What’s black and white and “read” all over? Manga, of course! These Japanese comics and graphic novels have become immensely popular worldwide. Art of Manga is one of the largest exhibitions of original manga drawings ever presented in the United States. Read on to learn more about this globally beloved art form and get ready for your visit.

1. Manga is not a genre, it is a medium.

The medium of manga is extraordinarily diverse, ranging from romance, sports, and historical drama to science fiction, horror, slice of life, isekai (alternate world), and beyond. There are audience categories, such as shōnen (young boy), shōjo (young girl), seinen (18+ men), and josei (18+ women), narrative types, as well countless subgenres targeting different tastes and audiences. These categories can guide readers’ expectations and, in turn, structure the industry as certain styles gain popularity. 

Recently, isekai involving time-slips or reincarnation have become incredibly popular. Takahashi Rumiko’s MAO is no exception. This compelling manga begins with Nanoka, a 15-year-old girl — or so we are led to believe — time traveling to the Taisho era 100 years earlier and meeting Mao, a doctor who blends mystical practices with medicine to heal people and break curses.

Nearly every interest can be met by a manga title. There is a manga for everyone.

2. Manga is basically black and white.

Most serialised manga are created in monochrome, black ink on white paper. In part, this is because of time, cost, printing speed, and production demands. However, black-and-white manga is what the audience has come to expect and love. Yamashita Kazumi’s LAND is a prime example of how black-and-white manga can draw you into the story through fluidly drawn lines and panels. Not everything is black and white though. There is an addition of grayscale in digital production and, of course, screentone, explored in our 4th factoid. 

Color is reserved for covers, promotions, and occasional supplements. South Korean–originated webtoon formats (read vertically on mobile devices), such as JUMP TOON from Shueisha, are also in color. Chiba Tetsuya’s amazing autobiographical A Diary of a Quiet Life (Hinemosu notari nikki), published since 2015, is drawn and colored by hand. 

3. Manga uses a visual grammar. 

Familiarity with this visual grammar lets you “read” the imagery viscerally and quickly. In fact, manga can be read much faster than text. This is, in part, due to the use of manpu, or manga symbols. These expressive symbols clue you into what’s happening in the panel without explanatory text. These could be sparkle marks for bragging, vein marks for anger, or faint lines on the side of a character’s head to imply satisfaction or agreement (as with Yabuki Kenji in Yoshinaga Fumi’s What Did You Eat Yesterday?). Understanding these marks provides a sensory experience, adding dimension to the manga beyond the text. 

In addition, speech bubbles are very important. Their shape gives insight into the mental state of the character. Here, Kenji’s speech bubble is smooth, as he is calm but excited about the meal being prepared. 

Panel frames, reading order, spacing, iconography, sequencing, manpu, and speech bubbles are all integral parts of manga’s multilayered content. One important hint to look out for is when the page and the panels are framed in black instead of white, such as in Oda Eiichiro’s ONE PIECE or Yamazaki Mari’s Palymra. It signals that the page or panel is a flashback, memory, or a rupture from the narrative flow. You can see this for yourself in the ONE PIECE ONLY installation. As you view ONE PIECE on the walls, the strategic use of black frames will become readily apparent. 

4. Screentone is an art.

The use of screentone (トーン／スクリーントーン), sometimes termed Letraset in the US, is a laborious and specialised art still practiced in Japan among mangaka (manga artists). It is the visual tactile nature of the art that is so compelling. Some artists, such as Takahashi Rumiko, still practice this much-loved art by hand, while others have switched to computer graphic versions. The adhesive sheets have printed textures and patterns, such as sky or lines that are carefully applied around or over the drawings. Taniguchi Jirō and his assistants were experts in screentone, sometimes drawing on top of or using Wite-Out on the screentone to intentionally break up the pattern. Manual application of screentone is sadly a dying art. It is also hard to find the range of screentone that was once available in Japan. You can see a good example of screentone in a drawing of Akatsuka Fujio’s workshop in the first room of the exhibition. The exhibition designers used another work by Akatsuka for the layered psychedelic screentone behind Nyarome, a cat/human character, for the gateway from the first room of the exhibition to the second. Here, in the image at the upper left panel from Psychedelic Beach, Nyarome is revealing his shock at a group of seagulls coming toward him calling him “Papa.” What other instances of screentone can you spot in Art of Manga?

For more on screentone, see Natsume Fusanosuke’s essay in the Art of Manga catalogue.

5. Sound effects help make manga immersive.

Sound effects — termed giongo (擬音語, imitative of actual sounds) and gitaigo (擬態語, feelings of states of being) are part and parcel of manga. They are so important that they are drawn into the design of the panels, rather than just placed on top of or alongside an image. While each artist uses sound effects differently, they all carefully think through how the forms and fonts are incorporated into the panels. Sound effects are often used to link panels together. They are not just onomatopoeia, words representing sounds; they are a graphic visual lexicon that allows readers to hear the sounds through sight. While complicated to translate, they are part of the manga’s architecture. It is ideal to keep them intact and not replace them with romanized fonts when possible. Translations can be placed beside the original Japanese effects. In the exhibition drawings, you can see how the artists envision their sound effects and which artists use sound effects more than others. 

One powerful use of sound effects can be seen in the third panel of Tagame Gengoroh’s Our Colors. As Itoda Sora gathers his courage and tells his parents he is gay, the mask he has been wearing gradually releases. The katakana カシュ (kashu) expresses the loosening of the mask, and Sora can become his true self in his parents’ company.