From: pckyip@athena.mit.edu (Patrick C Yip)
Subject: A brief look of Manga of TAIWAN
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 03:37:42 GMT

Alt.manga infatuated with Japanese manga only? No way! Here is the proof:
Manga of Taiwan! (No Manga in Taiwan, please note)

I've just bought a few issues of HAMBURGER MANGA which claims itself as 
'the only professional magazine for NATIVE manga' It is a monthly with
about 230 pages and a size slightly smaller than "100% NEWTYPE MANGA".
And the April issue is #30, so it already has 2.5 years of history behind.

Talk about Taiwanese manga, I have noticed its development for quite a long
time. Up till recently I can tell the manga can usually be classified in
the following categories:

1) Comics strip style with the possibility of being linked up to a continual
   story.  It is usually the way to go because at the beginning everybody is
   amateurs and "comics-strip" requires simpler art techniques. 
   Within this category, there are 3 main subcategories:
 a) Political and social satires:
	Although I wonder how popular sarcastic stripes are in Japan (probably     not popular if it's not directed to foreign countries), it's pretty 
    popular in Taiwan, especially regarding the political turnmoil and
    social restructuring after the government lessened its grip some years
    ago.
 b) Silly humor:
	For silly humor, actually I mean humor without necessarily good taste
    or real fun, just humor for the sake of "humor". Needless to say, it 
    draws HEAVILY from the contemporary Taiwanese society and people's life,
    and slang terms (current under use or self-created) are used freely.
    Suffice to say, the humor is usually drawn from the looks of the characters
    some shitty stuff, or hysterical reaction. The story can base on a
    diversity of topics though: office life, popular legend, fantasy, 
    adventure, school life etc ...
 c) educational:
	In Japan there are a lot of manga which teach children history and
    adults "how to". In Taiwan there are children manga which teach children
    how things work and about history too. That has a really long history.
    More recently there is a person Chai-Zi-Chon who has been very successful
    in bringing ancient Chinese philosophies to manga. With dozens of works,
    he has done manga introduction to many classics in Confusician, Taoist,
    Buddhist and other schools of thought. 
	Chen Wun's "Legend of the Assassins", while not in strip style, 
    belongs to edcuational manga too. This manga (done in color brushes BTW)
    is his tour-de-force to draw the stunning stories about the assassins,
    in the Warring States (3-5 century B.C.), who attempted to kill the king
    of the other state due to their personal belief or loyalty.

2) Shojo Manga:
	Believe it or not. It's the shojo manga which first matured among
    the native manga artists in Taiwan. And actually there are already 
    several popular shojo manga compiled into volumes a few years ago.
    Like shojo manga in Japan, Taiwan shojo manga like to draw from historical
    (real or legendary) figures, but you can tell that many would base on
    Chinese history.

There are other genres too, but none is as common as those above. 
Chen Wun's style is a specialty, rather than the norm. His brush technique
even impress the Japanese! 
Besides Chen Wun and Chai-Zi-Chon, another person worth mentioning is Push,
whose style is like Mobius but with a lot more details (he likes to fill
every space with irrelevant tidbits, mostly popular culture stuff). And as
you might have guessed, work on Sci-ficitional comedy. I like his art very
much, but the story is a major weakness. If the story can't keep its integrity
or tightness, the humor would surely lose its flavor. 

That brings what I consider to be the most undeveloped area in Taiwan manga:
better story, especially those comedies. This might have to do with the
amateur nature of the artists. In fact I think the contributors in HAMBURGER
MANGA are mostly students in colleges. 

The art has improved over the years, (now they can show a larger variety 
of facial impression for example)  but still I would say it still has
quite a bit to improve (the motion still doesn't look quite natural and
distorted face when drawn with another perspective isn't uncommon). 
An encouraging sign nevertheless.
    
BTW let's go back to this HAMBURGER MANGA. We can see a real attempt by
people in Taiwan to develop their own manga (unlike Hongkong, where the
development is at least 5 years behind, and only doujinshi <amateur manga
publication> exist). They have color pages for some ads, content, a bit of
one manga, and reader's art contribution. There is essentially only one
long series, with another permanent feature of "reinterpretation of 
popular fairy tales" (I LOVE THAT :) which is a series of independent
short stories, reflecting the doujinshi nature of the publication (although
they say the magazine is professional, which in term of the publish quality
is true). BTW the long series is shojo manga about some Arabian like
fantasy, which from the viewpoint of art is of high quality (haven't looked
at the story yet). 
All the rest are short stories, with a large variety: Sci-Fiction, Socail
drama, shojo, fable, modern life and simple humor. And there is one strip
as well, thus providing a large range of genres.

One third of the volume is devoted to text though. There are two feature
sections covering Japanese manga (my issue at hand has Aa!! Megami-sama :)
and they are pretty detailed. 
And then there are 3 letters sections: one answering questions about manga 
titles and history; one is devoted to personal correspondence to the magazine's
artists; one answers questions about how to do manga. 
There are two "editor's manga", one gives lecture on doing manga and anime,
one is kinda like the fun side of the editorial board, pretty funny.
And finally the readers' artworks, reports on manga activities in the
nation and interview of manga artist finish the whole magazine.

All in all I think the content is pretty substantial and the quality is
generally high (especially the text part). Particularly impressive is
the breadth of coverage this magazine provides. I envision what time 
places like America can have a publication like this.

BTW this magazine has an anti-bootleg attitude. This is what you'd 
expect once people know how bootlegging deprive of their potential
income (due to the competition). This shows a changing attitude in
Taiwan too.  

<<Self-appointed High Priest of the Cult of Urd, Belldandy and Skuld>> :-)

Patrick YIP (a.k.a. YO^SHIGO^)   **the one who's more into MANGA than ANIME**
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