fredart : blogbits

I read with interest today over on ICv2 (a kind of industry news site that covers the graphic novel anime, manga and comics industry) the 2005 Manga Awards. It’s not really any kind of big deal where they give out cars or little statues or anything, but it’s kind of a end of year wrap up about what they see as the most successful trends of 2005, or the ones with the most potential.

The #1 Manga Phenomenon of the year was Original English Language manga. They mention just how much steam the movement of non Japanese creators to create manga-inspired works has been, and i think that they are quite correct in giving the ‘movement’ some credit for getting some inertia behind it. It had a pretty good assessment of the status of things, and i feel honored by the fact that they mention that they refer to Megatokyo as “the long time champion in the OEL category” (I think the Warcraft manga ended up edging me out in 2005, not really sure). The line in this article that i am going to take most to heart this year and look back to for some inspiration is:

“Will other OEL series be able to match the success of Warcraft and Megatokyo? The answer may be clear by this time next year.”

I take that as a challenge I’m not a particularly competitive person, but personally i think i can do a lot better than i’ve been doing as it is, so topping myself is not a unrealistic goal. As for everyone else in the OEL category - nothing makes me happier than to see it started to get populated with some darn nice looking work (I have the little TokyoPop 06/07 Manga Calendar on my desk, and it’s contents are ALL OEL works! Nice calendar, too)

Good to have lots of competition, and i’ve said many times in the past that over the next few years there will be people who will come along and blow my doors off… but i’m not ready to lie down and let that happen yet — I intend to make whoever comes along and tops Megatokyo earn it

In the end, it’s the readers who win Look for some interesting stuff to surface from me in 2006. It should be a very interesting year

- pirotunes: Orb - A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre O -

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Daily Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.