Introduction for Graphic Narratives

Hey! I'm Maddie and I'm majoring in English with a Writing Emphasis. This is my last semester of college so I'm really glad that this class was offered before I graduated. My interest in anime started when I was a child and for my Kindergarten graduation my parents gave me a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Red. From there I continued collecting Pokemon toys, playing the game, and watching the show, and I discovered Sailor Moon. I probably had everything Sailor Moon that existed at the time and if I'd been allowed I probably would have worn my Sailor Moon Halloween costume every second of every day. 

There was a pretty big gap from my Sailor Moon days until I started watching anime again in high school. I started with the light novel of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and the anime of Death Note. That was the first year I attended an anime convention, Anime Next, and my first cosplay of Mikuru Asahina. I was hooked and went to Setsucon the following year, which I've been to every year since, and Otakon four years in a row. I've cosplayed a range of characters including Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service, Hatsune Miku, Kaiko (the female variation of Kaito, another Vocaloid), Marceline from Adventure Time, and maybe a few more that I'm forgetting. I've written critically about Adventure Time in the past an presented a research paper on Marceline at the EAPSU Conference a couple of years ago and last semester the Game Studies class introduced me to looking critically at video games, so I am excited to branch out into looking at comics, manga, and graphic novels in new ways. 

What is your current level of experience with reading comics/graphic novels/manga?  Have you ever read a graphic narrative before?  What are your observations regarding texts like these?

I've read all three pretty steadily throughout high school and college. Something I've noticed regarding graphic narratives has been how easy it can be to miss details if you read through too quickly. I have a tendency to read fast but they force me to slow down and look at each panel and see what is going on both in the language and the images. In traditional texts you create the images yourself but in graphic narratives it is visualized for you and that adds another aspect of the stories and characters to interpret as you read them.

Do you watch anime?  Are you familiar with visual novels?  Do you play video games?  If so, which titles?

I watch anime sometimes. I find a series maybe once a year and binge watch it, but I do not keep up with what is current or popular. I'm familiar with visual novels and have played through a few of them. I still somewhat struggle with video games but I've kept up my subscription to Final Fantasy XIV which I fell in love with last semester and I love Life is Strange, Pokemon, and Animal Crossing. 

What pre-existing (or learned) attitudes and beliefs do you have about readers of comics/graphic novels/manga?  Do you consider yourself a reader of these texts?

I would definitely consider myself a reader of these types of texts. Since I've been exposed to them for a while and been around a lot of fandoms I guess the only pre-existing attitude I still have is the way that fandoms can go in two very different directions. I've seen examples of fandoms that have been uplifting and created a community where the fans can support one another and bond through their mutual love of various series. On the other side of this spectrum I've seen, and experienced, the frustration of gatekeeping behavior where people try ward off people from sharing the love because they create a hierarchical system where fans who have less knowledge of the fandom or less experience with it are shut out. I came in with the learned belief that comics were less than other texts because they seemed to be lacking something, but I was drawn into comics by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and loved it. I think the manga that really pushed me from loving graphic narratives as a sort of fluff that I could read quickly was Chobits. While it might be an odd choice it left me asking questions, debating, and wondering more about the world it created. The implications of robots that were seemingly human in all aspects was intriguing and the addition of love between a human and one of the robots, somewhat similar to the idea expressed in the movie Her where the man fell in love with the computer program he communicated with, was really interesting to me. 

What questions do you have about these texts?  What are you curious to learn more about?  What do you anticipate you will take away from this class?

I think my biggest curiosity about these texts is what is currently being done with looking at them critically. I've been to panels that looked critically at anime, comics, how graphic narratives fit into the literary canon, etc. However, I am still curious about what current research is being done with them and in what ways people are looking at them critically. Game Studies has to approach identity, learning, characterization, narrative, collaboration, and an array of ideas unique to gaming because of the way that narrative comes out in the game. I look forward to seeing in what ways we look at graphic narratives and how that differs from traditional literature, game studies, and the way that other forms of pop culture are being studied. I hope to take from this class a more well-rounded understanding of how pop culture intersects with literature. At Shippensburg so far I have had multiple classes that branched out into looking at how our understanding of literature and analysis can be applied to narrative in other forms and I look forward to piecing what I learn in this class with what I have already learned through Game Studies and Reviewing the Arts, which also allowed me to write about pop culture. After graduating I hope to continue writing about these subjects and maybe eventually to submit some of that work to be published or present it at conferences and conventions.