Photo by The Figure in Question – thefigureinquestion.wordpress.com
So I was happy to get an Ultraman Manga figure for Christmas. As a companion piece to my review of the trade, I wrote a guest-review of the figure on my son’s action figure blog, The Figure in Question.
I don’t read a lot of Manga. I’ve read a half-dozen of them in my life. I have nothing against the genre, it just doesn’t often grab me. Even when a sort of hybrid Manga is produced, which stars characters I know from other media, the product usually doesn’t reach out and grab me.
According to Wikipedia, by the way, “Manga” simply refers to comics created in Japan; so the word “Manga” then wouldn’t necessarily refer to a body of work whose members all share the same characteristics, any more than American comic books all share the same characteristics. It would seem a bit silly to say that Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and My Little Pony are the same genre. But the Wikipedia article does specify that Manga works do conform to a particular style developed in late 19-th Century Japan, so I guess I’m not insane for thinking of them as a distinct genre.