Focus Group – 12/12/25 – Questions about manga and anime in academia
Panel – 6 Speaker, 1 moderator
What comes to mind when you think of manga and anime and how familiar do you consider yourselves with these forms?
Speaker 2 – Bleach..
Speaker 3 – Howls Moving Castle.
Speaker 4 – Spiky hair.
Speaker 5 – Familiar with the style but maybe not the contextual cultural framing.
Speaker 3 – Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Speaker 6 – Dan Dan Dan, Demon Slayer.
Speaker 1 – I used to watch a lot when I was 16, then I stopped –
Moderator – why did you stop –
Speaker 1 – I found this narrative structure being a bit repetitive. I’m talking about shows, like series, not like Ghibli they are different..
Speaker 5 – Like Dragon Ball Z,
Speaker 1 – Yh Like Dragon Ball Z, its like that structure you know, I grew tired of it. But not films! I’m a big fan of One Piece thats the only exception…
Speaker 6 – Whats one piece?
Speaker 1 – Its the best selling manga and anime. It’s like, you know, pirates, the guy who stretches..
Speaker 4 – Oh that one!
Speaker 2 – Full Metal Alchemist.
Speaker 6 – I have heard thats really good but never watched it.
Speaker 1 – I know that brotherhood is pretty good.
Speaker 5 – I’ve stopped watching, or being curious or interested for two reasons. One I’m a wuss when it comes to watching tip telly, so I just can’t take stress levels. Spirited away nearly took me out!
Speaker 1 – It’s intense, It’s so intense!
Speaker 5 – I’m a total wuss, and I’m not even ashamed of it… and the second reason is I found that I got really fed up with the giant eyes, the very tiny chin, the itty bitty mouth and the over sexualized young girls, because I might watching anime or hentai?
Speaker 6 – I don’t want to minimise the hyper the hypersexualization of young women in anime and manga, but I feel like the men are very very sexualized..
Speaker 4 – Yup!
Speaker 5 – They are kind of pumped up
Speaker 2 – yeah they are also real androgynous
Speaker 6 – That is true
Speaker 2 – Most of the men are quite, like very slender, very pale, very sort of like their features are sort of like, quite beautiful.
Speaker 6 – But everybody seem like they are being fetishised, and obviously there are levels to it and there is the particular Issue around misogyny in the depiction of underage girls, particularly in uniform, school uniform and other uniforms as well but yeah but like so much of the narrative and style from a very limited engagement with it seems to be training off kind of like the Politics of desire.
Speaker 5 – I quite like this studio Ghibli treatment, because very often the girls are not submissive
Speaker 6 – hundred percent
Speaker 2 – absolutely
Speaker 5 – very often they are the heroes of the story,
Speaker 3 – the main protagonist,
Speaker 5 – yeah and not sexualised but some of the others
Speaker 6 – But with Studio Ghibli they are also very very young but they are place appropriately off within the context of childhood or coming of age yeah space held for that within the narrative…
Speaker 2 – There lots of coming of age with Studio Ghibli ones, lots of coming of age.
Speaker 6 – It’s like reckoning the self and reckoning the family structure.
Speaker 2 – Kiki’s delivery service, all about that transitions of being a child into an self sufficient adult.
Speaker 6 – or is it Poyo
Speaker 5 – Ponyo
Speakers – Ponyo!
Speaker 6 – which has got one of the most tender love stories init, because there is so little, not sexual element to it and there is love that super seeds desire or lust, or its almost plutonic.
Speaker 2 – Ghibli is so different to the others
Speaker 4 – Anime and manga has given Japan a very extended cultural capital though, and around the world.
Speaker 5 – America needed to take a break, so someone had to take over.
Can anyone describe any personal experience with engaging with anime and manga as a viewer, as a reader or as an educator?
Speaker 6 – I don’t like conversations I often hear around anime and manga that pertained to like educate, like people are very I don’t feel like we’ve had conversations as a staff team before but in person and online meetings where it’s like really really dragged and I’m kind of curious as to why it’s such a like people are so interested in kind of picking it apart over perhaps other equally stylized or culturally situated art forms. And you know this kind of question around hypersexualization is obviously really important but I feel like it happens in lots of others, like we think about a lot of western or Hollywood for example is like dependent upon the hypersexualisation of young girls and boys.
