Scott Pilgrim vs. MANGAMAN: Two Approaches to the Negotiation of Cultural Difference

Over recent decades, the incorporation of influences from Japanese manga into works of North American graphic fiction has involved a variety of approaches to issues of narrative structure, thematic content, and the rendering of visual motifs. In works that apply a manga-inspired aesthetic to commercially well-established materials, such as Marvel’s Mangaverse of the previous decade, ¹ the approach is often fairly superficial in nature, involving a straightforward grafting of elements of Japanese popular culture onto iconic American superheroes and their attendant storylines (Dunn 2001; Dunn and Dunstone 2002; Andrews 2006). ² Another, similarly straightforward approach involves the insertion of North American characters into narratives whose core elements resemble those of established manga genres, such as stories involving the use of mecha vehicles and the defense of large urban areas from giant monsters. ³