FAQs
Ok, I hope this should answer a lot of the questions you may have if you're new to the hobby. I've tried to keep things as simple as possible, but that does mean a few generalisations have been made. Because of this, there could be some statements here that those of you with more knowledge may regard as being "wrong" - please don't email me to complain. If you know enough to argue the point, then you probably don't need to be reading this FAQ page. Go berate people about the word sushi referring to vinegared rice, not raw fish.
What's the difference between anime and manga?
Short answer: Anime means animation, manga means comics and cartoon strips. And yes, the word "anime" is related to the word "animation".
Long answer: There are several explainations for the exact meaning of the word "manga", but most boil down to "a sequence of pictures, the flow of which tells a story", so the link to cartoon strips/comics is fairly obvious. Now, this is where it gets sticky. Amongst Japanese of a certain age (read "old farts"), a piece of animation would still be referred to as manga - given that animation is just a sequence of pictures changing really fast, there isn't much wrong with this - after all, when you say "cartoon", you could mean either Calvin & Hobbes or The Simpsons without seeing a problem, couldn't you?
In general, though, animated work is referred to as "anime", which is pronounced the same as the first half of "animation" - the word's origins buried in Japanese adaptation of European words (I refuse to say "English", as it could just as well have come from French etc, and I'm not sure if anyone really knows the answer).
So why do people in this country call Japanese animation Manga?
The capital "M" is the key. Manga Entertainment Ltd were one of the first people to start getting anime onto British store shelves in any kind of quantity, and they decided to call it "Manga Video", which kinda stuck. It didn't help that they chose to fill much of their catalogue with the sex & violence end of what was available, which has resulted in plenty of tarring of anime fandom with the same brush as video nasties, and the spillage of no small amount of Daily Mail ink.
Isn't anime all porn and ultraviolence?
That's what a large number of horrifically ignorant people would have you believe. Anime includes everything from pre-schooler's shows like Dogtato-kun to, yes, schoolgirls being raped by tentacle monsters. I have a fair idea which makes for better tabloid headlines, though.
The argument used by people who say all anime is evil is the equivalent of saying that the existence of Playboy means that Good Housekeeping is porn, or that someone downloading Russian snuff movies from the internet justifies taking an axe to the servers used by BBC.co.uk.
Yes, there is some anime that's porn and ultraviolence. If that's what you're after, then fine - but, in the words of Chris Morris, "If you don't like it, don't bloody watch it!"
Shouldn't Anime have an acute over the letter "e" (Animé)?
Well, here's another long running argument ;-).
As the pronunciation is "Ah-ni-may", then writing the word in English would demand an acute over the "e". However, the situation isn't as simple as that, because anime isn't an English word - it's Japanese.
Although we use the Roman alphabet to write Japanese words without using Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji, it's just the letters that we are taking, not the rules of pronunciation. Remember how we said that "anime" is related to "animation"? Well, if you were to take a hatchet and lop off the "-shun" from that pronounciation, you'd be left with "ah-ni-may" (this kind of amputation is pretty much how it works with a lot of the western-derived words that the Japanese use, to help simplify them). Japanese writing indicates phonetics, so when you use Roman letters, these phonetic rules are preserved, with the letter "e" always being pronounced "ay".
Because of the fact that Romanized Japanese only has one pronounciation of "e", there's no need to have things like acutes to indicate alternative pronounciation. As such, when we are writing Japanese with the Roman alphabet, rather than translating to English, we use these Japanese rules.
Hence, "anime" not "animé".
If the Japanese read right-to-left, and we read left-to-right, how do they translate manga?
It depends on who's doing the translating. Some companies will flip the entire page structure so everything goes left-to-right, others leave the sequence of images alone and just change the wording in the speech bubbles.
Personally, I prefer the latter technique, but it's completely down to personal choice.
Should I watch anime dubbed or subtitled?
Take can-opener, release worms from captivity. You had to bloody well bring this up, didn't you?
Watch anime whichever way you prefer. Ignore people who tell you one way is "wrong" and another way is "right". As long as you enjoy it, it doesn't matter.
What's a "fansub"?
A fan-translated and subtitled anime. Back in the day, it came on vhs, but now you download them from the internet (digisubs). Generally taped from Japanese TV, then translated and posted on the internet by a fansub group.
That's piracy!
Well, my lad, you have a fine career ahead of you as a copyright lawyer. The status quo has always been kept by blind eyes being turned by the industry, both Japanese (westerners don't buy anything from them anyway, so they're hardly losing sales) and American (the popularity of a fansub can be used to guage how successfully they could market a full English release if they bought the license).
This situation won't last forever, and relies on people not distributing fansubs once an official license has been purchased for the English-language market - which, unfortunately, a lot of people aren't mature enough to accept.
IF YOU CONTINUE TO DOWNLOAD OR DISTRIBUTE THE FANSUB OF A SERIES THAT HAS BEEN LICENSED, YOU ARE HELPING TO KILL THE WESTERN ANIME INDUSTRY.
Why isn't everything available in my local shop?
Not every English-language license results in a UK release, particularly with less popular titles or smaller companies - as well as the cost of running a relatively small batch of DVDs off in PAL Region 2 format, any anime sold in the UK has to be approved by the BBFC, which can easily cost £15k, so the companies have to be sure they'll get their investment back.
Unless you have good reason not to, buy the UK release if it's available, and make sure your DVD player is region-free for everything else.
How much do you have to understand about Japan to enjoy anime and manga?
Nothing! Although a little knowledge can help for some things, like cultural gags, translators are getting increasingly better at putting in footnotes etc to explain things where needed. Although some won't admit to it, many fans knew nothing about Japan or the Japanese before they got into the hobby.
What's an "otaku"?
It's a word stolen from the Japanese by western fans to describe being an obsessive fan - it's slang, though, with the direct translation relating to the word "house". Think of it as meaning "One who spends too much time at home with only one hobby, and who needs to get out more".
Although western fans use the label with carefree abandon, be careful about using it around the Japanese, as it can be taken the wrong way. Using a language you don't fully understand around native speakers is always dangerous - remember the scene in Rush Hour where Jackie Chan walks into a room full of black guys and says "Whassup my nigger"?
