This blog post will be a small reflection on my essay as well as delving into interesting points and topics that came up but were cut from the final version of the essay.
My biggest regret with my essay is that I wish I had a higher word count, I wanted to dive deeper into the mechanics of Japanese onomatopoeia and its relationship with Japanese grammar as well as its usage in colloquial speech. I also wanted to be more specific in how sound in Japanese culture had changed and evolved since the 10th century, talking more about religious or maybe political influences on sound in Japanese culture. The word count restricted me from going into those topics at that level of detail as, in the end, I had written about 1300 words, leaving less than 200 words to talk about topics that I could base a whole essay on.
Another regret was that I couldn’t feasibly find popular manga that had a unique spin on sound design other than manga that has either 0 sound effects and used obvious recognisable actions to make the reader imagine the scene or manga that used music/lyrics as the sound design/score for a scene. Both examples didn’t really make sense to put in my essay as it focuses a lot on onomatopoetic sound design and it’s relevance in culture, so they didn’t fully fit with the narrative I was trying to create, at least the one I could create in 1500 words.
Aspects of the title I wish I could have touched more on were how anime is also affected in the same way as manga in terms of sound design, bringing in examples like “Sunny Boy” or “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” as they use sound and sound design in interesting ways that are also the same in manga despite there not being a need to be similar to manga as you can actually listen to animes.
Another aspect was webtoons(like a manga but is a comic that exists primarily on the internet, which is the most popular format for Korean comics) and a recent phenomenon of “audio webtoons” which actually have a soundtrack playing as you read the webtoon, giving the artist more auditory expression. I thought it would be really interesting to problematise audio webtoons and argue if they actually help promote innovation within comics and manga or if it stifles it as it’s a lazy cop-out or tries fundamentally to change what a manga is despite anime existing.
This didn’t really fit with the topic of my essay, but the reason I choose only Japanese manga is that opening up the essay to Chinese and Korean comics risked the essay losing focus and substance.
I also wonder if I could have picked a topic that had a more definite conclusion as I didn’t feel that my conclusion was the most satisfying finish for myself, but I also understand that at the first-year undergraduate level, it might be premature to have definite conclusions that don’t have references from more acclaimed scholars to back them.