This report will showcase my knowledge and what I have learned about graphic narratives. It will involve the history of an example character, artists or style as well as the target audience, ethics and representation.
A graphics narrative is a form a literacy that is combined with visual stills and are usually played in a sequence. These are images and scripts that are organised in a comic book sequence and, depending on the nature, printed as a novel or onto a news paper. The layout depends on the nature of the narrative and how it is to be published.
Firstly, a brief history of graphics narratives. Graphic narratives have been around for a number of years. They date back to times way before world war 1 and even before the 1900’s. Though wider varieties of graphic narratives, such as comics and manga, really came into play during and after the second world war. Of course over time the art forms began to develop and have become extremely popular to both the general public and artists of the different styles. Nowadays, creating graphic narratives is considered a very popular and high ranking job. Of course, because of this the market has become far more competitive.
My example- Manga style comic.
History- Manga history researchers are still debating on whether the style originated from 12th century Japanese scrolls or was originated closer to the 18th century. During and, more importantly, after world war 2 manga artists became heavily influenced by American style comics, mainly from companies such as Disney. Manga style comics have become so internationally popular that they often have been taken and animated into a form of TV series known as anime.
Target Audience- Manga, in general, simply targets everyone so in order to create a target audience you would have to pick a particular genre. To create a target audience I will list a few example.
Shoujo manga- Shoujo manga has a list of sub genres such as school life, romance, echi (somewhat sexual), harem (protagonist surrounded by a group of the opposite gender), comedy etc. These types of manga originally targeted girls and depending on the sub genre it may determine the age i.e. if you had a romance and school life manga the target audience would be young girls who currently go to high school, college or university.
Shounin Manga- Shounin manga is usually aimed at boys and plays on the male fantasies. Again a list of sub genres appear such as comedy, martial arts, superhuman, school life, echi, harem, ninja etc. These type of anime’s would target the nonsensical thoughts of young men or boys some of which have just started primary school.
Ethics- The number one ethical issue that manga faces is “scanlation”. Scanlation is the process of scanning, translation and editing of a comic book or manga into another language. This can occasionally be done official, however is not often a method chosen by professionals. The reason this is such an issue is, because this is usually done without permission by some who, with no qualification, goes “oh I can do this”. Often this causes a number of mistakes and misunderstandings with manga series. In order to prevent this manga writers will often have the name of the official translator on the last or first page of the manga. They would then provide their own statement to claim this is true, which prevents false information from being interpreted. This method is also occasionally done by manga writers who are bilingual or more. Another issue that is often confronted is false representation. This is when the audience tend to believe what happens in the manga series is what really happens in the country it is set (usually Japan). This is, of course, not the fault of the author. It is the fault of over anxious fans who wish to believe whatever they see on the internet. It is due to this that manga writers get many complaint letters from the mothers of these over imaginative fans who develop a light or heavy case of heart break when discovering that things do not work the way they were portrayed.
Representation- In most manga the representation is either feminism, masculinity or both. This is obviously featured in a number of manga’s, which is obviously displayed in the form of the characters. In a number of Shoujo manga’s (Target audience girls) even the male characters are drawn in quite a feminine way with slender body parts and cute faces. They are also drawn without any form of facial or body hairs such as beards and leg hair. Female characters are often drawn using the aspects of the ideal woman i.e. cute, beautiful, slender body etc. On the other hand for Shounin manga’s (Target audience boys) the males are drawn as quite masculine and over the top in terms of physical features as well as personality. In this women are usually drawn the same way as they are in Shoujo manga’s (aspects of the ideal woman), however their personality is either similar or stronger than that of a males or similar to that of a defenceless creature.
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