Picture Books; Manga

I was into anime in my younger days; to me, it was just another type of cartoon to watch. During my time in Japan, I learned that some of the anime I was into, also had their own manga. As a kid who was into both reading and watching shows/movies, learning that there was a book with pictures not made just for little kids, was a game changer.

Yes, I know the popular Shonen Jump is technically aimed towards a younger male audience, but if you see someone—who isn’t a child, reading a volume of One Piece, you wouldn’t have a puzzled look on your face. If they were reading something made from Dr. Seuss, you would question why they’re reading a children’s book. Comic books were also a thing, but I did not discover those till later. For those who don’t know what a manga is, the easiest explanation is a Japanese comic book read right to left. The structure between them is different, but they’re both visually heavy stories in book-like formats. Both get opportunities to be turned into shows or movies; for manga, they’re generally turned into cartoon shows called anime. Original animes do exist, but a vast majority come from an already established story. Just like a movie based off a book, such as Harry Potter or Hunger Games. Anime used to be the main way people consumed these stories, but now people have realized that the manga these anime’s are based on, are much further in their plot—sometimes already completed.

I remember as a child, when my mom would buy me a new Shonen Jump comic, she would brag to people how fast I read it. Shonen Jump is an anthology of multiple one chapter stories compiled into one book, released weekly. Currently, they have about 20 titles they publish on a weekly basis, each chapter about 15 pages. As a kid, I was not reading all of these stories. Honestly at the time, maybe I read a third or just a fourth of it? The problem with randomly jumping in, is that the stories are not paced out the same way. You’re not reading chapter 10 for all these stories, you’re reading from whatever chapter they left off on from last week. For instance, if you jump in to read One Piece, they just released chapter 1,121. So yeah, if I was a new reader jumping in, I would not understand what’s going on. After a certain number of chapters have released, they create a volume, compiling all the chapters for one story into a single book. This is how you can read the story from start to finish, or from start to whatever is currently being released. There’s also manga that come out biweekly, monthly, and from different publication companies. Shonen Jump is just the most popular one out there, housing stories such as One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Haikyu!!. 

When I started reading as a kid, I did not keep up with it when I moved back to America. I kept up with these stories either by anime or video games that would retell these stories. Dragonball Z games do this constantly; one of the reasons why I know the story of Dragonball Z so well even without reading the manga. From what I could recall, I started reading manga again around 2017/2018. I remember reading manga during my break times for my job at CVS that I started in late 2017, but I also used my favorite manga reading website MangaDex that was created in 2018. So I can’t recall if I started reading during my breaks before or after MangaDex, but either way, I was in it. Deep. I caught back up to One Piece at the time and started catching up to other popular manga before their anime counterparts released, such as Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen. Even diving into manhwa, which is a Korean version, but in a long strip format read from top to bottom. One of the most popular examples is Solo Leveling, which was based on a light novel, turned into a manhwa, now being turned into an anime.

I was thriving at this time, so much to read and catch up on. Anime had lost my interest due to the way filler was used in older animes. Filler, is content added to the original story to pad it out and make it feel longer. This was mostly done because animes would catch up to their manga counterparts and instead of waiting for more chapters, they would create their own stories. The most relatable example would be what they did with Game of Thrones last season. They had caught up to the books, to the point where the last one wasn’t even out yet; the author had shared the major plot points they needed to hit, so they created their own story to hit these points. Fullmetal Alchemist had a similar situation at the time, midway through they started creating their own content since the manga was still ongoing. Nowadays, studios tend to wait for the manga to produce more chapters, which is one of the reasons why seasons between Attack on Titan took so long. Anime studios have realized that majority of fans prefer faithful adaptations, rather than random original content in between. This is evident when Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, was created. A retelling of the same story as before, but based solely on the manga; this version was praised heavily more than its first anime iteration.

Currently, my manga reading time has gone down. I believe this is because most manga I’m interested in now, are still ongoing. I don’t mind being a current reader, but I realized that I get less invested in the story overall by this, just because it’s hard to remember information on a weekly basis for multiple stories. Jujutsu Kaisen is a good manga and anime, but I am unable to confidently tell you the names of major characters. I know their faces, I’ve always been good with faces, but names get jumbled together. This probably just stems from how I remember names in general. If I were to read chapters back to back or on a daily basis, the names of characters would stick easier for me. Having to wait a whole week to possibly see their name again, is kind of hard to memorize.

For my physical collection, I’ve decided to buy the first and last volume for any series I’ve read, to show the beginning and the end. This is my way of showing a complete read through has been done. Preferably in Japanese, because not all manga get official translations. Sometimes fans have to go out of their way to translate and post the translations online for people who can’t read Japanese. If I get the space and money, I would of course love to get in between volumes of series I’ve read. Maybe even get English versions if available.

To end this post, I will name a few manga I personally would recommend:

If you want to invest in a world that’s popular, One Piece. Like I mentioned earlier, this manga has over a thousand chapters, still ongoing, has an anime, multiple movies, and even a live adaption that is currently ongoing as well.

For a fantasy slice of life story that takes place after defeating the big bad final boss, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. Manga is still ongoing, season one of the anime ended recently and is one of the highest rated anime’s out there.

A slice of life sports story about volleyball, Haikyu!!. The manga is done, with the anime concluding soon with a final film on the way. I don’t watch a lot of anime, but I made sure to watch this one before the most recent movie came out.

Both complete manga and anime story, Attack on Titan. This is an anime even my dad was into and is a big fan of. A thrilling story of humans surviving behind a wall in a world filled with Titans, giant humanoid creatures.

Lastly, this one is manga only, Goodnight Punpun. Another slice of life story, what can I say I have a favorite genre, marketed more towards young adults. A coming of age story dealing with heavy topics, while following the main character from elementary school, all the way to their early twenties.

If none of these seem interesting to you, don’t worry, there’s plenty other options out there. Any genre you can think of, they have a manga. Even dirty ones—pervert.