~~ style minus context = ?

The amazon page for Shutterbox, an 'American manga', says that manga need not be Japanese because it's an artform and as such is universal.

I'm of two minds about this. I mean, Shutterbox looks interesting, like I would enjoy it, and also I'm currently reading `At Death's Door', a manga-style comic by Jill Thompson. But I think of it as manga-style, not manga, because... it cannot completely recreate the feel & experience of reading Japanese manga. That's why I feel less than enthused even about reading Chinese or Korean 'manga' also. Even the different style of names bothers me (like, not all manga/anime has Japanese-style names, but it's cute knowing 'this is what a Japanese person thinks normal Anglo names sound like'). It's just not the same; it doesn't even claim to be 'the same', and since I'm reading a very specific genre, I want precisely that & I'm not saturated enough with it for any substitutes yet. So yes, I suppose that makes me a purist in this.

I mean, if it was just an art style, then it would transcend national boundaries, yes, but-- it's also a cultural phenomenon, I think. There is a uniqueness to how the stories are written/constructed overall, there's a specificity to the cultural references (even in stories set outside Japan). Like... it seems important that there's a cultural context to the work I'm reading, in order to fully understand it, and a work imitating a style divorced from its original culture seems... purely imitative. Empty in a way, because it's just in a "style" rather than being part of a living movement.

On the other hand, it's true that 'real art' (whatever that means) should be able to be taken outside of its original cultural context, and one of the main measures of its success is how much the work can transcend its origins-- but those origins inform the work regardless, I think. If I'm really interested in a story, I tend to be much more concerned with the intended meaning of its setting & the cultural background that influenced it. I -can- read Shakespeare, say, without knowing anything about Elizabethan England, but I think that once one -does- know, it enriches the experience tenfold if not more. It's much more rewarding for me, feeling like I can connect to the story on a deeper level, like I have a greater sense of its workings & its inevitable resonances to other works of its sort. Of course cultural & linguistic context isn't everything, but it definitely makes a piece truly 3D, I think.

I've seen discussions on this with HP, too-- like, whether it's important (and what does it mean, etc) that the books are set in some version of modern England. And of course it's possible to write fanfic while ignorant of the details/context of British culture & linguistic peculiarities, it's just that... it's not the same, that's all. Context is part of what gives a story life and grounds it, so without it, it's just... free-floating; it's robbed of a vital part of its significance. In the end, it's just that I don't think any artwork exists by itself, in a vacuum-- but especially works done in a specific style or genre (whether it be the genre of fanfiction or manga). And as a reader of that genre, I personally would be left unsatisfied if that context was suddenly... gone.