#ranma is really cat coded oc

[s4msatpat]

DOWN BOY!!

my own ryoran version!

Saw a lot of these scrolling through Instagram and Twitter and thought “mmmm I should make a ryoran version, haven’t seen one” but it was kind of difficult to think about it because none of them is TECHNICALLY a dog, so I played with it using catfist ranma!! I love catfist ranma!!

[jeanklemwriter]

Marvel recently made yours truly (and a good number of other people) pretty cross with their recent statements that their attempts at diversity aren’t working and that “people don’t want diversity”.

Let’s ignore how Marvel charts sales only via floppies, and not trade paperbacks and/or digital copies. Let’s ignore how Marvel fails to hire new writers to reflect their diverse characters or audiences. Let’s instead focus on a graphic novel industry that’s currently eating Marvel’s pie while it complains about SJWs and makes old characters Nazis (because women inheriting Thor’s title is cardinal sin, but making them Nazis is A-OK).

Let’s talk about manga.

The Big Two, these being DC and Marvel, have a lot they should be learning from manga. It’s a growing industry! It survived a cataclysmic bubble-burst in 2008, but currently is still in a growth period. Shonen Jump has survived its print parallell being shuttered, as a digital-only publication. What are the likes of One-Punch Man, Please Tell Me! Galko-Chan!, and Attack on Titan doing that DC and Marvel aren’t? Well, for starters (more after the break)...

Manga is cheaper. Used to be, people on Gaia Online would joke that manga was a drug because it was more expensive than crack, but that’s not quite true. When it started, a Shonen Jump trade paperback (commonly called a “tankoubon”, because that’s what they’re called in Japan) would retail at $7.95. Eventually, Viz bumped up the price--to $9.95 a pop. Today, you can expect to spend as much as $12.99 a pop per tankoubon, although Shonen Jump stuff still retails at just under $10, for something between 190 - 256 pages in length. Meanwhile, the MSRP for a 168-page-long Spider-Man trade paperback is $24.99. A lot of arguments can be made here: anime is only in black-and-white, the paper stock is different. But why is an imported comic that needs to be licensed, translated, edited, published, then distributed a cheaper alternative than a comic made in the US? Monthly issues (”floppies”)  are a terrible investment, clocking in at $3 - $7 a pop, only 16 pages, and flimsy/fragile as all heck! Worse yet, in Marvel’s case, digital copies of the same issue cost the same as the print copy. (With Shonen Jump? They’re three bucks cheaper.) People only have so much cash, and they want their money to last: a story that’ll last you ten minutes isn’t going to be considered if that same money can go to a game that’s on sale on Steam. Considering how much work goes into a comic, I’d never even dream to consider that comics should be cheaper, but at least give people more bang for their buck.

Manga stories aren’t a messy web. When I started reading Dan Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man run in 2014, there was a whole extra series being sold alongside it that I also found myself needing to read: Learning to Crawl, which was sold as--get this--decimal-issues of Amazing Spider-Man. LtC counted as issues 1.1 to 1.6 of ASM. What. It can be argued that Learning to Crawl wasn’t necessary to understand Amazing Spider-Man, but then an important character introduced in LtC became an important recurring character in ASM. Now, let’s get even messier: ASM continued with the Spider-Verse event, with no less than four comics tying into the darn thing: Edge of Spider-Verse, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Woman, and Amazing Spider-Man. All of those characters and comics were involved, and had a hand in that event. I didn’t read all of those comics, only EoSV and ASM--so I can’t begin to explain why Spider-Woman was hiding in the Inheritor World when she was, or how Kaine appeared. Compare this to 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urusawa’s tale of childhood, post-war Japan, friendship, and political intrigue. If you want to understand that story, pick up volume one (I insist, it’s so good) and start reading. Wanna catch up on Berserk while its on hiatus? Just buy a volume and start reading! Anyone jumping into a comic book has to be ready to read three different books just to get the low-down on one story, which doesn’t combine well with the aforementioned pricing problems. Floppies are already a tough investment, and they feel even cheaper when you’re supposed to supplement them with even more purchases. It gets worse when you remember...

