Renée Bamford
Staff Writer

Fans of Japanese manga gathered for a symposium on Feb. 17 at Pomona College where speakers specializing in the field of manga spoke on the controversial topic titled “Marauding Rabbits, Starry-Eyed Girls, Battling Boys and Ordinary Ladies.”

Frederik L. Schodt, a conference interpreter, translator, and freelance writer, was the first speaker and lead the audience through a brief history of manga comics. Schodt explained to the audience how prevalent manga is throughout Japan as compared to the recent growth of readers in the United States.

After a brief introduction, Stan Sakai caught the audience’s attention with his charismatic personality and excitement for his work as a comic artist. Sakai began his lecture by drawing portraits of his favorite characters on the projector. Beginning with the Samurai rabbit, Sakai told the audience that the first question he is always asked is: “Why a rabbit?”

“It is simple and unique; no one had done it before,” Sakai said.

Sakai continued his presentation by explaining how his comics go from an idea in his head through the process that takes place for it to end up in the reader’s hand. By using a volunteer from the audience, Sakai asked the woman what her day consisted of and used it as an example of how her endeavors could be used as a comic. He explained that he uses everyday situations and incorporates them into his stories.

Kinko Ito, professor of sociology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, presented an introduction to Japanese ladies’ comics. She explained how ladies’ comics use situations that Japanese women experience such as love, romance, friendship, domestic violence and sexism, among others.

“If you want to really understand socially what is happening in Japan right now, go read ladies’ comics,” Ito said.

Ito explained that within ladies’ comics there are likely situations that take place that teach their readers how to cope with these affairs by presenting these social issues in the comics. Through her theory of the effect that ladies’ comics have on their readers she outlined the three main categories as emotional, sexual, and cognitive issues that all inevitably lead the reader to happiness.

The final speaker, Matthew A. Thorn presented a lecture on “The Fate of Girls’ Manga in the Digital Age. Thorn, a participant in the School of Cartoon and Comic Art at Kyoto Seika University, began with a brief history of the creation of girls manga and the development of these comics over the years. He explained how along with the change in history and the perspective of the readers, girls manga has paralleled changes within society.

Thorn analyzed the effect that manga has on its readers and found in his theory that the type of manga and how one reads it can be a vehicle for a reader to define his or her own identity.

“What they were reading says a lot about who they are,” Thorn said.

Renée Bamford can be reached at belle_renee@yahoo.com.