25th June 2021
Stories told with pictures have been found in Japan from centuries ago. Picture scrolls have been found from almost a thousand years ago and picture books have been found from the 1700’s (seventeen-hundreds) .
The modern manga comes from around the time of the Second World War and Osamu Tezuka’s `Astro Boy´ is said to be the first big story of the modern era. Osamu Tezuka had an interest in Disney and it influenced him.
Manga are larger than Western comics and are usually not coloured. There are manga for both children and adults. Adult manga is much more popular with adults than comics are with adults in most countries. There are sports stories, historical stories and romance stories, among other genres. The biggest selling manga is usually fighting manga and a lot of fighting manga are set in fantasy worlds. This fighting type of manga is particularly popular in some foreign countries. The content of adult manga can be violent and can have sexual content.
Online reading has helped increase sales. The Internet has helped some manga artists show their work on their websites. Most publishers are big however and the manga artist usually works with a team. The team has to communicate with an editor who has some control over the story. The manga artist, whose name is on the title of the manga, usually sketches or draws the pictures and creates the story text. The assistants in the team might draw from the sketches if the main artist has not drawn them and the assistants do other things such as background drawing or they write down the text in the frames. Some manga is drawn on paper, some is digital and some are a mix of paper and digital.
Working conditions as part of a manga writing team are often very tough and it is difficult to know who the assistants are.
■ Do you have any favourite manga?
■ ~ is a popular manga isn’t it?
■ Have you ever seen Western comics?
■ Do people around you read manga or comics?
■ Have you read any Japanese manga?
