Guide, but actually, it's also the natural progression of the manga reviewing I used to do for PULP and Animerica magazine for Viz. I worked with Patrick Macias on both those magazines, so it's a pleasure to be reunited with him for Otaku USA. The magazine is his brainchild, but we both wanted to do something intelligent, funny, well-read, that doesn't hide the personality of its authors, and isn't afraid to be critical. Basically it seemed that the time was perfect for a smart, independent Japanese pop culture magazine. When I first conceived of Manga: The Complete Guide, I was partly inspired by The Comics Journal and the general indy-comics desire to discuss comics/manga seriously as a legitimate art form. Rather than as franchises and fodder for anime and figures and screen-printed body pillows. While the indy-comics and manga scenes have drifted far apart in the last five years, one thing I have always admired about The Comics Journal is their interviews with artists. I hope to have a lot of manga-related interviews in upcoming issues of Otaku USA, because I do always try to remember that it always comes down to individual artists (and, to a varying degree, their editors and assistants).
DW: I thought it was the magazine was really successful in balancing an unapologetic, fan-driven perspective with really solid writing at the same time, which was really refreshing. Sometimes you'll pick up a magazine devoted to a specific niche, and it will feel like it's written in code, but that didn't crop up with the first issue. My interest is primarily in manga, but I still found the anime and game articles interesting. And I thought your interview was terrific. Do you have any others lined up for future issues?
JT: I do, but I probably shouldn't confirm them until the interviews are actually signed, sealed, delivered and translated. In addition to the mainstream artists, I'm hoping to get some interesting interviews with lesser-known people who aren't as heavily jaded and shielded by editors and other go-betweens. Yaoi artists, for instance; many of them are very low-rung manga artists, living with their folks and working part-time jobs, and I'm interested in their perspective, since in some ways it might be closer to what American small-press artists experience. Of course, I shouldn't make sweeping generalizations until I've done more than a handful of interviews.
DW: When you were starting out in manga professionally, where did you think it would go? Did you picture it taking off and becoming as mainstream as it has?
JT: It's definitely exceeded my wildest expectations; like Shaenon Garrity said on her livejournal once, I think a lot of us old-school fans are kind of freaked out now that our dreams have come true. But freaked out in a good way. My background was in indy-comics before I got into manga, so I always had a double objective: (1) make manga a success in America and (2) learn from the example of manga to make comics in general, including comics by American artists, successful. Today it's clear that manga is super-popular, but manga aimed at adults, and stuff with more experimental and unusual art styles, is still lagging. It would seem that Americans only have room for one stereotypical image of comics at a time, so that manga, which was once thought of as this weird foreign Japanese thing with samurai and giant robots, and then this sleazy thing with tentacled monsters, is now thought of as big-eyed stuff aimed at 14-year-olds. And now you have a "hipster backlash" against manga, an indy-comics backlash against manga. Of course, lots of manga *IS* stuff for 14-year-olds, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it remains to be seen whether publishers and readers will support seinen and josei and underground manga. Perhaps I'm wishing for something impossible, since those categories are always going to be small compared to the blockbuster shonen and shojo market.
My dream would be to see works, from both America and Japan, which combine the artistic techniques of manga with the indy-comics art-for-art's-sake personal aesthetic. I want to see a market which appreciates both shonen battle manga and shojo romances, but also the equivalents of Alison Bechdel and Art Spiegelman and Linda Medley and Ariel Schrag and Dave Sim and Paul Pope and Jason Shiga... or to get more borderline-manga, Chynna Clugston, Colleen Doran, Frank Miller, Bryan Lee O' Malley... I love 'em all, and I hope that "the rising tide lifts all the boats," so to speak. At some level it's all comics to me, and the reason I focus on Japanese comics is simply that I like them a lot, and also to keep my sanity by not having to try to be the expert on absolutely EVERYTHING.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
