Useless to say I’m fond of Manga, that’s why I decided to start writing
my first post for Let’s Blog! about them. Is there anybody there with the same
passion for Japanese manga? I hope you’ll get in touch in the comment section,
then.
Manga are Japanese comics or
graphic novels that include a big variety of genres like adventure, romance,
historical, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror and also erotic. An author
of manga is called Mangaka
The word manga dates back to 1815
when the great Japanese painter Hokusai Katsushika introduced it to define his work.
The word manga is the union of kanji 漫 (man) = strange, funny and 画
(ga) = image, drawing. So literally is
"funny pictures" or "moving pictures".
Its origin can be dated back to
the Heian period (749 - 1185) with the first painted scrolls: the emakimono. They
associated the images with calligraphic texts, telling a story that is
discovered by unfolding the scroll.The accompanying text is very short, almost
only a caption, pre-eminence is given to the image that can, by itself, tell
the story. This feature is perfectly preserved in modern manga.
The word manga, in other countries,
means Jap anese comic strips but in Japan this word collects all types of comics,
even the European ones.
Manga, with its childlike
features like big eyes (which, however, is not always present given the
different existing styles as each mangaka has its own style of drawing), may
suggest that they are intended for children and young people but that’s not the
case: the plots of manga can include themes and topics that are not suitable
for children or young people.
You start reading manga from the
last page and each page from the right to the left. To read the cartoons you start
at the top right and go down. Usually the illustrations are in black and white,
rarely are coloured.
In Japan, before the tankobon version is put on sale,
they publish weekly chapters of the story on the famous Japanese magazine Jump
Comics. The tankobon version is the paper format for manga,
made up of about 200 pages, 13cm x 18cm. This format make it easy to
take them with you.
Akira
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