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Manga (漫画) is the Japanese equivalent of comic strips. The word should be
pronounced (Mahn-Gah), where both vowels are spoken as a short "ah."
Literally translated, manga means "irresponsible pictures". Though
roughly equivalent to the American comic book, manga hold more importance in
Japanese culture than comics do in American culture. Manga is much respected
as an art form and its audience is not limited to children.
Manga Magazines usually have many series running concurrently with
approximately 30-40 pages allocated to each series per issue. These manga
magazines, or "anthology magazines," as they are also known, can be anywhere
from 200 to more than 850 pages long. Manga magazines also contain one-shot
comics and various four-panel manga (equivalent to newspaper comics). Manga
series can run for many years if they are successful.
When a series has been running for a while, the stories are collected
together and printed in dedicated book-sized volumes. These volumes use
higher-quality paper, and are useful to those who want to "catch up" with a
series so they can follow it in the magazines or if they find the cost of
the weeklies or monthlies to be prohibitive.
Manga have been translated into many different languages in different
countries including China, France, Italy, and many more. In the USA manga is
still a rather small industry, especially when compared to the animated form
of manga: anime. The leading manga publisher in America is Viz, the American
branch of publisher Shogakukan http://www.shogakukan.co.jp/ (小学館). They have
many popular titles such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dragon Ball Z, Tenchi
Muyo and the various works of Rumiko Takahashi.
The most popular and recognizable style of manga is very distinctive.
Emphasis is often placed on line over form, and the storytelling and panel
placement differ from those in western comics. Panels and pages are read
right-to-left, like kanji. While the art can be incredibly realistic or
cartoonish, it is often noted that the characters look "American", or have
large eyes. Large eyes have become a permanent fixation in manga and anime
since the 1960s when Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy and considered the
god-king of manga, started drawing them that way, mimicking the style of
Disney cartoons from America. Being a very diverse artform, however, not all
manga artists adhere to the conventions most popularized in the west through
anime such as Akira, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Ranma 1/2.
Fairly surprising for western readers is that (somewhat like the Jazz
approach to melody) Manga artists don't feel that their stories and
characters are set in stone. So a set of characters may build relationships,
jobs, etc. in one set of stories ("story arc") only to have another story
arc run where the same characters do not know each other. The "Tenchi"
series in particular is known for this; there are more than thirteen
different pretty-much unrelated story arcs based around Tenchi and his
friends.
Manga, sometimes even adult manga, often have furigana. The purpose of
furigana in manga is to help younger children who are still learning how to
read complex Japanese characters. They can read the simple-character
furigana earlier because it is taught in school earlier than the complex
characters are. There are even special furigana Japanese-English
dictionaries. Furigana is also often used for character names, where unusual
kanji are used or the name may have more than one possible reading.
Taking a look at online scans of manga is a good way to experience
the genre.
Unofficial fan made comics which continue with a series' story or write
an entirely new one using its characters also exist. They are known as
doujinshi.
Manga-ka (manga artists)‡
- Ai Yazawa
- Akira Toriyama
- CLAMP
- Eiichiro Oda
- Fujiko Fujio
- Gosho Aoyama (青山剛昌)
- Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿)
- Junji Ito (伊藤潤二)
- Kaiji Kawaguchi
- Katsuhiro Otomo
- Kazuo Umezu (楳図かずお)
- Ken Akamatsu (赤松健)
- Kia Asamiya
- Kosuke Fujishima
- Masamune Shirow
- Osamu Tezuka （手塚治虫）the God of Comics
- Riyoko Ikeda
- Rumiko Takahashi (高橋留美子)
- Sanpei Sirato (or Shirato)
- Shin Takahashi (高橋しん)
- Takehiko Inoue
- Takumi Nagayasu
- Tohru Fujisawa
- Yosiharu Tuge (or Tsuge) （つげ義春）
- Yousuke Takahashi
- Yukinobu Hoshino
- Yukito Kishiro
Major distributions
- ADV Manga
- Raijin Comics
- Shonen Jump
- Tokyopop
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