Part 2: Japanese Beatles

In the previous essay, I explained why I draw cartoons and what motivates me. It's clear that a lot of what I create can be easily traced back to cartoons I watched as a child. Now, the other side of the equation. In the second chapter of why I do the things I do, I'll explain my affinity for manga and anime. Let's not jump to conclusions now.

I guess it's best not to drag it out any longer than I have to, so here it is: I love Japan. I love other countries, too (certainly America, since it has always been home), but I've always felt I've had a deep connection with Japanese culture and paraphernalia. At the risk of making the rest of this essay redundant, the truth is, as they say, "I liked it before it was cool." Sorry for the cliche, but that's how it happened.

The thing people refuse to acknowledge, whether due to ignorance or stubbornness, is that America has always loved Japanese entertainment. Godzilla was Japanese, wasn't it? Mothra and Gamera were from the Land of the Rising Sun as well. Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion Cub came from Japan. Let's not forget Speed Racer. Space Invaders and Pac-Man were of Japanese origin. Yes, even the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were a Japanese export in a way. Looking back like this, Japan has been providing North America with more than just visual entertainment, but several essential pieces of American pop culture. If only all those auto workers burning Japanese cars in the early 1980's knew they were voluntarily feeding their quarters into Space Invaders machines from the same country.

But, since this is about my experience, we'll fast-forward a few years to the heyday of that next great Japanese device of conquest, the Nintendo Entertainment System. I didn't know a thing about geography back then. All I did know about the Far East was that there were at least two countries: one called China and one called Japan, and I couldn't tell one from the other on any count. In elementary school, my geographic knowledge was limited to a detailed memorization of maps of every stage in the first three Mega Man titles.

Slowly, without noticing, information about Nintendo's homeland began seeping into my noggin via my subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. Two things I took great interest in were the Super Mario Adventures comic series illustrated by Sakura Tamakichi (aka: Charlie Nozawa), and an article on a game entitled Legend of the Mystical Ninja. There was just something about these features that appealed to me. The way the comic was illustrated was unlike any other comic I had seen before, it felt like it had been drawn especially for me. At that age, and with my limited resources, I had no way of knowing it had been drawn by a Japanese artist.

One lovely weekend in spring, I was probably ten or eleven at the time, my aunt and uncle took my sister and me into the city of Boston for the day. We took a commuter train in and spent the day at the Children's Museum by the waterside. It was probably one of the best times I had as a child, and many long-lasting in-jokes between us were born on that occasion, such as the wall of kids' drawings where one child proudly wrote out "I lick hocky. I lick to play wish mine frents. I lick the New Kints On The Blonk."

The featured exhibit at the Museum at the time was called "Teen Tokyo". Why "teen", I have no idea (marketing, perhaps?), but "Tokyo", certainly: Japanese temples, train cars, and homes were recreated inside the museum for Bostonians to enjoy. Signs pointed out and explained facets unique to Japanese life or just unfamiliar to Americans. I saw strange gadgets and objects, bold and colorful illustrations, videos of Japanese television and commercials, and I was in awe. When we reached the section of the exhibit that focused on Japan's past, I recognized it instantly as the spitting image of the world from the game Mystical Ninja (which I had yet to even play).

By the end of the day I had fallen in love with a whole new culture. This would lie dormant for a few years, though I'd be able to point out Japanese things I recognized in the pages of Nintendo Power from time to time. I really had no idea of the "anime invasion" that was still a decade off in the distance, nor did anyone else.

Eventually, mid-1990's, Sailor Moon had syndicated its way onto some TV stations in the US, usually at 5.30 AM on Saturday. The show had not lived up to the marketing hype. I didn't even watch it, mostly due to my inability to locate it on the TV listings, but I was certainly interested in watching it. I didn't really get the chance to cut my teeth on Japanese cartoons until Samurai Pizza Cats began airing in the morning, right before school (I think by now I was 14). This show became my newest short-lived obsession and was probably the deciding factor that cemented my interest in anime.

So that's how it happened: not Naruto or Inuyasha or Pokemon, but Samurai Pizza Cats. In fact, thanks to Nintendo Power, I knew about the imminent arrival of Pokemon about a year before all my friends. I was looking forward to seeing this new Japanese cartoon on television, not realizing that its accompanying game would become the next phenomenon among the young folk and would eventually open the flood gates for the even bigger anime boom in America.

