Abstract II

The thesis of my senior project is to convey the message of being open to and accepting of cultures other than our own. I plan to use the recurrent theme of the differences between Japanese and American cultures but in the process of pointing out these differences trying to create a desire amongst the reader to go out and experience these differences on his/her own. For the most part these differences will be pointed out and discussed directly in my dialogue but I also wish to cover a few more subtle issues defining the two cultures, such as culturally determined ways of thinking which will be best seen in the artwork rather than described. I also want to try and write the manga bilingually, so that even though it won’t be open for all cultures to enjoy it will be available for the two it has basis in. As of now I have no real set defined good titles and I am going to be using Japanglish (Japanese+English), going for a fusion of sorts of the bilingual aspect of the project. Recently I have been thinking that I might like to add a preface or some type of author’s notes in my manga. The notion of author’s notes is something that is commonly used in actual manga and it felt like doing this would give my project that extra bit of manga feel to it. I also left the idea of a preface up for grabs in the event that I can’t spare the time, effort or energy in trying to do the slightly more difficult author’s notes. As far as the project itself goes, the style I want to use is coming together nicely and I have the overall story arc. Another thing that occurred to me that I had actually overlooked until this point was that I would need a cover and as I thought about making one the more difficult it became. This is probably because I am severely over thinking the task and can’t get out of the mindset of trying to capture the atmosphere of the entire manga within a single drawing but the cover seems like it should be one of the final pieces, like an introduction, that is best left for the end when everything has already come together.