Manga Aversion: Length

As a public service, I’ve decided to address the issues that are causing most people to not love things like anime, manga or video games as much as I do. Today’s issue is the length of manga series. Or, to put it another way, why should I read “Bleach” if it probably won’t end before I die?

To be honest, I won’t defend the length. Many of the mangas I read are at about the 500 issue mark and show no signs of stopping. Ever.

What I would say is that length isn’t the problem as much as a few other things:

1) Mindset – As many manga are turned into anime, people expect them to end like all television shows. This is an expectation people don’t hold for American comics. And this is why “Superman” is going into what seems like his sixth century of publication and no one feels the same way.

2) Training Content – When you’re having fun, the time flies by. When you’re, say, training to learn a new technique instead of actually using it in battle, things slow to a crawl. “Training arcs,” or portions of the manga where the characters train to get stronger, take an agonizingly long time to resolve. As was established in “Rocky IV,” training is only interesting in musical montage form.

If it gets too tiresome to handle, I suggest doing what I do and listening to some “Queen” music during the training arcs – though, to be fair, this would improve almost anything.

3) Battle Content – Sadly, when people fight it’s not always better. This is because many manga fights can span ten issues or more. For example, the (possibly) final battle in “Bleach” involved dozens of underling fights before the ultimate bad guy transformed into a stronger form, second stronger form, a god, a butterfly (which totally isn’t a joke – go look if you don’t believe me), a god again and finally a very angry, slightly stronger god.

Obviously, some of the fights need to be pared down a bit – it would occasionally be refreshing to see a decapitation in the battle’s first panel to end things quickly and cleanly.

That’s how I see it anyway. While manga isn’t perfect by any means, I’d put it squarely on the corner of “it’s not as bad as you think” boulevard and “you’re not giving it a fair chance” lane. If you’re not familiar with the neighborhood, you can always “Mapquest” it to get the directions.

So if you’ve got a spare week or so, try reading a manga. The stories are actually quite good compared to a lot of the American comics. This is particularly true for “Marmaduke.” I get it. He’s a big dog. He eats things off the counter. Can we just get it over with?