What are Japanese comics called? Japanese comics - manga

Currently, Japanese art trends are gaining more and more popularity. A person who wants to learn something new about the culture of the Land of the Rising Sun may have a question about the meaning of the word "manga".

What is manga, every resident of Japan knows, from young to old, but in Russia this direction is only gaining momentum. In Japan, this word means special kind comics. Only the essence of the information and its presentation in them are not the same as in the American ones we are used to. Caricatures in newspapers, funny pictures, grotesques - all this is manga.

History of appearance

In Japan, comics, which have been known as manga since 1814, appeared a very long time ago. the first progenitors modern style are sketches of Japanese monks dating back to the twelfth century. These pictures were of caricature and satirical content, and they depicted violators of the charter of the monastery. There are still images from the life of animals in this style, made by the Buddhist Toba, also dating from the 12th century. The term "manga" was coined by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai in the early nineteenth century. With this word, he denoted his caricature sketches, and translated into Russian, "manga" means "sloppy (man) picture (ga)".

Manga acquires the form that is known in our time after the Second World War. Tezuka Osamu made a great contribution to the development of Japanese comics, who, with the help of his students, brought this art form into popular culture. The creators of comics (mangakas) most often work without partners and not only draw manga, but also write text for it. Although in some cases over the creation another work employs up to 4 people. They know better than anyone how to read manga.

Currently, there are Japanese, Chinese (manhua) and Korean (manhwa) manga. The sound of the term in these languages ​​is somewhat different, but the hieroglyph is the same. Also, not only professional manga is spreading, but also its amateur version - doujinshi. Very often, well-known comic book creators started out as amateurs.

Distribution in Japan

In Japan, comics of this format are so loved that every year more than a billion copies of collections of the most various topics and format. They are so popular that more than twenty-five collections are published per family, and about ten issues per person per year. But even these figures cannot convey the scale of this hobby. It often happens that the latest issue of a magazine is left on a seat in a subway car or on a cafe table after reading it. It immediately finds a new owner.

Most often, manga is released in the form of books, which can even compete with reference books in terms of the number of pages. Usually in these books up to twenty stories are printed, and their plot continues for several numbers. There are Japanese comics in the form of colorful magazines. The stories that are most in demand are usually repeated in a special edition in the form of thick books containing different series of the same story. The most popular of them become the basis of serial anime (Japanese cartoons).

The culture of Japanese comics in the Land of the Rising Sun is high, they are read by the entire population of the country, regardless of age, status and gender. The assortment on the shelves of shops or specialized kiosks reaches hundreds of items. Passion for this direction has reached the round-the-clock sale of magazines in vending machines.

Who is reading the manga?

Manga... What comics are, probably, it is not necessary to explain. But Japanese cartoon stories are not just a collection of stories with caricature images. The former Prime Minister of the country called such periodicals one of the ways to bring the country out of the economic crisis and improve its image on the world stage. What is so interesting about her fans? One of the features this genre is the direction of style to a specific target audience. For example, there are manga comics for boys or girls. Adults - men and women, of various social strata, can also satisfy their interests. And, of course, publishers pay special attention to children. Designed for a children's audience most of comics. But even in this category there are gradations: manga is divided into comics for boys and comics for girls.

In addition, manga is divided into genres. Specialized editions satisfy the reader's needs for science fiction, adventure, gambling and pornography, stories about the life and exploits of superheroes, etc. Complete list it is very difficult to compose specialized genres, and the classification according to age categories is also rather arbitrary. It's common to see an adult flipping through children's manga. And it happens the other way around: a completely scientific journal in this style may end up in the hands of a schoolboy.

Manga, in which adventures take the reader into a fantasy world, allows you to revel in freedom. The education system in Japan excludes freethinking and prepares everyone according to the same model. As a result, it is only in manga that young people give vent to their aspirations and individuality.

The adult generation, on the other hand, rests while flipping through the next magazine, the subject matter of which often touches on all urgent issues and allows you to philosophize on unexpected topics. Therefore, manga for adults is not just an interesting pastime, but a world of hidden desires that you want to plunge into again and again. Like a drug.

