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Manga from heaven?
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It probably doesn’t sound like a winning combo to fuse the Bible with manga, that genre of typically violent and eroticized Japanese anime now overtaking Barnes and Noble bookshelves like kudzu. But as publisher Doubleday is finding out with The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation — currently Amazon’s best-selling religious text (over The Message translation and Deepak Chopra) and manga book — there’s a reason manga’s annual sales now top $300 million in the United States.
Forays into manga last year by Tyndale House and Zondervan were successful, though they didn’t ripple much beyond the Christian book-buying sphere. Next, a nonprofit organized for the “distribution of biblically based manga materials,” recently released the first in a series of five Bible-based graphic novels, The Manga Messiah.
But The Manga Bible, whose noir-ish, edgy black-and-white Jesus is as much samurai as savior, may enter the market at the right moment (after a trebling of sales in four years) with the right publisher (Doubleday) to hit wide acclaim. Praise of the 224-pager — chockablock with only the most action-packed parts of the Old Testament, the Gospels and several of Paul’s epistles — has sprouted up in places like this New York Daily News column.
The book’s illustrator Ajinbayo Akinsiku, a Nigerian Londoner who goes by the nom de plume Siku and hopes to become an Anglican priest, told The New York Times on Sunday he wants to give manga obsessives worldwide a more accessible Jesus, namely “a samurai stranger who’s come to town, in silhouette.” “The heroes,” the Times story says, “look and sound like skateboarders in Bedouin gear.” Noah gets “tripped up counting the animals in the Ark: ‘That’s 11,344 animals? Arggh! I’ve lost count again. I’m going to have to start from scratch!’” Figures like Goliath resemble Ringwraiths from “The Lord of the Rings.” The lead-up to Abel’s doom at the hands of Cain proceeds thus: “Whassup, bro? I’ve got something I wanna show you in my farm.” “Sounds interesting . . . what is it?” “Your death, you smug %@#$!”
Manga sales are up partly thanks to popular genre tributes from places as varied as Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” films and the edgy avatars used by the “virtual” hip hop/rock band Gorillaz. Christian authors, including WORLD’s Marvin Olasky, have predicted a bright future for graphic novels among young readers, and The Manga Bible appears to bear this out. Critics worry about putting the Bible into a genre known for hyper-sexualization and overt violence, but manga’s proponents, like Next, argue it isn’t just a fad and that it has worldwide youth appeal. The comics in Japan currently outsell newspapers and magazines, gobbling up 40 percent of the print market. In the United States, manga has become the fastest-growing category of books.
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A matter of life
Sorry, never heard of Magna.
I’ve loved comics since I was a kid, but “Silver Age DC” is more my style. I’ve watched the rise of manga and anime over the years and am astounded how the genre of Astro Boy and Speed Racer could grow into something so twisted.
I s’pose the same arguments we used to defend Christian rock in the 80s would have to also apply to the Manga Bible — it’s the message, not the medium. If God can use this for His glory, who cares what the naysayers might think?
On one hand, there may be people who never heard the stories of the Bible, and this may be a way to expose them to them. On the other hand, if too many liberties are taken with the text, would it do more harm than good?
My kids have the beautiful David Cook comic book Bible from the 60s which is very faithful to the text and features a lilly-white Jesus and Israelites and other characters. Great for Sunday School but not for reaching the lost. Then there was a comic book Bible series from the 90s that had much inappropriate subject matter, e.g. a lewd scene of Bathsheba bathing. Though the artwork was superb, this project bombed, probably because it turned off Christians while failing to reach people in the world, thereby failing to capture an audience. Then I hear that Michael Pearl of No Greater Joy is working on a comic book Bible. Guess we’ll just have to see whether God will use it.
As for manga becoming the fastest selling medium, on one hand, it’s a sad state, but on the other hand, as Stan Lee always said, “comics are the last hedge against creeping illiteracy.”
