Ghost in The Shell, a futuristic manga
(the Japanese word for comics and print cartoon) about Artificial Intelligence and cyborgs is one the most
popular manga in Vietnam nowadays. Translated in Vietnamese, the 20 volumes can
be bought in most bookstores. A young Vietnamese manga scene is slowly emerging,
trying to create a Vietnamese manga style.
“Vietnamese
Mangaka : the new gen”
“I discovered manga by chance. One day, my father offered me
an album of Doremon for my good marks in first grade. I can still remember how
impressed I was by the story”, Doan Minh Man says. Man is a young 23 year-old
student in Industrial Design in Ho Chi Minh City. As a hobby, he also writes
manga since he was 13 year-old. “Doremon is about a robot-cat who comes from
the 22nd century to help humans, especially his friend Nobita. It
was a complete shock and unlike anything I read before (western comics for
example). The situations, the angles, the narration, the drawing style,
everything was different”, he recalls.
Man and other mangakas (manga writer)
represent the first generation of Vietnamese mangakas. They are young and
talented, but also aware of the difficulties. “Manga is our passion and we know
it will take some time before Japanese mangas become popular, let alone
Vietnamese mangas !” he adds.
Man is very enthusiastic about his work
and he is very happy and proud that his work could be published. He has 2 sets
of manga book : “Angel’s Tear”, which was published as a series in the monthly
magazine “ Than Dong Dat Viet Fan Club” (Tre and Phan Thi edition) and “Candle
of Life”, which was published as serial episodes in the monthly magazine
“Truyen Tranh Viet 13+” (Kim Dong and Phan Thi edition). He just regrets that
he has less time to write mangas as he took additional jobs to pay for his
studies. “I cannot live out of writing mangas. So I took a job in advertising
where I draw story boards and in video games where I work on creative aspects.
But it is also a new experience, which I am sure will be useful for drawing
other mangas in the future! And there are so many mangakas now, they help keep
the scene alive!” There is a lot of hope for the younger generation, which
grows on Play Station and Nintendo games, which promotes manga style.
Indeed, the community of mangakas is very
active on forums and discuss different topics on blogs and internet ; for
instance, a manga –style drawing competition is organised for fans on
phongtranh-truyentranh.com while you can find lots of news on board.truyentranh.com
about mangas, but also about manwha (Korean manga) and even manhua (Chinese
manga) and of course manvi (Vietnamese manga).
“Manga
readership : youngsters to teenagers”
With the emergence of manga magazines, a
movement was born in Vietnam at the beginning of the 2000s, precisely in
reaction to western cartoons. Translations of a few Tintin or Largo Winch
albums, which one sometimes finds in the children's section of large Fahasa
bookstores in HCMC apparently only reach few readers; none of these franco-belgian
cartoons published in Vietnam over the past ten years have met with great
success.
By proposing stories often based on
legends or mythology in the form of albums and serial framework, publishers and
their authors opened cartoons to a new readership, showing that cartoons is not
condemned to the only market of children.
Just drop at M Café Studio on 99B Vo Thi
Sau street, and you will see. This Manga café is filled with teenagers, all
mangas crazy lovers. The café is quite unique in town. Customers leave their
shoes outside in front of the door. You usually do that when you enter
someone’s house, but not when you enter a bar or a café ! Then inside, the warm
atmosphere and welcoming staff invite for a calm reading. Soft music, smooth
chattering and teens reading mangas all over the place. Up on the mezzanine,
the setting is like a traditional Japanese tea place as people (teens and young
adults) sit on the floor (carpet), drink a smoothie (the café does not serve
any alcohol) and read mangas. You will be surprised at how many mangas are
available at M café Manga (around 2,000 mangas or more in Vietnamese language:
Sailor Moon , Dragon Ball, Slam Dunk, etc).
Unlike in traditional mangas cafes in
Japan, here customers are not charged by time : you can read mangas as long as
you want, or use internet for free. The Cafe has many large bookshelves and mangas,
Japanese and Vietnamese : a Vietnamese manga “Dat Viet Fan Club” (Vietnamese
land fan club) was indeed founded by artist Le Linh and it is the most famous
manga magazine with Vietnamese authors. It is different from Japanese manga
regarding the drawing style and narration but it is quite pleasant.
“Even if it
appeared 10 years ago, Manga is just starting in Vietnam. And it is still
misunderstood by adults”
But most of the manga that have been
translated in Vietnamese over the past ten years have been easy-reading manga
aimed at teenagers, from the animated series which preceded them on TV screens
(mainly on Animax, a dedicated cable channel dedicated to mangas). Their themes
are adventure or Sci-Fi, featuring super heroes... As in Japan, this very
focused type of manga generates its own otaku phenomenon: specialized press, «
cosplay » (costume-play as featured in yeah1.com launch last year in HCMC).
A number of daily-life manga are also
being translated, but again they are primarily aimed at teenagers, with daily
life often being treated in an often over-dramatic and caricatured way.
Daily-life manga is a more adult manga, with daily life portrayed without overemphasis
or stereotypes: a manga that has, however, been virtually ignored to date by Vietnamese
publishing houses.
Adults usually regard mangas as something
bad, if they actually know that it exists. The logic, if any, is simple: if it
is a cartoon, it should either be funny (toon) or childish. If it's something
else, it can't be understood, and thus, it's a bad thing. The usual complains
about mangas stem from ignorance, like "All the characters look
alike", (they don't) "Characters don't look Japanese", (they
aren't' supposed to). Manga is unfortunately already perceived in a very
stereotypical way by both the public and the media.
The main reason for all this is the fact
that public consciousness still cannot perceive mangas as an art form, and
considers it a genre. Inner conflict between the adult content and
"childish" medium makes anime "unsuitable" for children and
"too childish" for adults. Because of complete absence of mangas
information, advertising and promotion, this causes the current state of mangas
as a second-degree art form.
“Mangas tell mature
daily life stories, not bedtime stories for children”
Mangas attach particular importance to
story (various topics and situations) and especially to narration (the
techniques it uses to suggest sensations and feelings). In Japan, a mangaka
(manga writer) is someone who wants, above all, to tell stories, as opposed to
those authors overseas who generally become comic book artists through an
interest in drawing.
Manga has always emphasised daily life as
a theme. As opposed to what most of people think, at least half of Japanese
comics tell stories of men and women and their everyday lives and not only
violent or super heroes adventures. This attachment to daily life as a theme is
the principal reason of manga's success with a broad range of readers. Manga's
daily-life stories touch men as well as women, teenagers as well as adults.
This allows the format to attract a readership larger than just otaku (someone
who reads mangas and does not even go out of his room any more); most of the
readers are simply curious, open-minded people who read comics as they would
read novels or go to the cinema...
Doan Minh Man recognises that a true
Vietnamese manga style has yet to emerge. “The competition is hard but it is
very stimulating. It is great to be exposed to the quality of Japanese mangas :
the story is so well narrated they truly represent the manga state-of-the- art.
To compete with them and with Korean and Chinese manga to a lesser extent, we,
young mangakas, have to find our own Vietnamese style. We are working on it.
Maybe we should tell Vietnamese daily life. When it deals with daily life, the
manga becomes not only more universal, it also becomes, through the eyes of
Vietnamese readers, more «Vietnamese».”