Am I forgetting something? Oh, right, remember Part 1, when I wrote about the forces I feel shaped my love of cartoons and love for cartoon characters? Well, that was certainly a factor in all this as well. In the summer just before the Pokemon frenzy began I got ahold of a couple of important books. The first, "Manga! Manga!" by Frederik L. Schodt, I borrowed from the library, and the second, Gilles Poitras' "The Anime Companion" I purchased at a bookstore. These books taught me something very important about anime and manga: people in Japan made lots of these cartoon products with the deliberate intent of selling sex.

This was a revolutionary concept for me. If people in Japan were making and profiting from sexy cartoons, then there had to be a market for them. And if this existed in Japan, why not other places? Suddenly I didn't feel so alone anymore. Talk of sex and selling skin was no longer just another ubiquitous media distraction like commercial slogans and Star Wars parodies. If other people were out there providing the world with cartoon girlie pics, maybe my tastes didn't have to be confined to the palates of photographers after all! This was great news! When my friends said an actress or a classmate was "hot", no longer did I feel like I had to squint really hard at her and think to myself "uh, if you say so..."

So that's how manga became such an important aspect of my life. But was it really necessary for me to attempt to blatantly ape the Japanese manga style of cartooning? No, of course not, but I'm a lot better at it and am far more pleased with what I produce now. At first, many of the characters that I draw today began as animal characters, but soon I had to abandon this and own up to the fact that I stunk. Using that Super Mario comic from Nintendo Power as my guide, I began trying to re-teach myself everything I already thought I knew about cartoons. Throughout high school and my short stay at the Massachusetts College of Art, I vacillated between my original style and my new pseudo-manga technique more times than I cared to keep track of. Once Pokemon had made its indelible mark on American pop culture, anime and manga became much more widely available, and thanks in no small part to newly-acquired Ranma 1/2 books, my decision was eventually made and I would stick with the decision to re-invent my cartooning in its new mold. Today, I feel that my work is more of a product of both environments, neither one really trumping the other, and the experience has allowed me to carve out my own unique American style. Though the influences are apparent, my voice hasn't been lost.

Some may ask why, if I was to draw my cartoon characters as humans from then on, did I have to go the Japanese route rather than the more Americanized one? Just who does this guy think he is, going around acting like he's better than DC and Marvel? Here's why: I hate superhero comics. I always have. I'm more than willing to bet I always will. The underlying suggestion in questions like these is that I'm simply attaching myself to a fad, and that the Jack Kirbys and Stan Lees and (I can't name any others) of the world are "classic" and "timeless" for everyone simply because they're American. This is exactly the myth I wanted to dispel by writing this section. I'm not being swept up in a sudden post-Pokemon wave of interest, I was fascinated by Japan long before "anime" became a household word. We all have different tastes, so live and let live. If you still have a hard time accepting that anyone, especially an American, could actually prefer any Japanese product to what you view to be a clearly superior American one, then I can't help you. Sorry.

Of course, none of this means that I will take anything from Japan over anything from America. I'm a very finicky person, and this applies to nearly everything: books, TV shows, food, drink, and music. I only like manga and anime when they make me laugh (which is why I can't stand superheroes). Give me the choice between critics' choice anime Cowboy Bebop and The Mr. Men Show and I will take the latter every time. So let's not make the mistake that I feel any one culture or geographic region holds supremacy over all others in the arena of entertainment. That attitude would be moronic, and frankly, slightly racist.

To step back and look at the whole picture, I don't even watch that much anime. I own only about twenty or thirty DVDs. Contrast that with the three-hundred or so music CDs I own, and it becomes obvious where the real epicenter of my interest is. I mentioned above how picky I am about music, so if one was to wade through my music collection, you'd note that most of these groups are of British origin and about 98% of the CDs are by artists whose recording careers began in the late half of the 1970's. Pretty much all of the music I own is punk, power pop, and new wave from that era, and it's clear from shear volume that I've focused far more attention on Squeeze and Buzzcocks than I ever have on manga and anime. The only reason this doesn't show is because I'm a cartoonist, not a musician. Believe me, if I had chosen to pursue a career in music rather than visual arts, you'd never know I even liked anime.

That's pretty much all there is to it, I guess. That's my explanation of why I feel the way I do about Japanese cartoons, and why I'm not just being carried out to sea by a rising tide of a "Japanese Invasion", akin to the musical British one of the 1960's. Of course, there will always be people, as stated earlier, who refuse to accept this, and it's well within their right to do so. If they don't feel I've made a case for my adoration of Japanese art, they are free to turn off their American computers, get in their German cars, drive downtown to eat at a Chinese or Mexican or Italian restaurant, go to a bar and have some Irish beer or French wine, then come back home and fall asleep before the flicker of a British comedy show (on their Japanese televisions).