Week 10: Manga and Japanese Comic Tradition

For this week I had read Budda by Osamu Tezuka, Rama Book 1 by Rumiko Takahashi, and Cinderella Boy by Makoto Yumeno.

While reading and learning about manga this week I was surprised to learn how segregated the genres of manga were. Of course manga is for any age group to enjoy but having them separated by gender and age is unique to what I have seen in American comics. Finding out how large the manga market is and the acceptance of it in Japanese society also shows me how differently comics are perceived in American society.

There's a discernible difference between manga and American comics. The most obvious difference was that manga are traditionally black and white and comics are in color. However, a volume of manga is much longer than a standard issue of a comic. Also the demand for manga seemed to have a larger demographic than comics which is the result of the different cultural perceptions of illustrated literature. From my experience, comics and manga had preconceptions of its readers being immature or childish, and as a result these media were not as respected as regular books. Even though I was never shamed by my family for my interests, I always felt this pressure from classmates at school. I still struggle with bringing up my interests with others for fear of being seen as immature.

Of the manga I read this week I found Budda to be the most interesting in terms of story and art style. The design of the characters were charming and felt as if they had some influence of classic Disney characters. The movement and the expressions were fluid and not as stiff compared to Rama and Cinderella Boy and its story line was more serious in tone. Rama and Cinderella both slightly failed to keep my interest because their storylines felt surface level and the characters weren't compelling enough to convince me to read more.