Distinctive features

A distinctive feature of manga magazines is their volume (up to a thousand pages). But this circumstance does not affect the speed of reading the material - the reader usually spends about half an hour on a magazine of medium thickness (about three hundred and fifty pages). The average Japanese knows how to read manga correctly and masters the material of one page in about 4 seconds. The comics are prepared in such a way that the information from them is assimilated literally at a glance. And this is their main difference from their European or American counterparts, which are overloaded with the text component.

The style of Japanese minimalism familiar from childhood is also inherent in these stories. Therefore, most Japanese people know how to create a manga. Storyboarding, editing, and symbolism are fully utilized in the comics. Instead of a voluminous explanation, the manga contains hints and mystery. A raised eyebrow, a hand gesture, a directed gaze will tell the Japanese more than the most detailed explanations through the text. The time and place of action are indicated by one or two hints in the background - a tree branch, the sun at its zenith, and the emotions of the moment are conveyed by a smile, a tear on the cheek or an angry look. These ways of expressing actions and emotions allow you not to carefully read the text for each picture, but to perceive the image as a whole, barely looking at it.

Drawing in the genre of Japanese comics

Images in Japanese comics are notable for their monochrome. Basically, only the cover of a book or magazine is designed using color, while the comic itself is presented in black and white. Occasionally to highlight important points, mangaka color separate illustrations.

Before drawing manga, a fan of this genre will need to know distinctive features this image style. The drawings are read from right to left, clearly storyboarded, and speech is written in the same way as in American comics - “in clouds”.

The heroes of Japanese comics convey their emotional state with amazing accuracy. To do this, the creators of the manga use a proprietary method - a special drawing various parts faces. A criss-cross wrinkle drawn on the character's forehead accurately conveys anger, a raised eyebrow is surprise, and a square mouth is a clear expression of rage.

The peculiar "masks" of the characters convey to the reader hostility and admiration, envy, surprise and joy. For any human emotion, the artists of these comics have a precise way to convey it. And precisely because of this, the main thing when creating a manga is the amazing drawing of the facial features of the characters.

Manga Influence: Research Findings

Broadcast important information pattern is already genetically embedded in the nation of the Japanese. Even writing in this country is closest to fine arts. With the development of television in Japan, the understanding of the superiority of the visual method of transmitting information over text is only strengthening.

Researchers of the influence of manga, as well as teachers and psychologists, note that children who grew up on these comics understand the essence of the problem more easily and find ways to solve it. This is the result of applying informal logic when reading this kind of periodicals. Another achievement of young people in Japan is attributed to the passion for comics - scientists believe that it is thanks to this that young people easily master programming and other work with computer technology on the professional level. A natural question arises: "Manga - what is it: funny unpretentious pictures or a form of education of the future?"

Manga Science

Japanese comics, their popularity and the effectiveness of assimilation of visual information have attracted the attention of scientists so much that in recent times the production of serious scientific literature and textbooks in this style is gaining momentum.

Thanks to a number of experiments, it was possible to prove that after reading the course of economic theory, set out in the manga style, the memorization and development of complex economic concepts occurs at an unconscious level. The disclosure of economic topics in adventure stories requires a minimum amount of time to read them (2-3 hours), but the result is amazing. As a result, students calmly operate with terms and know the principles of operation of market mechanisms.

A number of large companies adopt this style and use it when creating instructions, working documents, catalogs. For example, the Taisei Company prepared a manual for workers in the form of a comic book. It explains in detail the new technologies used in the construction of high-rise buildings.

Manga by genre

Since in Japan manga is equated with a genre visual arts and literature at the same time, then the variety of such works is amazing. Come out at the most different options romance and horror, science fiction and erotica, business and sports. History, adventure, romance - all directions and genres cannot be listed!

Manga by genre, as in any other art form, is divided into more popular and those that are in demand only for a specific target audience. The most read stories include stories that touch on gender relations, martial arts, everyday life and romance.

Kodomo is a genre created especially for kids. This is a children's manga. What is kodomo? What are its distinguishing features? First of all, these comics are distinguished by the simplicity of the plot (sometimes the idea and its development are completely absent). The drawing of the characters is greatly simplified and resembles the American style of performance. There are no scenes of cruelty, and the manga itself is more often entertaining. Mangakas only teach children to perceive their creations.

