J-Horror

I'm as complex as any J horror story.... I like classic gothic literature, but I can't stand straight up horror (Stephen King...I'm looking at you, sorry..); I enjoy a few dark, primarily "horror" TV shows such as Dexter and Hannibal, but when it comes to horror films such as the Saw Series and even Paranormal Activity, count me out!


So it wasn't a huge surprise that I'm not the biggest fan of "J - horror". I read "Battle Royal", the manga version, and needless to say, I wasn't that interested. I'm not sure if it's because that idea of "lets see who's the most intelligent and creative through a game where pretty much everyone except the main character dies" or if it's because I relate "Battle Royal" to the American novel "The Hunger Games" but either way, I didn't get very far into either book.

Now, when I say I don't like it, I have specific reasons, mainly due to the storyline/plot of said novels. However, with "Battle Royal", there's at least one thing that I enjoyed while reading, if only for a brief time, and that was the fact that it was a graphic novel.

I grew up reading manga, mainly because my older brother read them but that's a completely different topic of discussion, and I do have a certain appreciation for it. Inuyasha, .Hack, and many, many other manga books, are just a few of the many books I either stole, or owned myself. The reasons I liked them when I was younger are still true now, 8 or so years later: they have pictures. Despite the fact that many of the manga didn't have color, that was completely irrelevant, simply because they had pictures. Unlike many of the other comics I enjoyed, Calvin & Hobbs, Garfield, The Peanuts Gang & Snoopy to name a few, Manga's pictures weren't set in regulated and consistent boxes; the layout of the pictures really moved and flowed with the novels. When there was something big or important happening, like a defeat of a major enemy or the death of someone, usually that took up an entire page. However, while taking up an entire page, the image was almost always drawn with more detail in the environment the character was in. Besides that, there was variations in the shape and size of the frames throughout the whole novel, as well as sometimes the frames even blended into each other. Considering all the differences from traditional American comics, it wasn't a big surprise when I started liking and reading Manga with the same zest as regular novels; just the smaller changes in the layout really made all the difference in whether or not I liked manga as a genre.