Manga

Manga (漫画 literally "irresponsible images") is a term for Japanese comic books, printed cartoons, and by extension, animated features done in a similar style.

Development

Illustrated stories are an important part of Japan's historical art, as moralists, philosophers, comics and others informed their audience on scrolls with plate images depicting scenes in the story. Manga, as a distinct publishing and illustration style, began during the occupation of Japan after WWII, and the illustration of characters (many if not most manga characters are drawn with European facial features) as well as the stories themselves strongly displayed the American influence from American TV and the comic books brought to Japan by US GIs. Astro Boy, by Osamu Tezuka, was one of the first and most popular manga, and remains popular today. Throughout most of its production, Manga has targeted teen boys and young men (shounen) from 8 to 18. However, since the late 70s, manga has found fans with young girls (shoujo style), older adult men (seinen style), and with more mature women.

Style and Topics

Distinctive characteristics include oversized eyes and tiny mouths and noses. A more detailed explanation of the various manga genres can be found under Anime.

Topics range from classical manga stories of space, super heroes, and robots to stories of very adult focused high school memories (Honey and Clover), slapstick high school comedies. There is even a manga about Bread Making (Yakitate Japan), Japanese Chess (Shion no Ou), and microbes (Moyshimon).

Manga in the US

Manga has become popular in the US, and manga about almost anything can be found. Manga is often printed in the original Japanese language format. This means that many manga read from right to left, unlike American comics which can be confusing to those not used to it. This is done primarily to preserve the artwork from distortion by mirroring the pictures to create a western left to right orientation.