The Decline of Manga

The decline of manga is nigh. Nay, it is already here.

Manga, in America, refers to Japanese-style comic books. They read from right to left, and are typically a bit more adult than American comic books in terms of content. More violence, swearing, etc.

As I claimed in a blog post from a few months ago on another blog I rarely update, the "Golden Age of Manga" is over. Manga used to sell like hotcakes, flying off the shelves at incredible speed.

It seems obvious to me that the reason manga no longer sells as it once did is that the quality has dropped far below what it once was. Naruto and Bleach, once two of the most popular manga series in America, feel like zombies that should have ended long ago. Instead, companies demand that they continue on, even though ideas are being rehashed, just to keep the cash cow mooing. Sadly, the author and artist of Bleach, Tite Kubo, had a far better series that he created before Bleach, which was put on hold years ago.

After all, does any reader want to spend over $400 on a full series that seems like it will never have a conclusion?

Worse, new series have nothing new to offer. They are old, stale ideas that someone has tried to paint a new sheen on. The sheen does not last. I have not bought a volume of manga in a year. I used to spend up to $50 a month on the comics. Now, that money from my now-larger paycheck goes to food or the occasional video game. I'm now focusing on just filling old series that I never had the chance to finish. Sure, I'll probably have to turn to the Amazon Marketplace, and hope that someone has the old copies I am looking for.

It's entirely possible that my perception on the great decline is just a matter of taste, and the old manga of the late 1990s and early 2000s were more my style. And yet, these are known in manga-lover circles as classics, where none of the newer series have gained such acclaim. Maybe my tastes have radically changed since I started reading manga in high school.

Even new series by authors of classics are falling flat. Tokko, by Tohru Fujisawa, was nowhere near as satisfying as his earlier series, Great Teacher Onizuka. Six years ago, I remember standing in Borders, eyes wide, admiring the cover art of what I knew to be the last volume of GTO. The conclusion of the manga was amazing, as good as any big-budget Hollywood film in comic form. Tokko was the Japanese trope of "people with special powers fight demons." It was yawn-worthy.

It also doesn't help that Borders just closed all its doors forever. The number of shelves still carrying manga have greatly decreased. There's still Barnes and Noble, but they've never had quite the same selection as Borders. Comic book shops tend to focus more on American comics, if they carry any manga at all.

Gone are the manga that could only be described as "epic." Gone are the shelves that allowed perusal to find the hidden gem that might just be there, but in decreasing frequency. Gone is the Golden Age of Manga.

Of MMOs and Guild Wars: Rubi Bayer

One of my greatest loves in life - besides my girlfriend, of course - is the world of video games. My favorite is Guild Wars, and Massively Multiplayer Online game, in which I have spent a staggering 3,000 hours - or 125 days - playing. Naturally, my favorite columnist writes every Monday about the game.

Rubi Bayer, a columnist at Massively.com, loves Guild Wars as much, if not more, than I do, having spent even more time in the game. She is somehow able to come up with a different topic about the game every week, and, for the most part, they are all rather interesting.

Many topics delve into the gamer culture specifically surrounding Guild Wars, but sometimes branch out into MMOs in general. As a gamer, it is something I appreciate and find interesting.

She also writes on another subject that is close to my heart, Guild Wars 2. When any new scrap of information is released about the upcoming sequel to what is obviously the greatest online game ever - eat your heart out, World of Warcraft - she dissects and discusses the tidbits, often interviewing the game's developers.

Strangely, for having a writing style that is easy to identify with and seems casual, she does not have many credentials. That is to say, her only job, according to her LinkedIn profile, has been at Massively, where she became an editor in 2009 and is currently the community manager.

She did, however, graduate from the University of Indiana with a broadcast journalism degree. She also maintains a blog on the side about mothers who play video games, as well as writing other articles for Massively.

Perhaps she was lucky and fell into what I would consider a dream job, or perhaps her LinkedIn is not complete; there seems to be no other information floating around about her previous writing jobs.

