Originally Posted by
CSTowle
While I'd disagree that it's not diverse in terms of topics/genres, I'd agree that like US superhero comics the vast majority of manga follows a few popular themes and has a lot of tropes that (if you're not a fan and accept them coming in) can be jarring or stick out to non-manga fans. We don't notice the same tropes (or notice them and gloss over them because of familiarity and acceptance) in our Western superhero comics, but we have the same things.
As a person who never really got into manga, a few things that stick out to me (in a bad way) include:
1. Weird unrealistic poses, usually involving standing in an odd position, tilting of the head in a particular way, winking, hand gestures, and use of cigarettes or some substitute to make someone look "cool" (probably most jarring as you don't see that much these days in the US). In fairness you could say the same about odd poses in superhero comics, but again I've been reading those since I was 5 so it's harder to notice/less jarring and most of those involve women posing to look attractive (I guess?).
2. The use of certain symbols to indicate emotion, like the sweat drop in nervousness, the nosebleed for arousal, the little cross on the head to indicate stress/frustration. I get what they're going for, but because I didn't grow up with these things they bump me from the story.
3. The amount of female characters who are clearly meant to be under 18 but are never the less heavily sexualized, often with cartoonishly large breasts. Again maybe a cultural difference, coming from the Puritanical US, but rubs me the wrong way and way more common than in Western comics. Though again, our superhero comics clearly and blatantly sexualize the female heroes. I just believe when Jubilee or Kitty Pryde are depicted with watermelon sized breasts and their rear ends facing the same direction as their faces that's because of bad artists drawing everyone in the same way, a bug rather than a feature.
4. Many of the stories are naturally about Japanese-cultural themes like Samurai/Ninja/martial artists, and I don't give a f##k about any of that. Of all the Asian cultures I'm probably least interested in Japan's, probably because I've seen it done already so many times. The same could easily be said by someone else of seeing yet another Batman/Superman style story and I get that, just trying to articulate what bores me about the vast majority of manga.
5. While the genres are pretty diverse (especially when compared to the superhero market of the Big 2, less so with Image/Dark Horse/etc.) the art style generally isn't and because they're drawing/writing larger volumes you can see how the art is stretched out "for the trade" (which again, has been adopted across most of the mainstream Western superhero stuff now as well). I don't see as large a difference between manga artist's styles as I do Western comic artists. Rob Liefeld vs Frank Quitely vs Bill Sienkiewicz vs Frank Miller vs Todd McFarlane. Those differences may exist, and it may be because we rarely get to see fringier stuff here in the States and are stuck with the more popular (and thus homogenized) manga that I don't come across it. But if all one were getting out of Western superhero comics was book after book in the style of Rob Liefeld (and for a brief period in the early '90s, that seemed like an easy thing to do) I could see them being turned off from them as I am for most manga/anime (don't get me started on the voice acting on anime).
Again, an outsider's perspective and one of admittedly little experience beyond what you'd find on the shelf at a Barnes & Noble. Just trying to give my two cents on why I don't think the topic's suggestion would necessarily be a good thing for US comic fans. I would say I'm much more interested in what's coming out from the Images of the world in Western comics than what Marvel or DC are doing, as much love and emotional attachment as I have to/for the characters I grew up on.