There's no particular reason, but I just feel like talking about this.
America's anime/manga industry is, I think better than it's ever been. Admittedly, sales aren't as high as they were during the boom five years ago, but exposure, and more importantly, selection, is up. And that's a good thing, because it doesn't matter how great an anime or manga is; if you don't have access to it, it might as well not exist to you. And even if you do have it, having it without a translation is going to strip away a fair amount of enjoyment. The continued importing and localizing of anime/manga, as well as the continued efforts of fansubbers and scanlators, is making sure that we get more and more of that over here.
And it will absolutely never, ever be enough.
That's the sad truth of it. Even if Japan never produced another episode of anime or volume of manga again, America would still never be able to catch up in terms of bringing their stuff to our shores. And when you consider that they're still producing more than we're importing, the comparative percentage of total anime/manga in Japan versus the amount that gets over here is actually shrinking.
It's easy to just nod and ignore all that. After all, there's probably already more stuff released in America than any person could reasonably view in their lifetime, and that's even if money wasn't a factor, which it is. That, of course, ignores the larger point though - no one will like all (or even the majority) of what's out there. Instead, they go through a process of combing through things to find the good stuff; its a process of sifting through (what is in their personal opinion) crap to find the diamond in the rough. But you'll never find it if it was never there to begin with.
It's easy to write all of that off as an abstraction, since after all you quite literally don't know what your missing. The problem becomes when you start to have an inkling of exactly what it is you're missing.
For example, take Mouse. Some of you might know of this series, as the anime was domestically released in America. If you haven't seen it, don't bother. The anime is a steaming pile of crap, and my understanding is that even the English translation is truly atrocious. In a parallel to Negima, however, the manga that the anime is based off of is, in my opinion, truly great. I bought eleven volumes of it (all that had been released at that time; not to mention the novel) while I was in Japan because it was just that good.
For those of you who don't know, Mouse (the manga) is a series that isn't a hentai manga, but is very VERY close to being one; regularly dancing over the dividing line. It's the story of a young man (Sorata Muon) who is a college student/high school teacher by day, and by night is a Carmen Sandiego-like thief called Mouse; in the guise of Mouse, he'll announce daring robberies to the police ahead of time, and then pull them off despite any defenses they've set up.
In fact, Sorata's family has handed down the Mouse mantle for centuries, and has amassed a fortune in doing so. This isn't just in ridiculous amounts of material goods and wealth, though, but also in female slaves. Sorata has literally tens of thousands of slaves worldwide, each and every one of whom is trained (apparently by older, more experienced slaves) to be absolutely loyal to him, totally obedient to him, and to love both him and their lot in life. In fact, Sorata's three closest slaves are more comfortable with the entire arrangement than he is, as he has some reservations about owning people and using them for sex (of course, the ladies are constantly pressuring him to take advantage of his property, i.e. them, and they usually convince him to do so).
Far more interesting, in my opinion, though, is the villain of the series: a man named One. One looks and acts like an ordinary Japanese salaryman, until it's shown that he works for a shadowy organization that opposes Mouse. In fact, he's a skilled assassin, and has two sexy female subordinates at his side - these two aren't slaves, but they act like it, being devoted to One to the point of fanaticism. Most interesting, though, is One's apparent immortality. Whenever he's killed, he simply shows up again a few minutes later. His body doesn't regenerate or fade away or anything, there's just suddenly another One there, as though he suddenly received a new incarnation.
The sex scenes in the manga, of course, are as prevalent as they are gratuitous. Sorata is constantly doing not only his slaves, but also a number of other women who show up in the manga, and even One gets some action with his girls at various points (interestingly, one of his girls tries to kill Sorata with sex...apparently she can somehow induce fatal orgasms). The only reason this isn't an all-out hentai series is because no genitalia is actually ever shown. We still see pretty much everything (T&A galore, Sorata mounting his girls, moaning, shuddering, etc.), there's just nothing that'd require an censoring.
If this sounds like a good series, that's because it is, and I think a lot of people would really enjoy it. But we'll never get it over here. I doubt any domestic companies would be seriously interested in marketing this series, and I haven't seen any hint online that anyone is even thinking about posting scanlations. This is a concrete example of how there's so much great stuff over there that we'll never even hear about, let alone get to see or understand.
