11/11/2018
When asked about literature, one can always argue that literature is of many kinds. It isn’t just big fat bound books with unimaginative olive green covers, but also various other kinds such as comic-books, poetry and manga. And our Literar-I member Sai Sushma would like to draw your attention to MANGA (in caps, for emphasis).
Manga is a very popular medium originally from Japan. They technically mean comics or cartooning. It includes works of a very large variety of genres ranging from fantasy, science-fiction, action, comedy, romance, school-life, detective, historical, drama, psychological, thriller and many more.
It is broadly divided into five categories
catering to the audience namely: Shounen (pre-teen to teen male audience), Shoujo (pre-teen to teen female audience), Seinen (Young Men), Josei (Young Women) and Doujinshi (Fan works). Manga is typically published in serial magazines as serials and episodes, and if it receives a decent response, the comics, are compiled and sold in volumes. If they cross expectations, then, the rights are usually bought by the anime industry to make anime.
Why all the hype over a bunch of black and white comics you ask?
Manga is not only great ideas put in dialogue, but it is also great ideas put in art. It is a medium that caters to both the literary and the artistic needs to achieve something aesthetic to the eye. Depending on mangaka to mangaka, manga brings characters to life, the panels become windows to glimpses of a moving story and the whole grey scale, heightens the effect. There are different art
forms in manga depending on the genre, the author and the audience aimed at, but what they all have in common is the ability to pull you into a different world, if only for a moment, to glimpse at something divine.
Books, can only take you so far as to getting into character’s heads and if it’s a really good writer, you can see glimpses of the world he created manifest in front of your eyes, but getting an idea of the setting, the mood in the air, the actions of several other characters happening simultaneously at the same time is difficult. Films, videos and others overcome that issue but get hindered because unless it’s a
really good movie with all the required elements, you cannot understand the characters’ inner motives until voiced out loud.
Manga here is a union of both the mediums with visual art and the voice of the characters. Most of the art is beautiful and striking; it grabs attention and holds us there.
It isn’t the perfect way to entertain an audience, but it is close.
Why not give manga a try next time?