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« on: August 22, 2006, 05:21:15 PM »
I was just looking up mangas in Wikipedia to know the difference between them and comic books, and I found something interesting. Turns out America wants to use them to renew interest in reading to U.S. children. The guy who thought of this idea said that kids in the U.S. carry around MP3 players and Game Boys while kids in Japan carry around 3,000 page long mangas. If mangas can change that, why couldn't comic books? They're basically the same thing, only mangas have simpler plots and shorter dialogue. I looked at these mangas at Barnes & Noble and there's somethings that are totally wrong:
1. The text is backwards. Isn't English read from left to right? Why is manga read right to left? Imagine being a kid whose first books are mangas. You open up a copy of "The Great Gatsby" in class and open it from the back. Mangas are gonna decrease the literacy rate.
2. There's more pictures than words. The maximum of "talking bubbles" in a panel is 2. I also saw Batman comics at the bookstore and found two paragraphs in one bubble! Also, there were four bubbles in one panel! Beat that, manga.
3. Demographics. How many cool kids do you see carry around a manga? None, they all carry iPods and cell phones. The few pale, fat kids at my school, however, do.
Looks like mangas are gonna destroy the reading interest in America. I have a suggestion for you booksellers. Why not just advertise your book to renew interest in reading? Compare the numbers of laptop commercials to book commercials. Now you'll see why books are selling poorly to children.
Did I mention that computers are renewing interest in reading? I mean, you gotta know how to read to IM someone, read websites, and type in blogs. Maybe we need a renewal of interest in spelling and grammar?
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