The following is an excert from Studio Tavicats faq page...which can be found
here.3. The Manga Art Movement
Q: What did Tavisha draw before she drew in "manga style?"
A: Tavisha has always drawn with a manga influence.
Q: Manga is a Japanese art form. What right does Tavisha have to draw in that style?
A: Manga is more than a Japanese art form. Manga is a Japanese Art Movement, as legitimate as the Art Deco and Art Nouveau Art Movements. Just as Japanese artists have harvested and used European and American Art Nouveau and Art Deco to their advantage, Americans and Europeans are now doing the same with Japanese Manga. Yet, this is simply a general privilege, a right in cultural exchange every artist on Earth shares as a natural given. It is unalterable.
Let me speak now of Tavisha's personal right to contribute to the Manga Art Movement. Tavisha is an American of Japanese and German decent. Her father is Wolfgarth, her mother is Kubota. Both her parents worked away from the home, thus she was mostly raised by her nissei grandmother and her issei grandfather. There was a heavy leaning towards Japanese culture throughout her childhood years in the 1960's and 1970's. When she first started drawing in the "manga style" she was 5 years of age, and over the years she become convinced she should only draw in this style because it was part of her heritage.
Tavisha never believed that interest in anime and manga would ever grow beyond the Japanese-American community and she is still shocked to this day by its popularity - and even more shocked at her own popularity as a manga artist. Despite her growing fan base, there are those who, knowing nothing about her other than that she is an American, see a European last name and decide that this is enough to judge her work by. These same detractors would nod with approval if she had used her mother's maiden name of Kubota. Why do they do this? Simple idiocy requires a simple response: they are racist and prejudiced, in part, because they in their adolescence (or adolescent-mindedness), seek an intellectual elitism in the "secret" art of manga. How dare a European-American or other ethnic think it in their right to tell a Japanese-American they aren't allowed to contribute to their own heritage simply because of where they were born! Really! Tavisha doesn't break into Octoberfest in Alpine Village, California and jeer at the dancers because they were born in America. She doesn't roll her eyes at the chef at our favorite Sicilian restaurant, looking down her nose with a, "Humph! This chicken parmesan is obviously American!" Get over yourself racist manga fan. If ignorant hubris is your only privilege, fine. Just understand that that your dim view is a tired opinion, older than you, debated, recycled, and tossed out years before you were born. It is not manga law.
I understand that this style of offensive defense can seem rather arrogant but then when it comes to detractors of American-made manga, Tavisha and I sometimes find ourselves, on rare occasions, up against an often belligerent and fanatical sect who appear happy to treat you as a friend as long as you remain simply a fan of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean-made manga, but turn on you as if you've committed some kind of real heresy if you dare to be an American of any non-asian surname and desire to contribute to the Manga Art Movement.
Regardless, as I once stated in an interview with Anime Insider concerning ShutterBox: If it (ShutterBox) is indeed successful, then I hope it inspires many more hopeful creators living and raised outside of Japan to understand what makes manga, manga, (the pacing, the staging, the timing, the panel count, the masking, the toning, the consistency of character design, the quality of emotion, etc.), and that they in turn can contribute to this art movement. Japanese play American baseball and wear American Levi's. Americans eat Japanese sushi and sing Japanese karaoke. The manga art movement is simply another extension of the great Pacific cultural exchange. There is no reason why an American should not be allowed make their own "authentic" manga.
Why cant more people think like this???
gonk 
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