REVIEW - Manga : The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson (2007)

 Manga is one of the most aggressively expanding areas of the genre landscape.  For a long time the translated comics with weird titles and a fondness for young girls were a niche apart from the rest of genre; a closed world whose wonders were only ever available to the initiated and occasionally hinted at through the closely linked but ultimately different world of Anime films.  Indeed, despite a seemingly ever-expanding array of western publishers acquiring a vested interest in manga reaching a wider audience, manga has long struggled with getting a toe-hold in the mainstream.  Everybody knows about manga but while millions flock to see studio Ghbli films, few people can list more than one of two manga titles.  This problem is largely due to a lack of an accessible critical standpoint from which to write about manga without sliding into apologia and cultural relativism.  However, Manga : The Complete Guide’s Jason Thompson seems to have cracked the problem, producing a book that opens up the world of manga without feeling the need to apologise and explain away its eccentricities.

From well known titles such as Full Metal Alchemist and Yu-Gi-Oh! to Guru Guru Pon-Chan (a story of a Labrador Retriever that falls in love with her master and takes human form in order to be with him, a bit like The Little Mermaid but with bestiality gags) and Iron Wok Jan (which is about cooking and includes recipes), Manga : The Complete Guide covers every single manga title that has been officially translated and released in the English language with online updates promised to cover any future releases.  These titles are reviewed and rated in the kind of short 200-300 word reviews that you’d expect from a guide to an entire medium.  However, the reviews are well written, informative and show enough critical distance that the reviewers do not feel obligated to draw particular attention to the bigger titles.  If anything, the book’s reviewers show a marked preference for the slightly more left-field, sophisticated and exotic titles.  This critical orientation is what ultimately makes this book so successful.

Manga’s problem has always been that while it shows an astonishing diversity of subject matter that far outstrips western comics and genre fiction’s attempts at find new audiences, it is also incredibly narrow in its frame of cultural references with certain jokes, ideas and artistic quirks so ubiquitous that manga, at times, can feel less like a medium and more like a genre.

The book deal with this problem by including not just reviews but also longer critical pieces about Japanese culture, the history of manga and why it is that manga has the quirks it has.  For example, the book explains that manga has a long-standing tradition of allowing its creatives to own their creations, which did not exist in US comics until relatively recently.  This culture of ownership has lead to creatives having a real vested interest in the success of their titles, which explains why so many manga titles run to dozens of volumes and why many manga creators employ assistants not only to serve as PAs but also to act as artistic apprentices who occasionally get credited in the books they help with and many books even contain artwork by the apprentices as a means of advertising their skills should any publishers be looking for new writers.  As well as historical and social pieces, the book also contains explanations of the tropes that characterise the different manga genres as well as sociological pieces such as the way that Japanese people see sexual ambiguity as something attractive and sexual (hence all the lovely long-haired feminine boys in manga) as opposed to our tendency to see it as something profoundly Other and asexual as suggested by films such as Pat and as embodied in the hateful stereotype of the predatory camp gay man.

It is these longer pieces that ultimately sell the book.  Any relatively articulate manga fan could compile a series of reviews but it takes a good critical mind to place these reviews within a wider context that makes them accessible while still trumpeting the loveable weirdness and eccentricities of the form, the book’s standpoint is that yes, manga can be weird but this weirdness is explainable within a wider context and besides, that weirdness is part of the fun.  Clearly Thompson’s ten years as a manga editor has given him the right kind of critical mind and the result is everything you could possibly hope for from a book such as this.  Anyone looking to expand their understanding of manga whether it be the baby steps of initiation or the longer strides of greater critical engagement really should consider tracking this book down.



N. B. - This review was based upon an advance review copy of the book sent to me by the good folks at Del Rey.