This blog will purely be about problematising the various articles and sources I found on sound in manga, comparing those sources to my own experiences and ideas on the topic, and then coming up with a full essay title.
First, we have “Onomatopoeia: A relevance-based eye-tracking study of digital manga”, a study by Rohan, Sasamoto and O’Brien. The study sets the scene by talking about the challenges of translating Japanese onomatopoeia, how it’s used “as part of the aesthetics” and then observes to see if there’s a correlation between the separation of the different types of onomatopoeia and the loss of engagement from readers.
I don’t really want to fully cite a study in my essay as I believe that I could easily get bogged down with statistics and methods of data collection but this article is useful to me in 2 ways. One is how it talks about the problems of translating Japanese into English because English cannot articulate Japanese onomatopoeia in a just-as-concise way. The could allow me to talk about the uniqueness of Japanese manga and its sound effects on the basis that so much information can be derived from onomatopoeia alone.
The other way is that the study finds that there is a correlation between the separation of the showing and meaning elements of onomatopoeia and the loss of engagement with readers. This could allow me to conclude and bring up the point that sound is important in manga and telling its story, and is a reason why manga is special within the Japanese cultural sphere because the sound makes it a lot more popular than its American counterparts. I could also cite official statistics on the most popular comics in America to aid the point that sound plays a big role in the success of manga.
A problem I see with the study itself is how the participants are familiar with manga and Japanese culture meaning that they would have more of an inclination towards sound effects in Japanese which could skew results. If this is the case, even if I want to reference this study in my essay, I feel like I shouldn’t let it hinge on the findings of the study as the reliability, from a cursory glance, is in question.
“Translating Sound into Image: A Comparison between American Comic and Japanese Manga Onomatopoeia” by Priscial Gerolde Gava is the next article I found. This article exclusively compares the onomatopoeia between American comics and Japanese manga.
This article does an excellent job of describing the difference is the use of sound between the two different styles of comics, as well as the differences between the languages, in great detail.
However, the final considerations to me are quite disingenuous as they initially state that there isn’t much of a difference between the way onomatopoeia is used between American comics and Japanese manga, but then goes on to talk about how “This is a massive difference between comics and manga”. It boggles the mind as to why Gava would contradict themselves within their own conclusion after comparing the two with numerous examples and to such great lengths. Another quirk of the article is that it doesn’t really evaluate why things are the way they are and instead just describes the differences between American comics and Japanese manga.
If I was going to reference this article, I would only use its information on the mechanics of onomatopoeia.
The last article I want to talk about is the article by Robert S. Petersen, “The Acoustics of Manga: Narrative Erotics and the Visual Presence of Sound”. This article goes into the origins of sound/sound design and not just in manga but also in Japanese culture, referencing work all the way back in the 10th century. It also has a lot of interesting insights that are not found in quite a few of the other articles I’ve seen, like historical examples of sound in manga and its roots in Japanese culture.
Unfortunately, by the time I have read this article, I already wanted to talk about the relationship between sound and Japanese culture and how they are intertwined. Why that is a problem is because this article focuses heavily on that and I fear that I might rehash the same ideas from this article. Despite this, I have to heavily rely on this article in my essay because there aren’t many articles talking about manga in context with Japanese culture, especially to the extent that this one does.
The way I want to get around this is by trying to find a source that talks about the visual aspect of sound design in how sound is instrumental in telling the story visually instead of just auditorily if that makes sense.
After reading a lot of articles, the essay title I decided to go with is “An evaluation of the relationship between sound and Japanese comics, language and culture.” this covers all the things I wanted to talk about, while also linking them together and keeping the focus on how sound presents itself in manga and Japanese culture.