Manga stories don’t come with baggage. Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t as great an introduction to the character as it could have been. If Peter Parker wasn’t such a cultural marker, that story would have left me confused. Who is this guy in the red-and-blue? Why does he have spider-powers? On a deeper level, what happened with him and Doctor Octopus?! Yeah, see, ASM takes place after a period of time where Doctor Octopus switched minds with Peter Parker and took over his body, becoming the “Superior Spider-Man”, and ASM starts with Peter having regained his body and finding the messes that Doc Oc left for Peter--and trust me, not having read the SSM books, I was surprised to see stuff like Electro and Black Cat having a vendetta against Spidey, or Mary Jane having married someone else. In other words, to understand a current comic book character, you’ve had to have been reading about them for over two years--or dived into a wiki. Now, few manga in the US have lasted the forty-plus years that the likes of Captain America, Batman, or Animal Man have, but even after 84 volumes One Piece is somehow still easier to jump into than an alleged reboot (they’re pirates looking for treasure, also yo-ho-ho Luffy took a bite of gum-gum). If your point is to create an entry point for new readers, you’ve failed when people need to read at least one other book to understand the current one.

Manga covers a lot of ground. Used to be, comics in the US had all kinds of genres: besides superheroes, we had romance, horror, suspense, crime thrillers, and comedies. The rise of the Comic Book Code changed all of that; now all DC and Marvel publish are superheroes. Shonen Jump may be the house that’s ruled by Dragon Ball and One Piece, but Shonen Jump still has piles of variety. Besides action stories, they also cover comedy (Cowa!, Gintama), romance (I’’s, Strawberry 100%), horror (Muyo and Rohji’s Supernaural Detective Agency), sports (Prince of Tennis, Eyeshield 21) and thrillers (Death Note). I’m only covering series that are licensed in the US, mind--Japan has weirder stuff from Shonen Jump, like the positively-ancient KochiKame. Too much emphasis is put on capes in the Big Two. Even their attempts at moving away from that are overshadowed by capes: Grayson may have been a spy thriller, but it still starred Dick Grayson, alias Nightwing (and onetime Batman). Gotham Academy was a fun adventure series set in a large prep school--in the middle of Gotham City. The closest we could hope for Marvel to do as a romance would be Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane. It seems Marvel and DC aren’t capable--or willing--to release anything that isn’t attached to their superheroes. (There’s a lot to unpack with that last statement, and there’s no space and time to cover that--let’s just say you can’t have an audience you don’t cultivate, and you can’t complain about people ignoring you if you ignore them.) Finally...

Manga actually hires women. Two of the most beloved manga of all time, each responsible for an entire generation of manga fans, are Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. They’re both romantic comedies with lots of action; the former is more comedy than action, the latter is more action and fantasy than romance. Both of these came to be genre-defining works. Their creator? Rumiko Takahashi--a woman. She’s not alone, either: Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, Yana Toboso’s Black Butler, CLAMP’s Chobits, xxxHolic, and Tsubasa Resorvoir Chronicles, Hiromu Arakawa’s Full-Metal Alchemist... there is a not-insignificant list of very, very prolific manga that are written and drawn by women. Meanwhile, DCs policies during the New 52 meant that only two women worked with them: writer Gail Simone and artist Amy Reeder. A lot of people on the internet argue for a total meritocracy: that creators should be hired for their talent or skill, and not because they’re women/people of color. But you can’t have a healthy industry without a wide variety of creators. A wide, diverse team of writers means you have a wide, diverse set of viewpoints and experiences that translate to different stories. Ranma 1/2 isn’t a great story because Rumiko Takahashi is a woman, it’s a great story because Rumiko Takahashi is a great writer and artist. But she actually had to get hired in order to make Ranma 1/2. The only reason for Marvel and DC to not have more women in their teams is if they don’t give a crap... and, really, that’s quite telling: you can’t complain attempts at diversity aren’t working if you’re not willing to commit to it. Manga isn’t great at diversity either, owing to Japan’s far-more-ethnocentric population, but there’s still startlingly-more variety with manga than there’s ever been with comics in years. If publishers in the US want to make better business, start looking at how their international fellows handle business. Millions of One Piece fans worldwide exist for a reason.