Shounen is for boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. How to draw manga for this audience, every mangaka knows. Dynamism, speed of plot development, more adventures and, of course, romance. The themes of rivalry in sports, life and love are very common in this genre, and girls are drawn as exaggeratedly beautiful. This is all that may interest a teenage boy.

But the most popular in Japan is manga in shojo genre. It is designed for the most reading target audience - young girls ranging from 12 to 18 years old. The peculiarity of this genre is that central character the plot is a girl or girl. The questions of her self-determination in the surrounding world, the process of the formation of the heroine as a person are touched upon. And, of course, not without romantic adventures.

Here, the conventionality of the image characteristic of the manga is fully manifested, and the characters are very energetic, beautiful and full of enthusiasm in relations with the world around them. Thanks to this, manga for girls is firmly winning the hearts of the younger generation.

Adult Special Comics

A separate target audience for the creators of comics is the adult population of Japan. All revelations are found in these works modern life- not only romance, but also cruelty, violence.

Also manga for adults differs in content, in which there are scenes not only of an erotic, but also of a more frank nature. There are also specific genres such as yuri, shounen-ai, and yaoi that deal with same-sex relationships.

But there is also a separate style for a female audience - josei. It is characterized by the development of the plot from school to old age. That is, the whole life of an individual is collected in a manga. Stories created for middle-aged women are very realistic and ordinary, and therefore they are in good demand.

Manga in Russia

In Russia, manga comics are a fairly new phenomenon. Interest in this type of art from the Land of the Rising Sun is just waking up. Almost all stories in the style of Japanese comics that can be found and read on the territory of our state are translations of fans and amateurs. spending own time and means, they adapt popular magazines in Japan and distribute them via the Internet. As a result, anyone who wants to touch the world modern Japan can do it for free.

Only two publishers are officially engaged in the release of manga magazines in Russia. These are the Comic Book Factory and Sakura Press. You can also find periodicals in this style from several illegal publishers. Therefore, just going to a bookstore and buying a fresh issue of manga, the adventures of which you want to read, is unlikely to work out. One of the first publications published in the Russian Federation was the work of Rumiko Takahashi "Ranma ½".

It is believed that cartoons are created mainly for children. However, in the Land of the Rising Sun, animation, namely anime based on manga, is popular not only among children, but also among adults.

Manga - as part of Japanese culture

Japanese comics, manga are part of the national Japanese culture. They are not limited to any genres and graphics (“big eyes”), but characteristic bright animated works are created on their basis.

The most developed animation culture in the world is considered to be Japanese animation, which includes anime and, of course, manga.

What is manga and what is the difference between it and anime? Few people ask this question, but it is essential and lies in the very nature of these two concepts. They are an integral part of Japanese culture. Manga is the original source of anime. In fact, without it, there would be anime, because only the most popular Japanese comics are further multiplied and come to life. Therefore, it is correct to say that manga is Japanese comics, and anime is already animation.

A brief digression into the origins of "Stories in Pictures"

The manga previously bore the modest and understandable name "Stories in Pictures". Archaeologists found the first mention of cartoon stories in the first centuries of Japan's existence. Researchers have found drawings structurally reminiscent of modern comics in the tombs of ancient rulers, also called kofun mounds.

The spread of comics was hampered by the ambiguity and complexity of Japanese writing. Therefore, the manga Japanese reads from right to left, not left to right, illustrated with many black and white drawings, graphic special effects, and minimal text.

Choujuugiga ("Funny Animal Pictures") is considered the first Japanese comic book. They date back to the 12th century and are written by the Buddhist priest and artist Toba (another name for Kakuyu). Choujuugiga is made in the form of 4 paper scrolls. However, during the time of Kakuya, the work he created did not have a modern name.

Strange and funny pictures, characterized by grotesque images, gave a single name - manga.

What is manga and doujinshi?

Oddly enough, seemingly self-contained Japanese animation drew a lot from European cartoons and American comics. This merger took place in the second half of the 19th century. And already at the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese comics found their own niche in Japanese culture. The manga was financed and encouraged by the government. However, comics that ran counter to the interests of the state were banned. It was then that the first fantasy hero manga - a giant robot that opposed the hated USA (1943).

