Comipo! and the Constructed Definition of “Manga”

Comipo! is a recently-released Japanese computer program advertised as a tool that allows people to create their own “manga” even if they cannot draw. While I have not sampled the program myself, the promotional materials for Comipo demonstrate how this is achieved. Using a wide selection of pre-existing templates for backgrounds, word bubbles, characters, effects, and other visual elements, a user drags and drops these elements onto a page layout (for which there are also templates), and essentially “model” their comic pages. Characters are 3-D models, which allows them to be placed and viewed at any angle within each panel. Photos can be imported as backgrounds and filtered so as to make them more in-line with the characters.

Given this idea of “instant comics,” what I find particularly interesting about Comipo! is the pre-set library of “manga-like” features itself. The second promo shows samples of effects that can be utilized, such as where multiple sharp lines populate the inside of a panel border to emphasize that something dramatic is happening, or when a similar effect is used on the outside of a word bubble to express that the words inside the bubble are an intense inner thought. As manga are printed in black and white, the third promo goes out of its way to point out that the full-color imagery used in Comipo! can be turned monochrome. The character models themselves are also indicative of this manga-centric angle. Instead of allowing the user to pose the models themselves, the program has a list of pre-defined physical behaviors.

Through these effects, Comipo! seems to imply that there are indeed recurring visual elements that can be seen as “typical” of Japanese comics, with quite a discrete definition of “manga” (or at least “the average manga”) emerging out of the rigidity of the templates used. While some of these elements could be said to be “comics elements” in general, when compared to a similar program in the form of the “Create Your Own Comic” feature at Marvel Comics’ “Superhero Squad” website, very immediate differences can be seen. Despite the greater simplicity of the one provided by Marvel, the differences in how the two programs treat the concept of drag-and-drop comics is evident in what they choose to include am emphasize. For instance, instead of the “intense inner thought” effect used in the Comipo! promotional material, the Marvel online creator showcases a variety of cloud-like “thought bubbles.” Whether or not Comipo!’s implied definition of “manga” or the Superhero Squad’s definition of “superhero comics” are accurate is not a subject I want to address at this point; instead I just want to consider the fact that these definitions exist at all.

Perhaps the most noticeable visual elements of Comipo! are the pre-existing character designs themselves, which are firmly planted within the “moe” (a sort of cuteness which promotes strong empathy and desire) aesthetic that has come to the forefront of manga and particularly anime over the past decade or so. Generally targeted towards males already familiar with anime and manga, the decision to feature moe character designs in the program in lieu of others is a decision which seems to say that this is the face of manga today, or at the very least the face of manga for people who would buy the program and use it. Obvious technological impossibilities aside, I have to then wonder what a program such as Comipo! would have looked like if it had existed in decades prior, say, in the 1980s when the influence on character designs by artists such as Mikimoto Haruhiko (Super Dimensional Fortress Macross), Azuma Hideo (Nanako SOS!) and Takakashi Rumiko (Maison Ikkoku) could be seen in their peers? What would the implied definition of “manga” have been then?