The Ultimate Showdown
Friday, April 8, 2011 at 2:00PM 
Welcome back readers! Are you ready to rumble? Don’t worry, you haven’t been tricked. You haven’t stumbled onto some kind of wrestling blog either. Since you now know all the basics of the Otaku culture, (go ahead, have a little victory dance if you want or you can caramel danse if you wish) I figured it was about time for us to have a bit of a showdown! It is time for the epic battle, the ultimate decision of the Otaku culture: Anime or Manga? As a new Otaku, you might find yourself wondering whether you should read manga or watch anime. What’s the difference? Which is better? Read on to find out!
Manga is the term used for the Japanese comic-books that go on much like a series. These tend to be rather long and can have up to over 100 books in a series. These comic-books tend to be a little more detailed than your average Western comic-book and are also read in a slightly different fashion. True mangas will be read from back to front (A little backwards you might say) and read from right to left. It can be a little confusing when you first start out but these tend to have a little instructional page in the beginning to help you and make sure your reading it the way it was meant to be read. Not all mangas do this however. Since manga and anime alike have become more and more popular in the West, the mangas today tend to read like your ordinary North American comic-book. So how does manga differ from anime? I am glad you asked!
Anime is a show or movie that you can watch on TV, online or buy online or from your local anime shop. Anime tend to spawn from a pre-existing manga and rarely develop as a video itself. Now, I’m saying this from a Canadian perspective. I know in Japan they have many anime that did not have a pre-existent manga. See not much to it. There really isn’t that much of difference when it comes to the two. When it comes right down to it: one’s a book and the other is a video. So what does the public prefer?
Recently I decided to take advantage of this new “ask a question” option on the ever popular Facebook. I asked what people preferred and I received four replies. *Sigh* some people just don’t want to contribute to the study of anime. Anyway, from what I gathered it seems to be a tie. Two voters said that they preferred anime and the other two said they preferred both anime and manga. Now I like to attribute this to our society becoming a more digital, time-consuming, era and people are looking for quick results and wanting them in a shorter time. Confused? Don’t be, I shall explain. Anime tends to take say the 100 book series and condense it to something shorter for the video version. Let’s face it. No one is going to want to watch 100 episodes of a show where half of it is inner thoughts and descriptions. If you do, then by all means, stick with the manga.
Who wins?
Technically it seems that anime is the winner but don’t feel pressured into watching the anime rather than the manga if that’s what you’re into. It’s really your choice in the end. Some people argue that mangas are too long and others argue that anime leaves out too much information. Everyone has their opinions but when it comes to you, it should only be yours that counts.
Congratulations readers. I now dub you all honorary Otakus! You’ve learned all the basics of what being an Otaku is like and I can’t say enough how awesome it was to share that all with you.
Until next time! Dewa Mata!
Reader Comments (3)
As someone who is completely outside the anime world, I found your blog enjoyable to read, Meggin. Keep it up!
I'd recommend you speak to a friend of mine, who took a film studies major and knows more about the anime conventions than anyone I've met. It's just too bad he can't turn that into a teaching career, he'd be a natural, and his breadth of knowledge in the entire video genre is awesome.
That said, I'd have to say anime is easier for westerners to pick up in video form, because the manga format carries a lot of cultural subtext the reader might not pick up on. And it's not just the reading style, either. :)
Oh, something I wanted to post earlier but had to hunt up the URL for. It's a parody of CLAMP anime to the tune of "The Lady is a Tramp".
http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/clamp.shtml