She does not limit herself to just her column and articles, but also puts out two podcasts with Massively editor-in-chief Shawn Schuster. The first involves MMOs in general, but the second revolves around Guild Wars. The latter acts as a supplement to some of her columns, going over the information with another perspective involved, while adding more topics about Guild Wars.

While I had thought of profiling Rick Kushman of the Sacramento Bee, who has a column on entertainment - my other dream job - and of the hosts of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May, I decided to go with something that I've read consistently over the past year, as well as something I've dedicated many hours of my life to. It was not a very hard choice.

In short, Rubi Bayer is not only an excellent columnist, in my humble opinion, who writes about something close to my heart, but also has something I would consider a dream job. Not only does her column interest me with topics that she chooses each week, it also provides a glimpse into what I would love to do in the future.

A week most terrible

I have suffered terrible losses this week. The death of not one but two anthropomorphic friends has rocked my very core, and threatened my way of life.

The first, and arguably most important, is my laptop. Laptops are not only important to being a student - say writing columns and articles - but is in the center of what it means to be a geek.

Imagine, for instance, where humanity would be without the advent of lolcats, those funny pictures of felines that have been humorously captioned. Or, even worse, without online games.

Already, it has proven hard without saved bookmarks to go through my morning ritual, checking websites for news and new webcomics. It also didn't help that the first version of this column was sitting on the hard drive, waiting to be edited. Instead, it must be rewritten entirely.

Thankfully, losing that column has provided perspective, and its loss will not be mourned. The loss of all the other files I had not saved to my external hard drive, however, will.

But, I mentioned another friend I have lost. That friend is a store.

Imagine a young man in middle school, on vacation, walking in to a bookstore with a vague goal in mind. He wants a comic book, but nothing Captain America or Spider-Man. Nay, he wants a manga, or Japanese comic book. This kicks off a decade of collecting and reading Japanese comics.

From there, he continues to go to the branch of the bookstore near his home, spending countless hours perusing comics, both Japanese and American, while looking for the latest rule books for tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons.

That bookstore is the former giant Borders. This is the last week it is open, and has sales that are 80 to 90 percent off. Don't bother going to buy books, though, as there are more shelves for sale than books left. It leaves a giant hole in my heart.

Both of these can be replaced, but not without cost. The computer might be fixed, hopefully, but if not, it's a blank slate.

A new computer, with no files, nothing that I previously had, everything gone in the wind. Saved game files? Nope. Word documents? Negative. Funny pictures I had saved from the internet? As good as deleted.

Borders, meanwhile, can be replaced by the internet and a comic shop. The internet is a great place to buy manga, if you know what you want. Half the fun was browsing, though. A normal comic shop sells western comics, if you enjoy being harassed for not buying anything while browsing and trying to make a choice of what you want.

Or there is Barnes and Noble, the other giant bookstore, which is 40 minutes away from my house compared to the 10 of the old Borders.

All in all, it's been a rough few days. The loss of my computer this morning has hit hard, especially since it's as close as I have to a child as I have right now. With any luck, it'll magically turn back on like last week, but I'm not holding my breath. Nor am I holding out that a bookstore will replace Borders anytime soon.

So rest in peace, friends. You will be missed.

College and its effects on perspective

When asked to come up with what is good about college, a few obvious ideas popped up: Friends, education, connections to the "outside" world, techniques for making instant ramen into a five-star dish. But none of these seemed right. It wasn't until looking at previous blog posts, made two years ago, that it hit me in the face like a burlap bag filled with ravenous, angry weasels. What's good about college is that it provides perspective.

That is a vague term, so some elaboration is needed. Friends come and go, but there is no real sense of what a friend is until you are trying to make lasting connections for the rest of your life.

Rhetorical question: How many friends have you kept in contact with since high school? Middle school? What about your best friend from elementary school? Would you recognize him or her on the street?

