Anime ruining Comic Books?

Hi guys, as the title of the thread says;

Do you think that Anime art is ruining the true Comic Books of yester-year? I am getting tired of meeting everyone on the internet who plays video games that describes their passionate love for Anime.

Now i was brought up with high quality fine art and oil paintings. My grandma was a teacher and taught me well. Whenever i was young she would turn the TV off whenever i watched cartoons because "they were horrible drawings". I know that seems a bit harsh but now i thank her for it.

It seems people nowadays would rather watch Anime's online rather than buy a comic book, sit through and read it to the end.

Why is this? Do people not like to engage their minds anymore with reading or simply because they don't like comic books and would prefer to watch a film?

I for one am not a fan of Anime as you can probably tell, though i don't mind those of you who are (which must be about 90% of the playerbase) i just can't manage to get to grips with it.

I was at an interview a few months back for college, showing my work. My interviewer said it was refreshing to see someone who hasn't followed the crowd and taken to the mainstream Japanese form of art That made me feel good and told me a lot about the people applying for my course.

Now don't get me wrong i am all for other forms of Art but compared to the time it takes to produce other things of a higher standard it just doesn't seem rewarding or an achievement to draw it.

I myself have tried fine art, oil paintings, charcoal and even spray painting through my history. So i am definitely open to more forms of art.

The problem i have is that i think it is ruining the "golden era" so to say of comic books. I know some of you are thinking "well comic books aren't exactly fine art" and i agree with you. But I'm not seeing this style of art around any more which is a shame. It seems to have been overtaken by what i think is a mainstream style of art. Much like how real Rap music has been dominated by the main stream artists of today.. The same example can be given for rock or metal.

Now i love comic books, i am grateful for everything about them. They have brought us iconic figures who children can look up to and of course brought us this game .

So i wanted to know your thoughts on the matter and whether anyone out there agrees with me.

Thanks for reading guys! Sorry about the colour i thought it would be easier to read

Some of you may have noticed that my Avatar is from an Anime, the only one i have ever watched. Ironic? Perhaps but i have to say i liked the concept haha.

Comic books never change, in a decade or so I'll be older than Bruce Wayne, a character who has been around for decades before I was born, and will continue to be around long after my death.

Anime and their paper based manga form, tend to be self contained series written by one author, they eventually conclude their story and move on.

A completed story is something more appealing to me, than one that will never end.

If you're talking about art styles, then both are as bad as each other. Both genre's have their great artists, and both have their artists that have you wonder how they ever got a job in the first place.

Edit: I'm a downy kid

Anyways to take a quote of yours, Comic Books have given us iconic characters to look up to. Likewise, so has anime. Both are just mediums to tell a story. Disliking a medium as a misrepresentation of a genre seems shallow to me.

Is it ruining comic books? I doubt it, if people are going to read a comic, they're going to read it. I never showed much interest in comics/manga myself till a few years ago. The only thing that ruins a good comic/manga is bad writing/bad artists.

Their are high quality anime series out there, Afro Samurai being one of them (I'd also recommend Cowboy Bebop). The main problem for just about every anime company out there, they don't have the level of budget that Disney has access to.

I do agree that in most cases, when English artists integrate the anime style into their work...some times it's not all that great (Totally Spies comes to mind...)

Anime isn't ruining comic books.

Joe Quesada is.

damn those French, well there are other examples, just that series particularly popped into my mind.

Obviously I'm very much the wrong person to ask on this topic. My advice is: stop by your local large book store if you have one, head to the manga section, and check out Claymore. Yes, it's not in color, but check it out and try to tell me that the art and story is weak. You can find some dumb stuff in the manga section, and you can find some brilliant stuff, just like American comics.

As far as anime goes, I'm obviously biased.

Goku

My 2 cents:

I'm not very convinced by Appeals to Tradition. Traditions are meant to be bent and broken as societies grow and evolve. Holding on to outmoded traditions for the sake of some sort of emotional attachment only holds back society from moving forward. That's just my belief.

That being said, main French painter thought that the camera would ruin painting forever. Before the invention of the camera, realistic paintings and drawings were the only means to convey images in real life. However, a group of Impressionist painters were able to take the medium of painting and turn it on its head, using studies in shape, color, and technique to create new art forms.

From those Impressionist roots, we got the four-color printing method responsible for creating the comics we know today. And comics have been evolving since then, from simple strips in the daily papers, to comic books, to graphic novels, to web comics, to manga, etc.

Manga, and by extension anime, are merely different art styles in the comic form. I don't feel that they're "ruining" comic books any more than the camera ruined painting. Artists continually find new was to express themselves on a given medium. I have no doubt that both "traditional" comics and anime will find their own ways to inspire imagination and creativity.