Speaker 5 – Disney until Moana
Speaker 6 – 100%
Speaker 5 – Moana was the first one who didn’t have a love interest and her parents were still alive.
Speaker 6 – 100%
Speaker 4 – There was Mowie
Speaker 5 – That wasn’t a love interested
Speaker 4 – Oh
Speaker 6 – I’m really interested in how it’s situated in conversations I’ve heard educators have, where it seems to be hyper visible in relation to its particular problems. But I’d argue those problems exist elsewhere as well. So I kind of thoughts around a xenophobic aspect but I also have thoughts around maybe people are quite comfortable interrogating it, because for a predominantly white, western staff/team it kind of sits outside the realm of cultural significance and also cultural relevance, and therefore it can be attacked and analysed in ways that don’t don’t need to take account for those things. I have a lot of students that work within the style and cultural context of anime and manga, and I always say to them, as long as you feel you are contributing something meaningful to it I have no issue with it. I don’t see why there is a problem contributing to a very distinct, existing art form as long as you’re finding your way of… Because for me a lot of people, maybe there is not a meaningful relationship with it, they see it as something that can not be contributed to. I feel as a lot of conversations I have with educators around anime and manga they see anyone contributing to that art form as copying and replicating.
Speaker 3 – The style is so distinctive
Speaker 6 – But like that’s true for lots of things, but why is the conversation so specific around anime and manga. Why have we decided that its not possible to make a meaningful narrative or stylistic contribution to it.
Speaker 4 – Because there is so much of it.
Speaker 5 – As an educator I have to see the references, what I have to see is your process, so I’d have to see what references you use, I have to see how you made made it yours, how you added your style to it so you weren’t just copying, obviously you will take influence from something and you might merge a few but I need to see that come together, as I would with anything else and see you put your thing that makes it yours.
Speaker 1 – Rightly so generalized and applied to any influence
Speaker 6 – As you should because that’s practice
Speaker 1 – The doubt arises when we wonder whether exactly its copying, for the sake of copying because practice is good on one hand or is it just merely copying, or just intake the influence without digesting it. Again going back to the original question which is why doesn’t that happen… the only thing that comes closer to manga can be maybe mainstream super hero comics.
Speaker 4 – Yh I was about to say Marvel.
Speaker 1 – That follows a similar trajectory and of course we don’t ask that question now like oh why do you draw that type of art.
Speaker 5 – I think I have an answer for that. Ignorance! I don’t know all the characters in anime but I know all the characters in marvel, and i know all the characters in disney. I can tell when you’ve copied something, but I don’t know with anime I’m just going to assume. There is a gazillion of them you’ve just copied one.
Speaker 1 – Its true
Speaker 2 – But from a western point of view does there seem to be appropriation involved?
Speaker 4 – Agreed
Speaker 2 – It’s so global, its so universal in regards to manga. A lot of American animation now, very similar style of drawings, the way they characterise faces. Is that a question that come up?
Speaker 6 – I’m thinking of an MA Illustration and Visual Media student who was interested in world building and they wanted to work with Star Wars after graduation and like whether that comes true not something they were interested in being able to manifest that through a portfolio piece so they developed a new plot line and character to contribute to the existing Star Wars universe. So there it was interesting that the conversations that happened in relation to their work where it was seen as like what the Star Wars wanted or not it was seen as like a valid and valuable creative exercise to think about how you might contribute something that’s already set. So exactly I think it just like feeds into the your question which is generosity extends to…
Moderator – I’m going to pause it there
Speaker 5 – I have one more thing to add to that point though. As a parent I find it incredibly violent and dystopian. But what I will say is the world that my children are growing up in seems very violent and dystopian and maybe that’s why they connect it. Whereas that was not my upbringing experience and maybe it’s a bit of denial but maybe that’s what i dont want life to be about, I don’t necessarily want to see that. When my daughter watches Attack on Titan, four times, knowing all her favourite characters will be slaughtered each time and sits there and cry. Why! Why are you traumising yourself like this! And her response is – But it’s such a good show!
Speaker 3 – Maybe it’s a safe space to have that emotion
Speaker 5 – Maybe they grown up with so much trauma in the world!
Speaker 2- That’s interesting because the Ghibli stuff come out of trauma from the second world war, and a lot of it comes from Hiroshima.
