Japanese University Plans Massive Manga Library

[Fasckira]

Pffft, everyone knows that manga isn't fiction. They're all documentary pieces depicting past and future events. When the next world war breaks out, we're going to see massive mechs piloted by skinny guys and buxom girls emerging from the east, mark my words.

 

[LeonLethality]

Does this include light novels? And how does taking out a book to read help your academic study? Unless you're doing a report on it maybe.

Libraries are for reading, researching is only a peice of its function. My univeristy has hundreds of comics and graphic novels, not necessarily for reseaching but for light hearted reading.

it never hurts to sit down and read a book I almost always have a book with me for such an occasion I feel like reading (which is often)

 

[NickCaligo42]

Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.

In other news, the mean GPA of Meiji university has fallen to 0.0 as students skip class to read manga.

Well, Japan seems to love wasting money on stupid shit.

...if it's in Japan can I assume the adult section to be mixed with the kid section?

I'm sorry, but week after week I keep seeing the Escapist just DIVING at Japan in search of any stupid shit they can dredge up, applying huge, sweeping, derogatory generalizations to its entire culture and populace all for its readers' amusement as if every single Japanese person were a dancing pedophile monkey. This news post is one of the more subtle, but from the way it reads you'd think that Japan were the only place in the world to have a comic book library. My own alma mater, Michigan State University, a respected "big ten" school and home of the world's largest superconducting cyclotron, has a huge collection of comic books of all kinds, manga and otherwise. It's had it for years, its volumes number in the millions, and isn't the only school to have done so. Meanwhile there's this big broo-ha about the Gundam monument, but remember who marched at the Rose Bowl that one year? That's right, George Lucas and his army of stormtroopers.

Seriously guys, are we really going to pretend that our own shit doesn't stink? That our pedophiles are somehow less disgusting than their pedophiles, that our neurotic obsession with our popular culture is somehow less neurotic than theirs is, or, maybe more importantly, that popular culture isn't worth studying, or even honoring?

 

[John Funk]

Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.

In other news, the mean GPA of Meiji university has fallen to 0.0 as students skip class to read manga.

Well, Japan seems to love wasting money on stupid shit.

...if it's in Japan can I assume the adult section to be mixed with the kid section?

I'm sorry, but week after week I keep seeing the Escapist just DIVING at Japan in search of any stupid shit they can dredge up, applying huge, sweeping, derogatory generalizations to its entire culture and populace all for its readers' amusement as if every single Japanese person were a dancing pedophile monkey. This news post is one of the more subtle, but from the way it reads you'd think that Japan were the only place in the world to have a comic book library. My own alma mater, Michigan State University, a respected "big ten" school and home of the world's largest superconducting cyclotron, has a huge collection of comic books of all kinds, manga and otherwise. It's had it for years, its volumes number in the millions, and isn't the only school to have done so. Meanwhile there's this big broo-ha about the Gundam monument, but remember who marched at the Rose Bowl that one year? That's right, George Lucas and his army of stormtroopers.

Seriously guys, are we really going to pretend that our own shit doesn't stink? That our pedophiles are somehow less disgusting than their pedophiles, that our neurotic obsession with our popular culture is somehow less neurotic than theirs is, or, maybe more importantly, that popular culture isn't worth studying, or even honoring?

You're reading a bit too much into this. I wrote about the manga library and the giant Gundam statue because I think they're freakin' awesome. Hell, I even did a serious study [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_225/6705-Pilgrimage-to-Mecha] of looking at the giant Gundam project in cultural terms.

And also we don't sell underwear in vending machines or have trains that go between the legs of giant statues of schoolgirls Let's face it: Sometimes, Japan is weird. When you see an American game coming packaged with G-cup breasts, let me know, and I assure you we'll write it up

 

[traceur_]

Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.

In other news, the mean GPA of Meiji university has fallen to 0.0 as students skip class to read manga.

Well, Japan seems to love wasting money on stupid shit.

...if it's in Japan can I assume the adult section to be mixed with the kid section?