I just find it sad that a country like America is losing its roots. You know what i mean.. just list the super heroes from America. People are getting more into the Japanese culture which isn't a bad thing of course, but it can be because when the Japanese experience the American culture in say 50 years from now.. comic books could be completely gone from shops or production.

We just need Mark Millar to write the ultimate manga that redefines the entire genre, and everything will be ok.

What is "American Culture", if not a melting pot of the cultures from every other place, since we're a country of immigrants? Unless we're talking about some manufactured notion from the 1950s post-war bravado about Mom and Apple Pie. Or you're talking about Native American culture, which all but died out when immigrants claimed Manifest Destiny.

But not so critically, people will take and pick what they like from other people's ideas. This goes for any culture. With the Information Age, the process is just merely accelerated. Japanese art that influenced European Impressionists arrived on ships that took months to get between either place. Now, we can just beam ideas to each other over the Internet on our computers or mobile devices.

Kind of funny though, if you think about it - Japanese art influences Impressionists, which eventually leads to comics and cartoons, which leads to Walt Disney, which leads to American animation influencing post-war Japan. Circuitous, indeed.

For myself i've found Anime and Manga to have a much more engaging storytelling style that is always evolving. as mentioned before there's usually only one creative mind behind the story and it will end. (see Maison Ikkoku) it may begin again in another incarnation or volume but that first story is complete in and of itself. (See Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden) conversely some series never seem to end but always continue to tell new stories despite what could be viewed as a limited topic for such (Hajime no Ippo is a personal favorite at 900+ issues) the topics are unlike anything in the west (look up "Iron Wok Jan" or "The Bartender" series for examples).

on the flip side in the West you have the same old titles that never end, the same old characters that never change (except for an attempt at a media bump), have been written by WAY too many people with conflicting visions and drawn by folks that want to redesign things to their sensibilities. Don't get me wrong. some of those comics i still love but i despise the fact that they answer to corporate boards and cave to fanboy demands instead of sticking to their stories (sorry folks, Hal Jordan should have stayed dead and never come back in any way, shape or form).

although there are exceptions to that in the west.
Invincible, The Walking Dead, Strangers in Paradise, Preacher, The Sandman, Transmetropolitan and others (usually at Vertigo or independant).
just as there's exceptions in the east.
Ranma 1/2, Dragonball, Gundam, etc.

and engaging the brain has nothing to do with it. convience does. i can put on a show or movie at work and home and do other things while i listen to it and watch the odd scene. i cant do that with a book. a book i have to dedicate specific time to. i cant multitask with it. After watching the documentary "It might get Loud" with my father the other day i'd realized that after several dozen views i'd never actually watched the film start to finish, but i knew every song and story from it. i just liked listening to Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page, talk and play guitar.

There are actually a couple of questions here.

Is anime/manga art style and tropes displacing traditional western comic book art style and tropes?

Is animation ruining comic books sales?

One of the reasons for the rise of awareness of manga art style and tropes is video games. We've had decades of Asian produced video games exposure. That rubs off on the collected psyche of gamers. And while certain genre of games are more Western, years of Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, etc. have exposed us enough that their particular art style, story telling style and tropes that they are now simply excepted into the greater whole.

The most recent anime/manga invasion began in the mid 1980s but surged in the mid 1990s. We started to enjoy animated shows with continuity. We felt that this was new, different and interesting. The stories flowed differently than the Hasbro based toy ones that were dominating cartoon blocks at the time. This added to the attraction, new and shinny always beats out same old, same old. What also helped was simple economics. It was cheaper to redub an already animated series than pay for one from scratch. Again, like with video games, the increased exposure to anime art style was absorbed into the collective animation/comic psyche in the west.

As for the animation killing comic books, that's simply the I'll watch the movie rather than read the book argument. It's becoming more prevalent these days than when I was young simply for two reasons. First you can consume video of your choice a lot easier now than then. Portable devices that can play recorded movies and TV shows. Streaming video sites that you can get to with any browser. Kids no longer have a stash of comic books in their tree house in their backyard anymore, they get streaming video over the home wifi on their iPod Touch.

Second we here in the Americas and Europe have the luxury of getting a manga and it's anime series after it was all over, generally at the same time. In Japan the manga came out relatively slowly and may have been completed before the very first episode of an anime version was broadcast. It wasn't a one or the other choice for fans who already read and owned the manga. But here, why pay $12-15 a volume when we can simply watch the series now for free or close to free?

Is it Japan's fault that they frequently make 50-100+ episode animated series based on popular manga? Also in Japan new comic series is the norm, not simply based on previous characters. Sure there are staples like Gundam and Lupin III but the majority of comics and animated series are new, not based on 40-50 year old characters. Name a "new" popular A-list character from DC or Marvel that was created in even the last 10 years?

American comic books are total BS and implausible to the 500th power. Comics ruined themselves.


BTW, I think the OP is just prejudiced against anime because it is "mainstream." He did not give a good reason why he does not like it.