How to Read Manga- very different version…

I kind of got my hopes up when I read the title for this weeks extra reading, “How to read 1,000,000 Manga Pages.” Of course, I didn’t realize it would be a discourse by Lev Manovich in which he analyzes the color spectrum of images. Or that’s the closest to understanding that I had while listening. Admittedly, his accent on top of the images he used caused my concentration to fade in and out. Maybe some of you were better students when it came to that lecture…

But that title led me to this post.

I am guessing that most people in this class had picked up a graphic novel and had some type of interest before attending. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for me. But sense I had read so much Japanese manga I thought that there would be some type of bridge that linked the two, some way to further my understanding. But I was wrong. It’s not that the art is different, that’s to be expected. Japanese manga functions under different mores. They have different lines to denote certain emotion, their frames are not as linear and their backgrounds have a formulaic set that mangakas use when not applying a place.

This is the traditional reading direction, by the way. I had to train myself to read from right to left again. And I still initially read left to right before realizing something is wrong.

Another difference between manga and graphic novels/comics are the audience. There is a large audience for Manga in America, but most of the readers are female or elementary age boys. I kind of doubt that can be said for graphic novels/comics. The reason being is largely due to manga having more genres to attract a wide array of people.

Going down the list

  • Action/Adventure
  • Romance
  • Sports and Games (Ranging from soccer to Majong)
  • Historical Drama
  • Comedy or gag
  • Science Fiction/Mecha
  • Fantasy/Supernatural
  • Mystery
  • Horror
  • Psychological
  • Tragedy
  • Ecchi (lewd or lascivious manga, involving a lot of panty shots)
  • Business/Commerce
  • Shounen ai (directly translated means “Boy’s love”)
  • Shoujo ai (“Girl’s love)
  • Yuri ( a more “mature” relationship between two women)
  • Yaoi ( a more “mature” relationship between two men. Oddly enough, this is more likely to be read by female fans due to the forbidden relationship aspect. Japanese plots also like to toy with incest for some reason.)
  • Josei (manga geared toward women in their late teens and early twenties)
  • Seinen ( manga geared toward men in their late teens and early twenties)
  • Shounen (geared toward elementary boys)
  • Shoujo (geared toward younger girls)
  • Doujinshi (self published or amateur manga- mainly sold at places like comicon)

Manga is something that you can walk onto a subway and see a business man and a high school girl reading. Of course with vastly different plots.

Anywho, to get slightly back onto the topic of this week. Reading online comics is a much more mainstream notion than most would think. That’s how I got addicted to manga. Because it was easily accessible, easily updated and free. This seems like it would be a detriment to the author, but I think it runs along the lines of downloading music. People still want to own a copy or have something tangible. Also, the manga that is translated onto an online format is normally sold in weekly magazines and then larger volumes following an arc. People are still definitely getting paid. Especially, if it turns into an anime, movie or drama.

I am sorry if this was all over the place, but what I am basically saying is that comics or manga being online just leads to a larger audience.

9 thoughts on “How to Read Manga- very different version…”

  1. Kacy,
    Your understanding of manga astounds me, as I don’t know much about the medium, other than Berzerk, but that was more in movie type form. Could you make some suggestions for online mangas?

    1. Berzerk? That’s a pretty hard core manga to read actually…are you interested in action stories with a lot of drama? I can recommend some mangas but I first need to know what type of stories and characters you like.

      1. I didn’t read Berzerk (yet, I have the first manga), I watched the TV series turned into a box set that I absolutely love. I’m not sure what type of stories I like, but action with drama sounds pretty good. Something with intriguing character is probably the most important thing for me…

        1. Well, I gotta admit, I just finished this one manga that I absolutely adored called Psyren. Luckily they just finished translating the series so you can read it all in one go. If you like this manga and need some more recommendations just let me know!

          Here is a site to check it out.

          http://www.mangafox.com

  2. I’m glad you commented on the video, even in a counterfactual way, since I agree that the lecture really spent too much time on the method and not nearly enough time justifying the method through results. While I don’t really enjoy manga’s visual style, I do admire the ability of Japanese mangaka to tell whatever stories they want, without fear of lack of publishing or ridicule.

  3. I had wanted to include some manga this semester, but the syllabus just got too long (and too expensive). But manga is definitely worth checking out, and you can see manga’s influence on mainstream American comics in almost any issue put out by DC or Marvel these days. By the way, Wired has a good introduction to manga.

    1. Why DC in particular? My gateway comic to manga was Marvel’s Spider-man Loves Mary Jane, pencilled by Takeshi Miyazawa, who left Marvel to become a mangaka.

      Perhaps I’m too narrowly defining manga – my idea of manga probably is more properly shoujo, which is definitely what SMLMJ fits into. What type of manga influence do you see in DC’s comics?

  4. Ian, I felt like Manovich’s method and results were almost one in the same. As he says himself, he’s not looking to criticize content, but generate enormous amounts of data to identify trends that allow for further research. I felt his results were pretty interesting as a stepping stone to further scholarship.

    1. Perhaps I’m just frustrated since I’ve seen the same type of thing done already (in 1986, I believe) with literature, with a lot more actual analysis generated from the raw data. Plus there’s the whole misleading title – it’d be more accurate to call the lecture “Lots of old magazine covers, oh, yeah, and a little bit of manga”

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