Watching Dragon, Growler's Hidden Anime!

(Volume Zero)

Japan has a reputation as the home of quality.

Japanese products are known and desired worldwide due to their innovative and technical superiority.

Japanese companies are highly competitive and frequently become the market leader in every industry they enter.

Sony, Honda, Nissan and Toyota are household names worldwide.

This quest to be the best also extends to comic books or manga.

This ambitious quality was embodied in the rallying cry “Oitsuke! Oikose!” which basically means “Catch up, Overtake!”

This phrase originated in the early Meiji period (1868 – 1912) and was the time the Japanese people took up modernization as a priority when they began trading with the West.

This union was called ‘wakon yosai’ meaning ‘Japanese spirit, Western learning’ and began in the early 19th century.

The word manga first came into common usage when artwork known as Hokusai Manga drawn by the artist Hokusai, was published in this period.

The word manga is made up of the two characters (or kanji) man and ga, which can be translated together as ‘random pictures’.

In China they are called lian huan hua or manhua and in Korea they are known as manhwa. One of the biggest Chinese manhua titles is Storm Riders by Wing Shing Ma.

Manga as we know it today really took off when American comic books were imported to Japan after the Second World War.

At the time, comic books were wildly popular in America and a big part of the cultural scene.

The impact these comic books had on the Japanese public was immense. They proved highly popular with all colour, action pictures.

The early issues were unofficially translated but gradually the Japanese began to make their own versions.

Why were comic books so popular?

Well, the stories provided escapism, allowing the reader, from teenager to grandparent, to leave behind the strict daily formalities, rituals and experiences.

You could enter a vibrant world free from the shackles of reality, explore fantastic realms and wash the senses with amazing stories.

The home grown Japanese versions were cheaper than the imports. Printed in black and white, lower grade paper and containing more pages, the themes that the stories encompassed grew ever larger.

They are produced in the form of magazines or collected into a thick, bound book format. The pictures are contained in panels (or squares) and are read from right to left, consistent with Japanese writing.

The writing is contained in word balloons. Early editions reprinted for the Western market had the pages reversed or ‘flopped’ so they could be read from left to right.

Demand has been recently growing for original and authentic ‘unflopped’ versions by their fans.

One convention used, that makes manga instantly recognizable worldwide, is that most characters are drawn with very large eyes. This helps gives the characters their unique expressions and adds to the storytelling process.

Manga has ingrained itself into Japanese society and culture and they are printed in massive quantities...