This was put into perspective when a Facebook notification informed me that it was my best friend from elementary school's birthday. Navigating to his wall, nothing appeared, except for his family and photos. No wall to post on. There was a sinking feeling when the realization dawned that I was not given access to my once-close friend's wall.

On the other hand, at both colleges I have attended, I have made lasting friendships that I keep, even having barely seen some friends for two years. Granted, I am going to their wedding in October.

What about perspectives on education? For most of elementary through high school, learning was not exactly fun. It was rigorous and supposed to "prepare us for how hard college will be."

And yet, a class where each week a Japanese film is shown and then discussed was fun, informative, and not nearly as boring as 90 percent of my high school classes. Surely a class where the creative merits of Joss Whedon are discussed is better than the high school class where Shakespeare is the sole topic.

But the thing that is most put into perspective is time. It seems like just yesterday was high school graduation, but this December is college graduation after nine semesters. Ironically, one of the friends from the first class this blog was created for has been lost to the sands of time and lack of communication. Two years have gone by since I transferred from Monterey, yet it feels like I was living in the dorms last week.

Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly in high school. In college, it has flown by. Had someone told me that college would happen in the blink of an eye, unlike high school, they would have been met with laughter and derision.

That is, of course, what college is good for - making me think and forcing me to reevaluate perspectives on life, the universe, and everything. The passage of time, friends and acquaintances, and even the learning process have changed over the past two, five, and nearly nine years of high school and a transfer between two colleges.

Lost in Sacramento and other pitfalls

I began my fifth first day of the year in college at 5:30 a.m. Earlier than my normal 6 a.m., but I had to deliver my girlfriend to the high school she was student-teaching at in an unfamiliar part of Sacramento. A noble cause that will net me boyfriend points, but also the first mistake of the day. Nay, the first mistake of the week.

Getting my girlfriend to school was easy. Getting back to Sacramento State's campus proved a greater challenge.

"It'll be easy," she said. "Stop worrying, you'll get there fine," she said. "It'll take 20 minutes," she said.

I got lost twice. Being directionally challenged, I took not only wrong roads, but entirely wrong highways. My girlfriend said I should be back to campus in about 20 minutes, but it took a call to my student newspaper's editor-in-chief and an hour to get back. I was able to make it to my first class with quite literally two minutes to spare.

But the day was not done. I still had to help out with production night at the State Hornet, the aforementioned newspaper. My last class got out at 4:15 p.m. I didn't leave campus until 9:30 p.m.

With the first day at an end, I had hoped that my bad luck was at an end. Wrong again.

Tuesday's classes went well enough, save for finding out that I will have to read a book each week. The real trouble came when the editors under my care had to upload their stories to the Hornet website. The editors caught on quickly, which was good, but the uploading itself proved glitchy and uncooperative. Being that the online news editor had classes, I uploaded his section for him. It took six hours. For reference, when I was opinion editor last semester, it would take me between 30 minutes and an hour to do it each week.

Two days of bad luck. One would think that after having done this four times already, I'd be prepared for the inevitable rush of things not going my way on the first week of classes. Sadly, I don't seem to learn. Thankfully, this will be the last time I have to live through what I like to call "Hell Week."

Also thankfully, my luck changed. Wednesday was an ideal day, and nothing went wrong. I even got home before the sun went down, was able to hang out with friends, and relax.

But that was the eye of the storm.

Thursday morning, I was given the task of doing something no one had figured out since the Hornet started using computers: Connect to the server from home while on a PC.

Instead of whining and moaning about how terrible my week had been and trying to pass it off on someone else, I hoped that my luck would turn around and I'd figure it out. The universe must think it has a sense of humor, because I regained my stride and figured it out.

While I would love to end this column with a profound lesson I've learned, say something along the lines of "life is a roller coaster, deal with it" or "experience does not always make you prepared," but the only lesson I've really learned is that having a staff parking permit helps immensely when one arrives at campus with 10 minutes before class starts.