At the first lecture of ENG 705 early this semester, I learned that vision is learned and cultivated, rather than naturally-occuring or equally inate in all humans. All the stuff we see during our lives influence our perception over time. For example, someone who is not used to seeing cinema, or the motion picture, is not able to comprehend the flickering images on a screen.
Recently, I was reminded of all the Japanese and Korean manga (manhwa in Korean) that I used to read and Anime that I used to watch when I was still a kid in Seoul. I think that manga and anime are examples that support the idea that vision is learned and cultivated. Despite the fairly recent success of Anime and Manga in North America, many people still do not “see” the two visual mediums and often have trouble comprehending it, and understandably so.
Japanese manga is considerably different from North American comic books. It’s read from right to left, and the pages run backwards. The direction of reading is completely opposite.
Someone who is not used to manga and anime would find the bodily features of characters strange. Often, the heads are much too large for the body, the eyes too large for the face, and so on. The improper proportion is not the only strange thing — characters are often given unnaturally shaped and coloured hair, unusual eye colours, unusual skin colours, and extraordinary body features, such as emblems and symbols in places such as the forehead.
Although many Japanese manga and anime artists have different styles to their art, “anime style” is often synonymous with features such as jewel-like large eyes and spiky hair. In the following picture, we can see that while more modern manga, featured in the right, may not feature the traditional “anime style” large eyes, there are still remnants of the traditional style in the unrealistic colour and shape of hair. In the left column, we can see highly stylized features prominent in anime, such as purple hair, skin, and eyes, full hair, pointy ears, and extraordinary bodily proportions.
here, in a picture of the popular anime Sailor Moon, we can see that the main character has a cresent moon symbol on her forehead. This cresent moon, like many other symbols found in the anime characters and manga, are birthmarks that mark the character of a power or importance.
in the following picture of typical Japanese anime, we can see disproportionate bodies, overlarge eyes, unusual hair colour, and the like. Another feature that a manga/anime non-viewer would not be able to comprehend is the reddish lines etched across the cheeks of the three girls below. These are blush marks that mark the girls as either shy, innocent, embarrassed, or sometimes, in love.
compared to the disproportionate bodies often found in manga and anime, North American cartoon classics, such as Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman, hold a more realistic representation of the body, despite their often muscularity.
Even Archie, Betty, and Veronica look much more realistic than manga and anime characters:
In this manga depiction of the Sailor soldiers (of Sailor Moon series), we can see especially exaggerated body features, such as the unrealistically long flowing hair:
even more so exaggerated is the manga depiction of Chibi Chibi, who is no more than two or three years old. Here, not only is her head bigger than her body, but she appears to have a body of a much older girl and wears high heels:
Readers unfamiliar to manga and anime also would not “see” the sweat-drop that manga artists often use. As strange it may sound, the sweat-drop appears on a character’s head when he is in embarrassment, exasperation, confusion, and shock, not all of which are necessarily considered to be sweat-inducing under normal conditions. It is frequently used in reaction to another character’s bad pun or joke, or when a character’s friend does something stupid or silly that makes them look bad.
Here, in a still from a typical anime we can see that the sweat-drop. The familiar manga reader will know right away that the main character, who appears to be sweating, is in a moment of confusion or embarrassment.
The familiar manga and anime viewer also comes to instantly recognize “face faults”, or generic faces and body actions that indicate emotions. These “face faults” are rarely understandable to an unfamiliar viewer. For example, rivers of tears underneath the eyes indicate comedic anguish or discontent, while pulsating crossed forehead veins indicate anger, rage or irritation.
Generic facial expressions and the corresponding emotions
Comedic discontent shown by rivers of tears
Anger shown by pulsating forehead “veins” visible through thick hair
Characters fall over, often with jaunty angles of the limb and beady eyes, and sometimes with a loud thud or crash, after hearing another character saying something anticlimactic, unexpected, or stupid:
Finally, the hand at the mouth (often coupled with blushing cheeks) show that the character is shy, embarrassed, nervous, and the like:
There are many, many other examples of such face faults in Japanese manga and anime. I’ve drawn up many of them to support the claim that vision is learned and cultivated, rather than innate and natural in all humans. Someone who is not used to reading manga or watching anime would not be able to catch the meaning of many features in manga/anime. I propose that all visual mediums are cultural and artificial. The notion of “one must be used to seeing in order to see” seems undoubtedly clear.
