How to read Manga

Manga, a form of illustrated storytelling that originated in Japan, is one of the most popular kinds of reading in the world. And as graphic novels have found a mainstream audience, manga has also found its way to new readers.

One of the obstacles that keeps even the most avid booklovers from picking up manga is the basic mechanics of how to read the books and how to understand the visual language shared by many varieties of manga series. We’ve put together this guide to help every reader get into their first manga smoother than a bullet train pulling into Shinjuku Station.

Where to begin?

What we’re talking about here is how to handle a manga and turn the pages so that you proceed from beginning to end. (For tips on which manga to try first, check out our beginner’s guide to manga.)

The first thing to know is that even in translation, manga reads as all Japanese text reads: from right to left and top to bottom. That means that you start reading every manga book on what will feel like the last page. If you’re reading manga on an eReader, that will typically mean tapping leftwards to advance.

Once you’re on the first page, reading carries on from right to left, and from top to bottom. Because manga often employs complex grids of panels the way other graphic narrative forms do, readers who don’t read a lot of comic books and graphic novels might struggle to follow the thread of speech and action across each page.

Below is an example of a typical page layout, where each number indicates the sequence in which to read the panels, and the letters indicate the sequence of the speech balloons within each panel.

With practice, you’ll soon find you’re able to read through any page layout intuitively, with your eyes naturally following the story.

What’s happening?

As a visual form of storytelling manga can be emotionally expressive in a way that doesn’t come across in words.

Often artists will colour a page black to indicate that the scene being depicted actually occurred in the past or is being recalled from a character’s memory. Juxtaposed with white pages, this sets past and present next to each other and allows the story to play out over dual timelines. Some pages will include both black and white backgrounds, showing how much the past is influencing a character in that moment.

Dark pages and illustrations can also convey the surreal or evoke feelings of horror. In these cases, the illustrations and even the speech balloons may be fully inked-in, with only flashes of white giving shape to the characters and events of the story. We’ll see more meaning expressed through contrast of light and dark in the next section on emotions.

What does it mean?

Now that you know how to follow the thread of the story, the last piece of the manga puzzle is understanding how different emotions are expressed on the page. With manga, emotions are coded specifically through specific illustrations that will be familiar to you if you’re an avid user of emojis—and you might be surprised to learn what they’re meant to convey.

Anger is expressed with dark shading around the character’s face, with the eyes often standing out as white shapes without pupils. Bared, gritted teeth add to the juxtaposition of light and dark. And the stylized ➕-like symbol that appears on a character’s forehead is meant to represent throbbing veins—showing how the character’s feeling is so strong it’s threatening to burst out of their face. Without the throbbing veins, the darkness can also mean depression, or the character is figuratively “in a dark place.”

When a character is feeling embarrassed, or even loved or proud, they might blush. This is illustrated with shaded patches on each cheek.

Embarrassment can also be expressed through a sweat drop on a character’s forehead. Or a sweat drop can mean a more general sense of discomfort, where perhaps the character has pertinent information that they’re just realizing other characters don’t have.

Characters feeling either relief or exasperation will often express their feelings with a cloud near their mouths, symbolizing a heavy exhalation. The ambiguity between these very different emotions can be played for humour, so watch for double-meanings.

Air isn’t the only thing that might be expelled from a character. In manga, nosebleeds signify sexual arousal. Many reasons have been proposed for this, but like so much artistic symbolism there isn’t a definitive explanation for its origin. Generally speaking, the volume of blood expelled from a character’s nose generally correlates to the intensity of their arousal, and the explosion of blood is frequently played for comic effect as the character finds themselves temporarily not in control of their body.

And there you have it: all the tips you need to read your first manga. And remember, if you need help finding manga to read, we can help with this article on series for newcomers to try, or you can dive into the whole manga section on Kobo. ◼