What Is Manga?
Manga litterally means "meaningless pictures." "Manga" are Japanese comic books. As most things are in Japan, they differ greatly from comics here.
First, they are written virtically, which is the traditional way in Japan. I will get a few photos on one soon so I can show you how exactly to read it, because it really can be confusing for people who've never seen a book written vertically before. Another major difference between manga and comics is that most manga are written in black and white. This is a severe contrast between there animations, which use all the colors in the rainbow and then some. But manga are much more popular there than they are here and so the Japanese save money by not using color. Also, manga are usually a bit smaller than comics here, and though I haven't bought a lot of American comics, I'm pretty sure manga have more pages on average. There's also a lot of little differences between comics here and manga.
I'm sure everyone has seen sound effects that are used in English comics. Words like "boom!" "zoom!" "crash!" kabam!" appear frequently in our comics. The Japanese have sound effects, too, but they have far more than we do. While we have sound effects for only sounds, the Japanese have them for sounds, feelings, weather, and many other things. For example, the Japanese have "doki doki" for the sound of a heart beating quickly, "hera hera" for the sound of embarassed laughter, and "niko niko" for grinning! These words help express the mood of a situation and bring the action alive in still frames. I will later create a lesson in my Japanese course that teaches some of the more common sound words.
If anyone wants some practice in reading Japanese, manga are the way to go. They are written in colloquial speech, which teaches you the way people actually speak. Also, almost all manga use kanji in them, but the nice thing is that manga often impliment a system called "furigana." Furigana are small kana characters written above (horizontal text) or to the right of (vertical text) kanji to indicate that kanji's pronounciation, so you will always know how to pronounce the kanji. This also makes it very easy to look up the word, because you don't have to look the kanji up in a kanji dictionary first.
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