A Beginner’s Guide to Reading Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for printed comics and cartoons. (Anime, on the other hand, is animation for television or film). Although manga is essentially an animated film, manga occupies a higher place in Japanese culture than comics in American society. Manga is highly regarded both as an art and as a form of popular literature. In fact, a majority of the adult population in Japan reads manga, and several major manga magazines in Japan sell tens of millions of copies each week.

This should tell you that manga isn’t just kid stuff.

What kind of story would you be interested in?

A hard-nosed detective hired to find a missing girl?

A world dominated by animal-human hybrids after an apocalyptic war in 2054?

A boy-meets-girl-meets-giant-robot adventure?

A historical play about the shadowy generals of the Genpei War?

A successful journalist who adopts a handsome homeless man as a pet after her fiancé dumps her?

There are hundreds of stories to choose from in manga books and there is something for every taste. Additionally, many manga titles combine ornate imagery and frames with nuanced stories for a highly entertaining and addictive read.

Manga is generally classified into different genres. The most popular include:

– Shonen manga for boys and teenage boys

– Shojo manga for girls and teenage girls

– Kodomo for children

– Redisu for adult women

– its for grown men

– Jidaimono is a historical drama

– Suiri is crime and murder

– ecchi is erotic food

So how do I get started with manga? Easy.

1. Go to the store. Most major bookstores have a manga section, but to really get a selection of titles, try a comic book store. Anyway, manga books usually have colored covers and maybe the first few pages too, but the rest of the story is usually in black and white.

2. Look through the books, read a little in them. When you find something you like, stop and take it home.

3. If you are familiar with surfing the internet, read manga online first. Look for one of the many directories of online manga sites and browse those sites for interesting titles. Many of the sites actually show the manga book – art and text – from his website.

Remember that when reading manga, you read frames from right to left. When you open a manga – just like a regular book – there is often a page that tells you how to read it.

Try out a few manga titles to get a feel for what you like. As soon as you have found a title that you like, you can search for other identical or similar titles from this publisher. Look for the English publisher’s website on the front of the book and then check out that website – it will likely have descriptions of all their books and maybe even a small sample online.

Thanks to Tracey Patterson | #Beginners #Guide #Reading #Manga