The blaring cheers of female Japanese pop stars on screen blanket the constant humming chatter inside Anime Jungle. It has just struck noon when scores of fresh-faced youths pack the spacious Downtown Los Angeles shop. Among the ranks—hidden beneath a silken aquamarine wig styled into a bob—is Dolores Stewart.
Squatting in front of the section of manga comics labeled “A”, she thumbs through a copy of Attack on Titan, by Hajime Isayama. Stewart is dressed in an outfit resembling Vocaloid Hatsune Mikuo, the male variant of Hatsune Miku. Dressing like a fictional character is know as cosplay.
“I like the darker mangas because they show raw human emotion,” Stewart says, as her deep brown eyes scan the page.
“It makes the characters more interesting.”
By the light of day, Stewart, 22, attends Los Angeles Pierce College, with aspirations of becoming a mortician. When the late night cram sessions end, Stewart directs her concentration to another obsession—manga.
“I prefer the softer lines and diversity manga offers,” Stewart says. “American comics have harsher lines and physically exaggerated characters as the norm.”
Change has been slow to stir since manga and anime—Japanese comics and their animated counterpart—first appeared on the radar of American teens back in the 1980s. However, the recent boom in social media has prompted a massive expansion of the Japanese comic style.
Last year’s Anime Expo, or “AX”, 61,000 people attended the 2013 Los Angeles,” according to the Society of the Promotion of Japanese Animation. It was the largest North American conference of its kind, until 80,000 people came to the 2014 convention.
Some groups see these increasing numbers as a threat. Stewart, who attends AX all four days every summer, has been confronted by members of religious protester groups stationed outside of the Los Angeles Convention Center. She has never had a good experience with them.
“I remember this one woman said, ‘You’re going to hell for what you’re doing,’” Stewart recalls. “She told me it was a sin.”
Regardless of the ridicule, Stewart does not let the critiques of others weigh her down.
“People just don’t understand the manga, anime and cosplay community, and if you don’t understand something you’re going to be afraid of it,” Stewart says.
Professor Robert Wonser of Pierce College would agree.
Wonser, who has been teaching since 2008, is a Nintendo fan. In his course Sociology 86, Wonser examines what is the driving force behind a movement’s popularity.
Or in the case of anime and manga, the forces working against it.
“People take things out of context. Those who get it, get it,” Wonser says. “However, the people who aren’t part of that group see it as scary and don’t understand it.”
Naomi Nadreau, 20, who studies art at CSUN, faced the same judgment from strangers while attending AX last summer.
“Protesters will just stand there and yell at you,” Nadreau says. “They’ll even shout at you while you’re in your car.”
Despite not being heavily involved in manga and anime communities, Nadreau enjoys reading various light novels and comics from her collection. Her favorites include Chobits, by Clamp, and Mars, by Fuyumi Soryo. The latest edition to her collection is the American comic book Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan.
For Nadreau—whose keen eye has earned her spots in numerous student art exhibits—the look of a manga is as important as the story.
“I won’t read or watch something that is not visually or aesthetically pleasing to me,” Nadreau says.
Although they have never met, Stewart and Nadreau share the same need to keep improving their art. Both young women are accomplished illustrators, yet their styles stand in stark contrast of one another.
Nadreau is known for her eye-catching pieces that blend fantasy and human anatomy. On the flip-side, Stewart likes to think of her work as “randomized madness.”
The struggle for Stewart is getting what is in her mind on the page. “On any given day I come up with 5-to-10 characters,” Stewart says. “Once I really like a character, then I start my research, and that can take forever.”
To elude the stereotypes, Stewart visits local manga haunts, such as Anime Jungle and Kinokuniya, located in Downtown L.A. Spending hours at a time consuming comics, she takes a mental note of the characters she likes and those she doesn’t. These bi-monthly trips are only half of the research.
Once a character’s personality and background has been plotted, Stewart creates mock-up sketches. “I spend close to 20-to-40 hours figuring out a character. Sometimes it takes a little longer or a little less,” Stewart says. “Or I’ll scrap a character completely and start from the beginning.”
Stewart, who has been drawing and creating mangas since she was a pre-teen, learned her likes and dislikes young. She spent many Saturday mornings watching Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon, Digimon and Pokémon with her sister and three brothers. This early exposure helped Stewart craft her style.
Yet, still she believes there is room for improvement.
“It’s always me against the manga,” Stewart says.
Nadreau would agree, even after her latest art success.
“You’re never there. You will never be there, either,” Nadreau says. “That’s the thing about being an artist.”
Since February 2014, Stewart has completed two mangas. These will join the other completed volumes in her library. Though Stewart remains dedicated to her art, she has never sought out a publisher. For her, manga is just a hobby.
“If I am published someday, great. If not, it isn’t the end of the world,” she says. “Being a mortician will be work and entertainment enough.”