It's truly a shame. :no:
America's anime/manga industry is, I think better than it's ever been. Admittedly, sales aren't as high as they were during the boom five years ago, but exposure, and more importantly, selection, is up. And that's a good thing, because it doesn't matter how great an anime or manga is; if you don't have access to it, it might as well not exist to you. And even if you do have it, having it without a translation is going to strip away a fair amount of enjoyment. The continued importing and localizing of anime/manga, as well as the continued efforts of fansubbers and scanlators, is making sure that we get more and more of that over here.
And it will absolutely never, ever be enough.
That's the sad truth of it. Even if Japan never produced another episode of anime or volume of manga again, America would still never be able to catch up in terms of bringing their stuff to our shores. And when you consider that they're still producing more than we're importing, the comparative percentage of total anime/manga in Japan versus the amount that gets over here is actually shrinking.
It's easy to just nod and ignore all that. After all, there's probably already more stuff released in America than any person could reasonably view in their lifetime, and that's even if money wasn't a factor, which it is. That, of course, ignores the larger point though - no one will like all (or even the majority) of what's out there. Instead, they go through a process of combing through things to find the good stuff; its a process of sifting through (what is in their personal opinion) crap to find the diamond in the rough. But you'll never find it if it was never there to begin with.
It's easy to write all of that off as an abstraction, since after all you quite literally don't know what your missing. The problem becomes when you start to have an inkling of exactly what it is you're missing.
For example, take Mouse. Some of you might know of this series, as the anime was domestically released in America. If you haven't seen it, don't bother. The anime is a steaming pile of crap, and my understanding is that even the English translation is truly atrocious. In a parallel to Negima, however, the manga that the anime is based off of is, in my opinion, truly great. I bought eleven volumes of it (all that had been released at that time; not to mention the novel) while I was in Japan because it was just that good.
For those of you who don't know, Mouse (the manga) is a series that isn't a hentai manga, but is very VERY close to being one; regularly dancing over the dividing line. It's the story of a young man (Sorata Muon) who is a college student/high school teacher by day, and by night is a Carmen Sandiego-like thief called Mouse; in the guise of Mouse, he'll announce daring robberies to the police ahead of time, and then pull them off despite any defenses they've set up.
In fact, Sorata's family has handed down the Mouse mantle for centuries, and has amassed a fortune in doing so. This isn't just in ridiculous amounts of material goods and wealth, though, but also in female slaves. Sorata has literally tens of thousands of slaves worldwide, each and every one of whom is trained (apparently by older, more experienced slaves) to be absolutely loyal to him, totally obedient to him, and to love both him and their lot in life. In fact, Sorata's three closest slaves are more comfortable with the entire arrangement than he is, as he has some reservations about owning people and using them for sex (of course, the ladies are constantly pressuring him to take advantage of his property, i.e. them, and they usually convince him to do so).
Far more interesting, in my opinion, though, is the villain of the series: a man named One. One looks and acts like an ordinary Japanese salaryman, until it's shown that he works for a shadowy organization that opposes Mouse. In fact, he's a skilled assassin, and has two sexy female subordinates at his side - these two aren't slaves, but they act like it, being devoted to One to the point of fanaticism. Most interesting, though, is One's apparent immortality. Whenever he's killed, he simply shows up again a few minutes later. His body doesn't regenerate or fade away or anything, there's just suddenly another One there, as though he suddenly received a new incarnation.
The sex scenes in the manga, of course, are as prevalent as they are gratuitous. Sorata is constantly doing not only his slaves, but also a number of other women who show up in the manga, and even One gets some action with his girls at various points (interestingly, one of his girls tries to kill Sorata with sex...apparently she can somehow induce fatal orgasms). The only reason this isn't an all-out hentai series is because no genitalia is actually ever shown. We still see pretty much everything (T&A galore, Sorata mounting his girls, moaning, shuddering, etc.), there's just nothing that'd require an censoring.
If this sounds like a good series, that's because it is, and I think a lot of people would really enjoy it. But we'll never get it over here. I doubt any domestic companies would be seriously interested in marketing this series, and I haven't seen any hint online that anyone is even thinking about posting scanlations. This is a concrete example of how there's so much great stuff over there that we'll never even hear about, let alone get to see or understand.
It's truly a shame. :no: