Essay: Bandes Dessinee [BD], Manga, Anime, and Cultural Preferential Bias and Treatment of a Gaijin Auteur

Essay - BD and Cultural Identity

There's a difference between the way I discovered Saturday Morning Cartoons and the way I discovered BD and French animation. I didn't know it at the time, but on a biological and genealogical level (weird as that may sound) I have more of a genealogical connection to BD as an artist than I do Japanese anime. There is much French heritage in my family tree. It's a spiritual and genealogical connection there. My attraction to Japanese, and Korean manga and anime is emotional and intellectual. My connection to French BD Comics is spiritual. I sense a soul there. A real soul in the pages of Bande Dessinee. I feel a real soul in Bande Dessinee the way I sense it in anime and manga, but not in most American animation or comics of the modern post 2002 era.

French comics culture has embraced me and my design sensibilities for comics and animation, without even ever having seen me in their country in person. My spiritual creative presence is there without me even having been there. France has embraced many of the design archetypes I created early on, on a profound creative and intellectual level, in a way Japan never did. 

Archetypes like:

• ·       The Otomo Moebius influenced layering
• ·       "Masking" as Scott McCloud calls it (detailed backgrounds/props layered over cartoon characters)
• ·       "Guns, Swords, n' Trenchcoats"
• ·       Organic Architecture
• ·       Dystopian Dark High Fantasy (HP Lovecraft, Jhonen Vasquez, Blade Runner
• ·       Warrior on a ledge, looking down on a cityscape horizon below
• ·       Post Apocalyptic Science-Fantastique
• ·       Marv-esque Protagonist
• ·       Detective Stories
• ·       Emphasis on Science Fiction and Fantasy-Fantastique Graphic Album Episodic Tomes

A lot of these elements I drew in my work without having seen any French comics  beforehand. It was a coincidence I drew that way. Unlike certain Japanese artists of the current era, I wasn't ripping competing artists off. I was trying to create something original. Something I could call my own. The French just happened to really like my way of doing things in comics, more than the mainstream American way half the time. The American mainstream often fails at imitating my artistic and literary storytelling and archetype style the way the French mainstream does. American artists copy me and don't go beyond, and half the time they lose the appeal of my initial work that made my work appealing to begin with. French designers copy, but they keep the spirit and appeal intact.

The Japanese embrace some but not all of these archetypes. The French embrace all of them. The two countries are both highly ranked in the international community, but they do have their differences and similarities. They both influence each other and have borrowed from one another with mutual respect for a long time now. My respect for Japan is not as mutual as my respect for France. The Japanese cartoonists often parody and mock me and my work on TV and online in a way the French cartoonists almost never do. There's a respect and credibility I have there, that I almost seem like I have in France that doesn't seem to exist as much in Japan yet.

Japan. France. Thank you for your love. I love you. Moi.

How come no one told me how awesome Canadian bookstores were?? A lot, if not all Canadian bookstores (especially ones in French-Canadian regions) are modeled after French bookstores to please their customers. French-Canadians. A demographic that almost doesn't exist in America. There's one store in particular over in Toronto (Canada, North America) that I discovered while doing research on modern Bande Dessinee articles online. Labyrinth Bookstore. Their shelves are stocked with all sorts of stuff that no one sells in the States. I'll be checking that out more in the future. I'm so jealous of that comic shop owner. They have access to so many beautiful artworks and books! Why do we not have that here!