MangaNEXT Convention, Day 1

I have been facilitating an after-school Anime Club at two high schools next to Ground Zero, alongside teaching Japanese after school (there is a lot of overlap in the student participants). As I do more and more research on Anime and Manga availability in the U.S., I meet increasing numbers of young people of color from all kinds of backgrounds who are consuming and producing their own anime-related work. Yet the culture of Anime and Manga consumption/production in the U.S. is still dominated by white (and Asian) males, although there seems to be an increasing number of women being recognized on an institutional level.

As an artist and teacher who was raised on anime/manga (I learned Japanese by reading and watching) I'm pretty interested in the changing social impact of Japanese/US manga and anime culture. So I decided to hop on NJ Transit bus #129 after work today and attend the 2nd annual MangaNEXT convention (only the second convention devoted exclusively to manga ever held in the U.S.) This was my first day.

My first impression as I entered the air-conditioned faux-marble lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel was that I had somehow reverted to a stage of high-school awkwardness and angst. I was alone in a room full of elaborately dressed people who shared a similar language and culture - to which I somehow felt implicated and yet rejected at the same time. I definitely recognized characters from popular anime series. I also recognized sub-mainstream Japanese girl fashion trends...
But of course, first impressions are decieving. On second thought, I decided that I felt more like an ethnographer, entering a little-known and misunderstood society. This, if you know anything about me, is not a feeling I enjoy. I don't like studying people and places in a way that otherizes them or exploits their "inaccessibility" (this is a complicated subject that I have yet to write about.) But one of the reasons I was there was to research a book I want to write on racial representation and anime/manga culture.

My first workshop was led by Kensuke Okabayashi, a professional artist whose book Manga for Dummies is soon to come out (Feb 2008). I learned a few time-saving and stylistic strategies that I will be able to pass on to my students in the after school Anime Club. I'll also probably use some strategies on the manga I'm currently developing! Okabayashi is currently on hiatus as a Manga instructor for the agency that employs me, the Educational Alliance. We didn't get to talk much but I would be interested in hearing about his experiences teaching manga art to young people in an institutional setting (not that the convention is not institutional.)

As I walked away from the workshop and ate a tupperware dinner in the chaises by the staircase, I realized that in a sense I wasn't so out of place at the convention. I wasn't as desperate for escape-through-fantasy as I used to be as a high-schooler attending Otakon (a huge anime convention held annually in Baltimore) but I was - I am - deeply affected by anime/manga culture. It has affected me so much that the first job I got in NYC was through anime. It also happens to be the only job I've found so far that is super-exciting.

Okabayashi said that in many ways manga is intensely personal. I should bring that to my students - "Create your own characters from scratch. Make you yourself into a character." I would say that some of the best manga I've seen comes from real-life characters. Hopefully, we can make it happen in the Anime Club.