Manga] Manga]

Rating:
Summary: Lovely survey
Review: Ever wonder about those crazy Japanese comics called manga? So different from American comics. Well, Schodt gives you a very readable historical perspective on them, drawing all the way back to pre-industrial Japan. But he shows that the true flowering of manga arose in post-War Japan. Manga is seen in Japan as a serious literary form. While some manga are indeed trash, others are considered on a par with novels.

The book has colour plates and black and white pictures of many manga, with English commentary. Glimpses of quite a different culture.

Schodt wrote his study in 1983, when manga was still relatively unknown in the US. Few such comics were available in translated form. Hence the book was very useful in breaking through a formidable langugage barrier. But things have changed. Now US bookstores stock many English versions of manga. In fact, manga in the US possesses a unique trait. It is the only major printed form in English that often has the pages numbered from back to front, as we would term it. This of course follows the Japanese page numbering convention. The English manga retains this, to add to the ambience.

The only drawback about the book is that it aches for a second edition. The intervening years have seen an even greater flowering on new manga in Japan. Plus, he could also study the influence of it on the Japanese computer games.