The real revolution took place in post-war years thanks to Tezuka Osamu. Manga was formed as the main direction of Japan and acquired features that are characteristic of it today: black and white illustrations on strips, color cover, rare pictures on the pages, standard expression of emotions with signs, strokes.

Those who draw and create manga are called "mangakas". However, in the Japanese market, there are not only professional manga, but also amateur ones. It was with "doujinshi" that many modern mangaka started.

What is manga? This is a synthesis of cartoon effects, comics, exciting stories. These are the unrealized dreams of cinematographers about cheap, but beautiful and high-quality special effects that attract attention and make viewers follow every step and action of the characters. This is the depth and variety of stories.

The interesting, exciting events that unfold in the pages of manga soon became a haven for many completely unrealized in science fiction, mysticism and others.

Manga has access to cinematic techniques for less money: drawing action with different angles, large, medium plans, detailing, demonstration of movement in stages, visuality.

It should also be noted the transmission of emotions characteristic of manga characters. It is large-scale, grotesque, but never superfluous. The Japanese themselves in life do not use the mimic transmission of feelings, they simply say: "I'm sad, fun." But manga and anime characters are the exact opposite of their creators. The transfer of emotions is concentrated and realized through poses, costumes, dances, words, through everything that surrounds the character.

Looking through Japanese comics, you can find sparks escaping from your eyes, a whirlwind over your head. European readers sometimes do not fully understand this designation, but readers from the Land of the Rising Sun know this “language” very well. After all, the main templates for the emotions of the characters were developed by O. Tezuka.

It is believed that the more the hero experiences, the more schematic his image becomes, the more his character changes. appearance from realistic to grotesque. It is this transformation that attracts European fans: it gives dynamism, lightness and expressiveness to manga.

What is unusual in the symbolic language of Japanese comics? Very often, specific designations, known even to a small Japanese, will be new to an unprepared reader, and therefore will be incomprehensible.

For example, the traditional manifestation of anger on the pages of manga is the cross, and the flow of blood from the nose of the hero is a sign of lust and lust, fainting is neither fear nor a sign of poor health, but a sign of surprise.

Based on this, before you start studying manga strips, you should first study its “conditional language”, and, by the way, it is no easier than Japanese characters.

The word "manga" is quite ambiguous.. This includes political cartoons in newspapers as well. But for the Japanese, this is primarily comics. 4.5 billion books and magazines are printed annually in Japan. A quarter of this number (something around 1.2 billion copies) are comics published in the form of magazines or books.

Dozens of publishers throw away every week on book market colorful magazines as thick as telephone directories. Each of them contains 10-15 different stories, printed with continuation from issue to issue. A significant part of them is designed for a children's audience. There are comics for boys and comics for girls. Their content is markedly different. One-time circulations of the most popular of them reach 3-5 million. But there are also manga for boys and girls, men and women. There are dozens of specialized publications devoted to science fiction, adventures from the life of robots, astronauts or gangsters, ufology, demonology, pornography, gambling, sports...

The ones that are in the greatest demand are published in the form of books (often as serials in 10-20 volumes), which are distributed throughout the country by tens of millions. And on the basis of the best of them serial cartoons are created.

In all countries, comics are published mainly for children. Adults prefer newspapers and books. And in Japan, almost the entire population of the country is drawn into it. Comic book magazines are everywhere. Dozens of titles to choose from bookstores and newsstands. For those who cannot imagine a night without their favorite reading, they work around the clock manga street vending machines. Based on the fact that more than a billion copies of manga are published in the country every year, then there are 10 magazines for every adult and child, and about 27 for a family. But these numbers by themselves do not yet reflect the extent of the craze for comics. After all, many people, having leafed through the latest issue, leave it on the bus seat, on the luggage rack of the train, on a table in a cafe. And to the discarded manga the hands of a new reader immediately reach out. It is not uncommon to see an adult enthusiastically leafing through a magazine for schoolchildren. Surveys conducted at a number of Japanese universities showed that among the top ten periodicals read by students, four were manga. The average reader "swallows" a 320-page manga comic in 20 minutes. In other words, he spends 3.75 seconds on each page of a comic book, while still managing to absorb what he read quite well. The point here is not something special talent. Just Japanese manga differ markedly from American-European comics.