I'm sorry, but week after week I keep seeing the Escapist just DIVING at Japan in search of any stupid shit they can dredge up, applying huge, sweeping, derogatory generalizations to its entire culture and populace all for its readers' amusement as if every single Japanese person were a dancing pedophile monkey. This news post is one of the more subtle, but from the way it reads you'd think that Japan were the only place in the world to have a comic book library. My own alma mater, Michigan State University, a respected "big ten" school and home of the world's largest superconducting cyclotron, has a huge collection of comic books of all kinds, manga and otherwise. It's had it for years, its volumes number in the millions, and isn't the only school to have done so. Meanwhile there's this big broo-ha about the Gundam monument, but remember who marched at the Rose Bowl that one year? That's right, George Lucas and his army of stormtroopers.

Seriously guys, are we really going to pretend that our own shit doesn't stink? That our pedophiles are somehow less disgusting than their pedophiles, that our neurotic obsession with our popular culture is somehow less neurotic than theirs is, or, maybe more importantly, that popular culture isn't worth studying, or even honoring?

You know those comments were said in jest, right?

 

[Korten12]

yay shelves for One Piece.

 

[NickCaligo42]

"Our shit doesn't stink"?

There is a significant portion of this community that happens to like manga and anime from Japan, and I'm sure they would appreciate it if your didn't allude to feces when talking about Otaku culture.

Well, I apologize. That wasn't the allusion I was trying to make. I was trying to talk about general cultural "oddities," not manga.

I'm in somewhat the same position as you, not exactly an otaku myself but with lots of otaku friends and a healthy respect for Japanese culture. I've been influenced by more than enough anime series in my life as well, have several years of convention-going under my belt, and I've had a few friends that are Japanese. And ... a few Gundam models. >.> Borderline otaku, maybe. For sure I can say that I have a predeliction towards Japanese games moreso than western ones. So when I see the Escapist putting up articles like this and the one about Itagaki putting the breast jiggling thing in the new Ninja Gaiden 2 port and fingering the Japanese market as being nothing but a bunch of perverts and easily-amused goofballs, I get very, very offended. Maybe I'm looking too deeply into it like everybody else seems to be saying, but in the environment I've been in at school, dealing with a constant stream of intolerance for all the conventions in gaming that I grew up with, I'm just a wee bit easily ticked off by it.

I'll give you an idea:
At one point I was aspiring to be a character designer, and what art style do you think I drew in?

That's right, anime/manga.

Seeing this, my classmates en mass just flat-out blacklisted me, disallowing me from any creative input on any of the projects we worked on and slighting around any logical arguments I made about the actual design of our games. They'd want me to model, rig, and texture models, but they didn't want me to actually design them. It was absolutely miserable, and I eventually stopped drawing as a result of it. Today I'm in much clearer waters with much less aggressively intolerant classmates, but the memory of that incident is probably going to be with me for the rest of my life.

You can see why I might overreact...

 

[Stabby Joe]

Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.

In other news, the mean GPA of Meiji university has fallen to 0.0 as students skip class to read manga.

Well, Japan seems to love wasting money on stupid shit.

...if it's in Japan can I assume the adult section to be mixed with the kid section?

I'm sorry, but week after week I keep seeing the Escapist just DIVING at Japan in search of any stupid shit they can dredge up, applying huge, sweeping, derogatory generalizations to its entire culture and populace all for its readers' amusement as if every single Japanese person were a dancing pedophile monkey. This news post is one of the more subtle, but from the way it reads you'd think that Japan were the only place in the world to have a comic book library. My own alma mater, Michigan State University, a respected "big ten" school and home of the world's largest superconducting cyclotron, has a huge collection of comic books of all kinds, manga and otherwise. It's had it for years, its volumes number in the millions, and isn't the only school to have done so. Meanwhile there's this big broo-ha about the Gundam monument, but remember who marched at the Rose Bowl that one year? That's right, George Lucas and his army of stormtroopers.

Seriously guys, are we really going to pretend that our own shit doesn't stink? That our pedophiles are somehow less disgusting than their pedophiles, that our neurotic obsession with our popular culture is somehow less neurotic than theirs is, or, maybe more importantly, that popular culture isn't worth studying, or even honoring?

Like the Escapist, we're just having fun. I'm actually bored of jokes directed at Americans now.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Wow, awesome, I'd go see it, but then I remembered I can't read Japanese... damn it...

 

[ChaosDemon]

I would learn japanese just to be able to go there.
That and get the Phoenix Wright/Prof Layton game.