Manga 101
Manga (plural and singular form) are otherwise known as Japanese comics, however they differ greatly in concept, design, and storytelling than the typical American comic. They have been accepted by all ages in Japsn…where almost everyone reads their favorite serial story. And the stories are rarely superhero, but rather specialized stories about tennis, or iron chef cooking, or music, or futuristic sci-fi, etc. Pick a subject, and it’s probably been covered. In America, for the last five years, manga has logistically exploded across the teen market, especially among teenage girls who have mainly shunned the American superhero stories; a great deal of stories are geared towards girls where the heroines are cute, flawed, and demure, while the male love interests are meloncholy, driven, and somewhat approach androgeny=safe (this fits most of the female geared soap stories) Most manga art is less muscular and roman-esque, but more fluid and disney-like…and use a much wider and more believable range of emotion. If you visit your local bookstore(borders, B & B) to the graphic novel section, you will see at least one or two rows dedicated to the thick volumes of manga…and usually see teens slumped on the floor reading them. In the any bookstore’s art section, it is has been taken over by instructionals on how to draw in the asian manga style…it’s really huge…some American artists has tried to emulate the style, but somehow lack the spirit of the art…which is minimalist in style and speech and appeals to emotion that can be successfully freezed framed in the story. Manga had been introduced in the 80’s, but it hasn’t really exploded intil very recently with todays youth who love manga and have been extremely successful at emulating the art style due to the lack of having to unlearn the American style of sequential art. And as the article states, the American market growth is exploding, where American distributers are wrestling each other for rights over titles to translate for Americans, or contract local manga artists to work on original stories. Tokyo-Pop has been hugely successful at marketing budding American manga-artists. Ironically, with all of the hype, manga trends in Japan are slipping due to the more techno-savvy Japanese youth, who all but worship cellphones and their expanding multimedia functions.
Violent and eroticized isn’t unknown to the OT, at the very least.
Although I share the dubious feeling over Manga being a good venue for the Bible.
For more info about Joe’s post, check out the bio of Osamu Tezuka, who invented the medium of manga about 50 years ago, and who was in fact influenced by American cartoonists and animators. It’s ironic that the current generation of American illustrating is seeking to emulate this form, when Japanese manga artists themselves have injected so little originality into Tezuka’s basic work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka
Hi, I’m Roseanne Roseannadanna and I think it’s terrible that someone published the Mangled Bible! DON’T YOU KNOW IT’S WRONG TO MANGLE THE BIBLE? ONLY REALLY BAD PEOPLE WOULD—What!? You said, “The Manga Bible?” Oh!
Never Mind.
(Sorry the temptattion was just too great
)
I just bought it!
R O F L @ kathy’s post!
brilliant
#2 I dont think manga is a proper way to distribute God’s Word no matter what the argument is. I wouldnt call it an evangilistic tool either because its the Word of God and the Holy Spirit that will change the hearts and if it doesnt protray Christ biblically anyway why defend it.
#9 Was there enough information provided in this article to decide whether Christ was portrayed Biblically? If so, please point it out because I missed it. Of course this is not a “bible” but simply an adaptation. If manga is not a suitable medium for adapting a Bible story, how about “regular” comics like the aforemention David Cook edition?
And what about making movies of Bible stories? The “Jesus” movie has reached millions of people all over the world since it was made in 1980. Every other movie adaptation has taken liberties with the text of Scripture, but “The Passion of the Christ” did so with respect while “The Last Temptation of Christ” did not.
As far as fidelity to the text of Scripture is concerned, we don’t read Cain saying “whassup bro” but it may well be that some idiom is used in the original languages (though I don’t know one way or other). But there are so many paraphrase Bibles out there that really do distort the text.
I personally feel that if God can use Baalam’s ass, He could use of the aforementioned.
chockablock with only the most action-packed parts of the Old Testament
Man, I sure hope it covers Exodus 4 where Jehovah/Jesus inexplicably jumps Moses in a tavern and tries to kill him.
But I’m pretty sure it won’t.