Manga Creation Technique close - the same principles of symbolism, the same techniques of storyboarding, editing. If a American artist carefully works out all the details of the picture, then only a hint is enough for the author of the manga. The hero's questioningly raised eyebrow tells the Japanese reader more than a long-winded explanation in an American comic book. Like , manga art gravitates towards the values ​​of the unspoken. They designate the time of action, for example, by drawing the rising or setting sun behind the heroes, the scene of action - the background against which events take place, the mood - a picture of a broken branch, a falling leaf, a tear rolling down the cheek. That's why japanese reader does not look at each picture, reading the words of the dialogue. He skims the page, taking it as a whole, swallowing the story like a portion of hot noodles - without chewing.

The ability to work not only with text, but also with the pictorial series, one might say, has become part of genetic code Japanese. After all, the entire culture of this country is based on hieroglyphic writing, which is much closer to the picture than any alphabet in the world. It was not for nothing that Sergei Eisenstein spoke of the "kinematicity" of the entire Japanese culture. The widespread use of television in Japan has only strengthened the national predisposition towards the image as a medium richer in information than any text message.

However, the phenomenal Japanese love for manga is explained not only by the traditional preference for pictures over text. opens a window to the unrealizable for the Japanese. In the concrete labyrinths of urbanized Japan, children have no place to play. Manga allows you to mentally enjoy the space. The school makes a child a strictly standard part for a mass production conveyor. In reading comics, young people find answers to the needs of repressed individuality. Busy from morning to evening in production or in the office, an adult Japanese in reading manga is looking for an opportunity to relax, dream about something not related to the affairs of the enterprise or office. Manga for Japanese- not just easy reading. This is the most accessible method of escapism, addictive visual drug. That is why, having discarded the magazine he just read, the Japanese reaches for a new issue of manga, dreaming of plunging into the world of fantasy again. The page http://animelux.ru/manga/, for example, offers to dive into the same world, for example, which intends to offer readers to download without registration longest-running manga series, and many other Internet sites that scan and translate manga in huge quantities.

Japanese comic book phenomenon attracted the attention of publishers, whose interests are extremely far from the creation of entertaining reading matter. The first to master the new techniques were historians who created school textbooks, the content of which became easily accessible even to the most dumb-headed. Then, in the form of manga, some books began to appear, for example, the series “The Life of Remarkable People”.

The ease of assimilation of the material presented in the pictures is amazing. With this in mind, Japanese publishers have begun to release a series of textbooks "Fundamentals of Economics". Complex economic concepts revealed by manga artists in specific situations as a curious adventure story. Any book in this series could be flipped through in an hour or two. At the same time, clear formulations of economic laws, marketing schemes, and principles of interaction between market mechanisms remained in my head.

The Taisei Construction Company has released a comic manual for its workers. new technology in construction multi-storey buildings from reinforced concrete. Sumitomo Insurance Company issued a manga commentary on difficult cases determining the amount of insurance payments in case of road accidents. And the Marujun Machine Building Company used the services of manga artists to create a new catalog of spare parts.

Psychologists, educators, researchers unanimously claim that comics are able to convey information much more effectively than "naked" text. Manga develop in readers the ability to quickly grasp the essence of the problem, without relying on the principles of linear logic. It is the experts who see the reasons why the younger generation of Japan is so successful in mastering computers and the basics of programming. © japantoday.ru

(jap. 漫画, マンガ?, [ˈmɑŋgə] (inf.)) f., skl. - Japanese comics, sometimes called komikku (コミック). Manga, in its current form, began to develop after the end of World War II, heavily influenced by Western tradition, but deeply rooted in earlier Japanese art.

In Japan, manga is read by people of all ages, it is respected both as a form of fine art and as a literary phenomenon, so there are many works of various genres and on a wide variety of topics: adventure, romance, sports, history, humor, Science fiction, horror, erotica, business and others. Since the 1950s, manga has grown into a major branch of Japanese book publishing, with a turnover of $500 million in 2006. It became popular in the rest of the world, especially in the US, where sales in 2006 were in the region of 175-200 million dollars. Almost all manga is drawn and published in black and white, although there is also color, for example, "Colorful", the name of which is translated from English as "colorful". Based on popular manga, most often long manga series (sometimes unfinished), anime is being filmed. The screenplay script may undergo some changes: softened, if any, scenes of fights and battles, removed too much explicit scenes. The artist who draws the manga is called a mangaka, and often he is also the author of the script. If an individual writes the screenplay, then that screenwriter is called a gensakusha (or, more accurately, a manga-gensakusha). It happens that a manga is created on the basis of an already existing anime or film, for example, according to " Star Wars". However, the culture of anime and otaku would not have arisen without manga, because few producers are willing to invest time and money in a project that has not proved its popularity by paying off in the form of a comic book.

