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Youka Nitta? She’s the most recent mangaka to pretty much lose her career over tracing photos.

The HILARIOUS thing about the Youka Nitta scandal is the reaction from 55DSL, the fashion brand whose unique and artistic ad was blatantly traced by Nitta and drew attention to her tracing in the first place. They pretty much voice my reaction to this kind of scandal: let’s put this all in perspective. If you’re copying ads, for shame, but seriously - you’re probably only spreading the popularity of what you copied.

Isn’t that one of the justifications behind doujinshi, broader artistic interpretation notwithstanding?

New rumors about 55DSL are stirring on the web these days, since the incredibly attentive manga readers concerned about artist Youka Nitta’s recent illustration that resembles one of the brand’s advertising photographs. Specifically, the opening page in Stand on Vessel (Haru wo Daiteita series #49) manga in the August issue of Be-Boy Gold Magazine bears a great resemblance to the famous “kiss on the the ledge” from the Fall-Winter 06 campaign, and Nitta directly acknowledged that she traced it and that she is somewhat naïve in her awareness of copyrights. Nitta also promised to deal with these issues more carefully in the future, and apologized profusely to 55DSL, the people involved, and her readers. 55DSL says: Nitta, don’t worry, we’re not that kind of brand, we consider this a tribute, only the greatest are copied, right? But honestly, our chick is hotter than yours!

However, this is not the take that most comparisons of the verbals and visual forms take. Rather, they often try to make direct superficial analogies between specific types of structures. For example, "such and such" is the equivalent of a "word" or "sentence." This is often why many want to claim that single images have "grammar" — because a single image has lots of information in it, like a "sentence" and unlike a "word" — even though composition within single images behaves nothing like a grammar. (...nor should we expect it to given the differences between sound and light!)A similar endeavor has tried to find "minimal units" of the structure of the forms, following the school of Structuralism (most popular in American linguistics from around 1920-1960ish). However, again, just knowing minimal units doesn't tell you about the broader structure, and units larger than minimal units might also be useful and insightful. It also gives no beneficial comparison other than that "minimal units" exist in both domains.All of this is an argument for looking beyond the superficial understandings of "language" and to look for comparisons in deeper, more fundamental aspects of structuring.

look at common misdiagnoses of "trends" — especially in Japan.

A lot of Japan-oriented trend blogs seem to push "cool" products as "trends" without any evidence that consumers agree

This essay is not to say that there isn’t noteworthy reporting on innovations, novelties, and borrowable ideas from the Japanese market, but there is always an error of over-reporting these as "mass trends." If we return to the initial problem in analyzing the "rent-a-luxury-bag" phenomenon, the best course may be to err on the side of skeptical neutrality. Reporting on new products and services is great fun for blog posts, but overselling novelty as "trend" can create a false sense of market realities.