Speaker 5 – But all the Ghibli stuff ends with a joyful resolution – ish
Speaker 4 – Ish
Speaker 1 – Which is interesting if you consider the man himself Miyazaki who is known for being a miserable person,
Speaker 6 – Miserable in what sense
Speaker 1 – He’s miserable like he has no faith
Speaker 6 – He’s like a sad boy
Speaker 1 – Yeah he’s like sad boy
Speaker 6 – Is that quite useful maybe?
Speaker 1 – Its interesting though. Why does he make those stories?
Speaker 2 – One of the big themes about Ghibli is about wind, it’s about air. Ghibli itself is the name for a certain wind. Wind features in a lot of their films, which is very uplifting. The Wind Rises, Totoro, which is incredibly uplifting. So that’s interesting that a very miserable person makes these very uplifting stories.
Speaker 1 – Its therapy probably, its therapeutic.
Speaker 6 – This is pure fantasy though, but maybe he is miserable because he knows what he wants to see, he is telling the stories he wants to see, I love that man I’ll give him a green card!
Speaker 1 – I love him. He’s just a sad man.
How often do your students reference or incorporate manga and anime influences in their creative work?
Speaker 1 – Quite often
Speaker 6 – It turns out that a lot of my students have personal projects that are manga and anime oriented or influenced, but they don’t feel comfortable sharing them in the academic environment. Its seen within our UAL context as a lower art form or an art form that they’ll know they’ll be critiqued for
Speaker 1 – Did you have that feeling?
Speaker 6 – No I know it, particularly with the reflective log that we have now introduced, you’ll go through their sketchbooks and there will be a lot of personal work incorporated alongside the studio labs. A lot of it is anime and manga. I’ve had multiple conversations where I’ve asked students about that work, and they won’t talk about, oh it’s a personal project.
Speaker 4 – It’s a guilty pleasure
Speaker 6 – Its frame as such in the context of UAL
Speaker 1 – It’s because we do not offer anything in our program that bridges that interests that they have in manga
Speaker 6 – Do they teach it at all? Even as a reference, does it come up at all?
Speaker 1 – I’ve brought it up a few times. But also what I encouraged them in the unit that I ran is that they can use the tools that I provided about basic drawing, fundamental, anatomy can be used with any style, especially manga. I’ve seen people drawing manga, I’ve been encouraging them. If you want to draw manga style do it, for me it’s a matter of digesting, if they like something for the sake of liking it, but what does it mean to draw in manga style? They are young, they haven’t developed a strong enough critical view on it. If we were to provide them with more chances to use the manga or anime influence they are in to they will do it, they will stop making that individual work and it’ll embed in them.
Speaker 3 – I feel like I don’t know enough about it. So when I see it, it feels like they are all drawing from a similar way and they don’t reference it.
Speaker 2 – What do you mean by they reference it?
Speaker 3 – They don’t say what they were influenced by. For instance, one of my students in first year has made a whole wooden sword. It’s incredible, he showed me a picture of what he was influenced by and its that aesthetic of the beautiful, androgynous looking, flowing robs, and cherry blossoms in the background. I’ve seen this aesthetic so many times in the past year or in the past few years, and I don’t know what the reference is, I wish I knew more about that.
Speaker 4 – They might now even know, it might be subconscious.
Speaker 2 – Most of the students are east asian and chinese, is there any association with that. It must be very popular in China, there might be some sort of cultural intake.
Speaker 3 – Probably
Speaker 6 – I was doing a crit with MA students this morning and there were three of them working within the realm of anime and manga. It was really fun watching them talk about each others work because they knew the references and they were able to talk about it in not only in terms of like the references and the various story lines within those references but they were really kind of like interrogating the visual language, so there was like one student who actually was Southeast Asian who was creating a short story that was around achieving flow state and the style wasn’t in anime or manga style, he was using a lot of the kind of visual elements that you might see in anime or manga around blurring aura and it was really interesting how other students were able to like immediately recognize it. It was actually really fun crit because I didn’t have that much to contribute, so my job then was to be prod them in terms of the questions they were asking but they have this really like contextually rich, shared, thing that they will pulling from there was a little bit really meaningful. The thing that made it stand out for me is that they were really really digging into these like visual languages and visual elements and thinking might be applied or extended. Because MA is set up so differently we dont really have crits in the same way. It was fun!