Etymology

The word "manga" literally means "grotesque", "weird (or funny) pictures". This term originated in late XVIII - early XIX century with the publication of the works of artists Kankei Suzuki "Mankai zuihitsu" (1771), Santo Kyoden "Shiji no yukikai" (1798), Minwa Aikawa "Manga hyakujo" (1814) and in the famous engravings of Katsushiki Hokusai, who published a series of illustrated albums "Hokusai manga" ("Drawings of Hokusai") in 1814-1834. It's believed that contemporary meaning the words were introduced by the mangaka Rakuten Kitazawa. There are disputes about whether it is permissible to use it in Russian in plural. Initially, the reference portal Gramota.ru did not advise inflecting the word "manga", but recently noted that "judging by the practice of its use, it acts as a declinable noun."

The concept of "manga" outside of Japan was originally associated with comics published in Japan. One way or another, manga and its derivatives, in addition to original works, exist in other parts of the world, in particular in Taiwan, in South Korea, in China, especially in Hong Kong, and are called manhwa and manhua respectively. The names are similar because in all three languages ​​this word is written in the same hieroglyphs. In France, "la nouvelle manga" (French for new manga) is a form of comics influenced by Japanese manga. Manga comics drawn in the United States are called "amerimanga" or OEL, from the English. original English-language manga - "manga of English origin".

What is your take on manga?

What is Manga

Manga is a form of fine art that is expressed as a comic strip drawn in Japanese style. In simple words It is common to say that manga is Japanese comics.

Manga is a cultural phenomenon.

Recently, manga has become popular far beyond Japan. The youth environment in America and European countries quite quickly and warmly accepted this direction in creativity. This is mainly due to the fact that manga is something different from the usual comics, with its oriental philosophy and style unlike the rest.

In Japan itself, manga is not perceived as some kind of purely youth entertainment. In the Land of the Rising Sun, absolutely everyone reads manga, whether they are children or the elderly. This type of creativity is considered an important part of Japanese culture. Manga artists and writers are considered very respected people and their profession is well paid.

For reference. Manga, although it became widespread after the Second World War, actually has a very ancient history. Naturally, in a more primitive form, but similar graphic novels existed in Japan hundreds of years ago.

Why do people of different ages read manga? Why is she popular?

The answer to this question is that manga is not limited to any one genre that can only be of interest to a limited group of people. Manga can be adventure, fantasy, detective, thriller, horror or even erotica or porn (hentai). From this we can conclude that each person can find among the genres of manga exactly what he likes.

It is worth noting that although at first glance it may seem that the manga is just an entertaining read with pictures, in fact it is not. Many representatives of this genre have very deep meaning, put their readers before deep philosophical questions and problems of modern society.

How is manga different from regular comics?

As we already know this species creativity came to us from Japan, and, therefore, it has its own, special, Asian style, so to speak.

• Manga characters almost always have an unnatural big eyes, small mouths and abnormal hair color.
• Emotions in these comics are usually shown exaggerated. For example, if a character cries, then a whole bucket of tears will pour from his eyes. When laughing, the eyes become small slits, and the mouth, in turn, becomes huge, depicting deafening laughter.

Manga and anime. How are they related?

Well, I think that the connection between these two genres of Japanese art is obvious to the disgrace. They flow from each other, so to speak. Naturally, manga is the progenitor of such a direction as anime. By and large, anime is animated manga transferred to TV screens.

Nowadays, it is quite common to observe how anime is created based on manga plots, and vice versa. Sometimes this leads to funny situations, when at first an anime is filmed based on a manga that has not yet been completed, the cartoon series quickly catch up with their text counterpart, after that the plot of the works is divided, and we get two different endings.