Originally Posted by
Dolemite
Are you sure that they actually just turn the page upside down? I was under the impression that they simply re-arranged the panels themselves from left-to-right to right-to-left. If they actually DO just flip everything upside-down, than I totally agree with you.
What most companies would do is take the page, and flip it horizontally, so that what was once the right edge is now the left, and vice versa. Take a pic in Photoshop, do a horizontal flip, and you've just done what they did. So, at that point, right hands become left hands, right lanes become left lanes, etc.
I know of very, very few companies that took the time to actually cut out each panel and re-arrange them so that they read American style, but the artwork was not flipped. Blade of the Immortal, in fact, is the only book I can think of that does that.
And the last thing I think we need to worry about is a lack of manga to bring over to America. Manga and anime are two totally different worlds. Go to Japan - there are THOUSANDS of issues of manga at any one store at any given time. Some of those titles even get a full GN-sized book weekly or bi-weekly. Even if we suddenly had EVERY manga title currenly out in Japan announced for release in America, and if every book stuck to a monthly release schedule, even without looking to any new manga, we would have enough stuff to be published until I'm dead, at the least.
What really needs to happen is that the manga market here in America needs to diversify. Thankfully shoujo has become a hit, and we're getting some great titles from that genre. But there are still so many genres that have little to no representation on our shores. Still, a lot of the stuff we have is anime tie-in stuff, and if you ask me, that's some of the lower-quality stuff that we could get. There's a huge selection of non-big name manga out there that deverses to come our way.
I do, of course, wonder if the American market can support the amount of stuff we're getting. When I got back from Japan, and saw the manga section at Borders, I was shocked - just in that one year, the manga market here had grown by ridiculous proportions. And while I'm a bit concerned at how fast it is growing, I also love seeing it. If you're a fan of manga, and go to Japan, it breaks your heart to see how much they have (and how cheap it is) compared to our situation. So, the more we get, the better selection and diversity we have to choose from, the happier I am.
WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.
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