Friday, April 23, 2004
Bags and Boards should learn their manga ABCs....
So, Bags and Boards, a comics blog on Variety.com has an entry on The ABCs of manga. Ick! I hate to say it, but this thing is horrible, especially coming from something related to a print publication, where you'd think there'd be a bit more fact-checking.
Besides the fact that writing comes off kind of stilted (dunno why.. just seems.. choppy) behold:
"ShoJo" is a valid spelling (though "shoujo" is more common), but why is the J capitalized?
"Weekly Shonen Jump" is the Japanese publication. The US one is called just "Shonen Jump" as it isn't weekly.
It is "Chobits" not "Chobit".
Why does Love Hina link to the anime site instead of the manga site?
"tankoban" is spelled correctly in most places, but is "tankaban" in one. More importantly, this term refers to the collected digests, not the original weekly/monthly anthologies.
The part on One Piece doesn't refer to the fact that Luffy can stretch! Also, I'm pretty sure his name is "Monkey D. Luffy", not "DeLuffy".
And it ends it with of course a plug for Anime Insider, saying "It's unique in that it serves all level of fans. We want to reach the Pokemon and the Adult Swim fans."
So, I don't know if this is a case of an oral review where Jevon guessed at spelling (should at least look these things up, though) or Mr. Bricken really is clueless. The definition of tankoban makes me lean a bit toward the latter...
All in all, most of it is very superficial and doesn't give much more than most people already know, while most of the specifics are outright wrong. Maybe I'm just being too hard on them, especially since this is just a blog entry and not an outright article in a magazine, but I wish people would make more of an effort...
Update: Geeze, on top of everything else, even the name of the guy interviewed is wrong! According to the editor of Media Blasters, his name is Robert Bricken, not Richard...
Update 2: After putting a link to here in the B&B's comments, Jevon has since posted a reply. He is quite the gentleman in his reponse, and has since corrected most of the issues in my complaint. I think I was probably a bit on the defensive side (like people who get annoyed at articles saying Biff! and Pow!) and I'm glad to see more people making the effort to try to learn about manga. Don't let this scare you off Jevon. Next time I'll just e-mail you if I have some issues. :)
Besides the fact that writing comes off kind of stilted (dunno why.. just seems.. choppy) behold:
"ShoJo" is a valid spelling (though "shoujo" is more common), but why is the J capitalized?
"Weekly Shonen Jump" is the Japanese publication. The US one is called just "Shonen Jump" as it isn't weekly.
It is "Chobits" not "Chobit".
Why does Love Hina link to the anime site instead of the manga site?
"tankoban" is spelled correctly in most places, but is "tankaban" in one. More importantly, this term refers to the collected digests, not the original weekly/monthly anthologies.
The part on One Piece doesn't refer to the fact that Luffy can stretch! Also, I'm pretty sure his name is "Monkey D. Luffy", not "DeLuffy".
And it ends it with of course a plug for Anime Insider, saying "It's unique in that it serves all level of fans. We want to reach the Pokemon and the Adult Swim fans."
So, I don't know if this is a case of an oral review where Jevon guessed at spelling (should at least look these things up, though) or Mr. Bricken really is clueless. The definition of tankoban makes me lean a bit toward the latter...
All in all, most of it is very superficial and doesn't give much more than most people already know, while most of the specifics are outright wrong. Maybe I'm just being too hard on them, especially since this is just a blog entry and not an outright article in a magazine, but I wish people would make more of an effort...
Update: Geeze, on top of everything else, even the name of the guy interviewed is wrong! According to the editor of Media Blasters, his name is Robert Bricken, not Richard...
Update 2: After putting a link to here in the B&B's comments, Jevon has since posted a reply. He is quite the gentleman in his reponse, and has since corrected most of the issues in my complaint. I think I was probably a bit on the defensive side (like people who get annoyed at articles saying Biff! and Pow!) and I'm glad to see more people making the effort to try to learn about manga. Don't let this scare you off Jevon. Next time I'll just e-mail you if I have some issues. :)
