From the (Library e-)Comics Rack: Weeaboo
Nov. 28th, 2021 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs I waited and waited for new issues of Otaku USA to show up in my mailbox in the months after renewing my subscription by phone, I did start to wonder if something had got lost in the system. Having had the chance to begin at the beginning with the magazine’s very first issue and then kept buying it as the other North American English-language periodicals vanished amid the anime industry crisis at the close of this century’s first decade, I’d established something of a habit; with the habit apparently broken by accident, though, I did find myself asking if I missed it all that much. Thoughts of a stack of back issues being a “hard-copy chronicle” only went so far. Confronting that, I also got around to contemplating unsubscribing from the magazine’s email newsletter I might not have quite specifically asked for in the shift from bookstore magazine racks to the postal service. Before I could quite break a habit through my own resolve, however, I did notice the regular inbox arrival promote a North American work of comics about anime fans, with a title recognizable to me but a word I do try not to use. For all of that I did wonder about actually reading the comic, and then I happened to ask myself if it might show up in the multimedia e-lending service offered through my city library. It has almost no “manga,” but does offer a considerable amount of North American comics, which just might provide an alternative to another habit drifted into. I went looking, and Alissa Sallah’s “Weeaboo” was there.
The artwork did have me thinking “yes, real people do look different from the appealing simplifications of anime characters” without looking “realistic” itself. I did start wondering about certain insistences that North American comics (once you’ve got past “superheroes”) have “varieties of design anime doesn’t,” and then supposing there must be manga that varies as much but doesn’t get brought over here or which I just don’t read. With time, though, I got used to the art and focused more on the story it was telling. The main characters being in high school reminded me of how in my own high school years I was at best aware of “animation from Japan” without knowing how to see any of it (it was a different time back then, of course), not much missing what I wasn’t aware of even as I kept coasting on memories of having seen Robotech and spinoffs from it without much in the way of character art (much less “decent” character art). The narrative bending towards a far-distant anime convention was one more divergence from my own usual path. It was good to get a sense of different experiences, of course.
The story’s not just a matter of “isn’t being a fan great?” James Shibata struggles with school and doesn’t have a happy home life; Danielle “Dan” Mitchell tries out for the lead male role in a school play that seems rather reminiscent of “The Rose of Versailles” only to have her efforts brushed off and be assigned the female lead; Maya Thompson seems the most enthusiastic fan of the three but goes through a real crisis of confidence sparked in part by a power outage which keeps her from being able to straighten her hair and a rather unpleasant “black” character design in one anime episode. (Having come from an age when anime characters had their identities reassigned with name changes and blithely accepting them at the time to the point I keep grappling with how I see “anime character designs” and what more I can say about that without stepping on a land mine, I can see how other fans have their own struggles to deal with.) Aware of certain comments over the years about how long “most” anime fans stick with it and what might have put me out on the long tail of the distribution curve, I did wonder about how the comic would end and whether it might just happen to promote “creator-driven North American comics” as an alternative. In the end, though, things were quite satisfying (even as it just happened to mention the shorter, perhaps more fan-used and less dismissive, form of “weeaboo.”) Not every question the story might have raised seemed to get answered, but I was all right with that.
As one last note, not that long ago I did get another issue of Otaku USA in the mail. I’m now just wondering whether I’ll manage to get the back issue I ordered to make up for what I missed while the renewed subscription was kicking in.
The artwork did have me thinking “yes, real people do look different from the appealing simplifications of anime characters” without looking “realistic” itself. I did start wondering about certain insistences that North American comics (once you’ve got past “superheroes”) have “varieties of design anime doesn’t,” and then supposing there must be manga that varies as much but doesn’t get brought over here or which I just don’t read. With time, though, I got used to the art and focused more on the story it was telling. The main characters being in high school reminded me of how in my own high school years I was at best aware of “animation from Japan” without knowing how to see any of it (it was a different time back then, of course), not much missing what I wasn’t aware of even as I kept coasting on memories of having seen Robotech and spinoffs from it without much in the way of character art (much less “decent” character art). The narrative bending towards a far-distant anime convention was one more divergence from my own usual path. It was good to get a sense of different experiences, of course.
The story’s not just a matter of “isn’t being a fan great?” James Shibata struggles with school and doesn’t have a happy home life; Danielle “Dan” Mitchell tries out for the lead male role in a school play that seems rather reminiscent of “The Rose of Versailles” only to have her efforts brushed off and be assigned the female lead; Maya Thompson seems the most enthusiastic fan of the three but goes through a real crisis of confidence sparked in part by a power outage which keeps her from being able to straighten her hair and a rather unpleasant “black” character design in one anime episode. (Having come from an age when anime characters had their identities reassigned with name changes and blithely accepting them at the time to the point I keep grappling with how I see “anime character designs” and what more I can say about that without stepping on a land mine, I can see how other fans have their own struggles to deal with.) Aware of certain comments over the years about how long “most” anime fans stick with it and what might have put me out on the long tail of the distribution curve, I did wonder about how the comic would end and whether it might just happen to promote “creator-driven North American comics” as an alternative. In the end, though, things were quite satisfying (even as it just happened to mention the shorter, perhaps more fan-used and less dismissive, form of “weeaboo.”) Not every question the story might have raised seemed to get answered, but I was all right with that.
As one last note, not that long ago I did get another issue of Otaku USA in the mail. I’m now just wondering whether I’ll manage to get the back issue I ordered to make up for what I missed while the renewed subscription was kicking in.