Xtreem n00b

[tcv]

Hi folks,

I hope I won't get lambasted for posting here.

Over the weekend, while browsing Barnes and Noble for magazines to read. I ran across Shonen Jump. I have a VERY small understanding of manga, but I had heard the name.

That book led me to search some stuff online. I knew that there was a large population of manga/anime fans online. i used to be in a group about 15 years ago. I hope you won't hate me for saying this, but I didn't get much out of it.

First of all, everything was about extremely large robots. Large robots are nice, but ... well, I just had my fill. Secondly, I couldn't find stuff in English. Well, that's not entirely true. At the time, Akira had been translated but I found it really boring. I saw it three times and I just couldn't cope. I was like Elaine in The English Patient.

"Stop moaning Kaneda and just die! DIE!"

So, people told me that even though there wasn't that much available, I should watch the Japanese versions because you really didn't need the dialogue to understand what was going on. Perhaps that was true, but I know I missed a lot.

There seemed to be a lot of interesting stuff out there, but I felt like it was inaccessible, at least to me. There is (or used to be) a store in Cambridge, Mass that sold Manga un-translated. I picked up a couple of things but, again, I just couldn't grasp the whole thing and felt like I wasn't really getting the crux of the story. That bothered me.

So, yesterday I discover this really cool new (to me) manga world online. It's translated and it's got VERY interesting stories, though most stuff seems to involve fighting and ghost protectors and I don't know why. I ran across Aquastar and read some stuff, especially Mahou Sensei Negima and got hooked. I also got hooked on a few of the things in Shonen Jump, though not Yu-Gi-Oh. I know it's been around for a long time and I really feel lost in the story. Also, I get the impression in SJ that it's their star attraction. The episode was at the end of the book and was much shorter than the others.


Anyway, this is a really long message and I feel kind of overjoyed to have found this. I have a few questions about the manga world in general:

1. Who are the people doing all these translations? Are they simply fans?

2. How do the titles get picked?

3. How current are the titles?

4. It seems like there are different genres. Some have to do with boys in school who fight and others seem to deal with boys (or girls) in school who have relationships. What are the genres? I apologize if I mischaracterized anything.

5. What happened to big robots? Was that ever a manga thing?

6. If fans are translating the books and then those books come out officially later, are they different? (I think they are, as a few spoiler topics seem to say that!)

I have lots more questions. If this isn't the right place to post them, I apologize. Kindly point me in the right place! I appreciate any help!

Cheers,

Mike...

[jdennis007]

1)Fans
2)Personal prefernce.
3)Depends
4)Tons
5) They are still around.
6)For the most part the words are different only some companies do change the artwork around and stuff but for the most part everything is kept the same.
You posted this in general discussion so it should be ok here.

[tcv]

Thanks for the help.

Is AquaStar a group? What kind of group? Are there other groups?

[jdennis007]

We are a scanalation group but we are also more importantly a group of friends, that have come together to share our love of anime and manga with others so that they too can join us. There are tons of groups out there.

[Zap Electro]

I wasn't sure if you were asking about commercial manga, or fan-translated manga (like how some members here translate Negima).

So, if it's commercial stuff like Shonen:

1. Viz, Shonen Jump, Tokyopop, and a few other companies

2. Usually popular titles in Japan are translated.

3. Yeah, really does depend. Most are fairly current though.

4. Oh jeez, this outta be big. Well, you've got shonen which is basically action with some romance, shojo which is mainly about relationships, problems, and a few other things (some action). There's shonen-ai, which is about gay guys, and shojo-ai about gay girls. There's hentai of course, but you probably know what that is (manga equivalent to porn). It's not very commercialized, most just on the web. Then you have the Mech manga. There are also more detailed descriptions, like maho shojo (Magical Girl), like cardcaptors. Seinen, which is more...adult...kind of manga. Not necessarily hentai, usually just has mature topics. Ghost in the Shell MIGHT be considered one of these.

5. Probably a little before my time, but I can safely say that giant robots have been and still are a large part of manga/anime, but other genres are equal in size.

6. Translations are really interpretations, meaning that it'll be different from a company's translation. If 3 companies translated the same book, they would all come out different. Shonen tends to remove a lot of the Japanese culture from the book (removing certain words that a manga fan would know). Viz is better at this, and will explain certain things. Tokyopop tries really hard to keep everything the same, by adding a lot of footnotes that explain expressions. ADVfilms manga does things like Shonen does by removing a lot of the details of culture, but are very, VERY thorough at the end of each book by explaining things you might not have understood.

Sorry if you didn't mean commercial manga, but you sound a lot like I did when I started reading manga lol. If you like Shonen-jump's manga, check out Bleach!. It's a great series. Plus, Shonen sells their books for 2 dollars cheaper than the other companies, so if you go out for a big manga splurge of buying (like I do occasionally), picking up some Shonen could mean you'd get an extra book from the savings. That being said, Tokyopo and Viz provide a much bigger variety, so it's up to you.

[tcv]

Thanks for your reply.

I was mainly referring to fan-translated manga, but I appreciated your comments! The simple truth is, I am just fascinated by it all.

The bigger problem I seem to have right now is that I am having trouble finding older manga. I see that Negima is available pretty inexpensively at Amazon and other places. But I'd like to find, for instance, Gokusen. I see that this has been translated by a scanlation group called, "IMP". It's easy to find V5 and V6, but I don't know where to look for earlier volumes.

Also: I'd like to know where to buy used manga. One of the things I like about managa is, at least it seems to me, it's VERY affordable. it's certainly more entertainment than you get in a $5.00 DC or Marvel book. But sometimes I find that if I look online, by the time you pay for shipping, you have pretty high prices for single volumes. I'm hoping someone has some suggestions on where to shop... I'd certainly buy from fans.

[erizo]

Your best bet is always look for an anime store nearby, it will be very affordable and you will get better results.
We can't give you information about where to get those manga, specially because the money help those companies making more mangas for all of us.
So please try to get the volumes as they get released.

[jdennis007]

To answer your question about used manga it depends where you live some places have used bookstores that have manga in them. Amazon does sell used manga as well if you look around for it. Some comic book store will also sell used or slightly read manga. I am lucky because I have a store near me called Book-off which is a Japanese used book store. I am in NYC.