Manga and Its Cousins - An Introduction to the Art of Asian Comics and Novels

Recently one of my coworkers asked something relating to book formats: What is a light novel? This got me thinking that a great idea for a post would be an introduction to formats like manga, its cousins manwa and manhua, and the aforementioned light novels. This can be confusing for newcomers, especially librarians and patrons encountering these differences for the first time. So here's a quick rundown of the comic formats of manga, manwa (as well as webtoons), manhua, and the novel format light novel.

Welcome to the manga section

Manga

Dinosaur Sanctuary, Vol. 5

Manga (漫画) is a Japanese word meaning "whimsical pictures" and is used to describe comics originating in Japan. Manga is read from right to left, with spines on the right side of the book. This is because manga follows the tradition of writing text vertically rather than horizontally (horizontal written books are read left to right). Manga is traditionally published in an anthology magazine, like the famous Weekly Shōnen Jump, published by Shueisha, with a new chapter in each issue. After so many chapters have been published, they're collected in volumes called tankōbon, much like how American comics are often published in short issues and then gathered into graphic novels, often as trade paperbacks. Manga is generally published in black and white (if color is used, it's usually reserved for just a few pages) and is known for its stylized art, though some series, especially those aimed at adults, use more realistic art. Popular manga are often made into anime.

To the right and below are examples of manga, using the seinen (adult male target audience) series Dinosaur Sanctuary by Itaru Kinoshita. 

Dinosaur Sanctuary vol. 5. Notice that the dialog and pages read from right to left.

Manwa

The Hellbound

Manwa (만화) is the Korean word for comics, coming from the same linguistic root as manga. Despite being influenced by Japanese manga, manwa has its own style. Manwa tends to be in color and is read from left to right, like an English book, because Hangul, the Korean alphabet, is read left to right like English. While manga is often very stylized, manwa is often more realistic. While its start was in print media, today manwa is largely an online format, with collections like manga's tankōbon being published physically. Many manwa are published on websites and apps like WEBTOON, Tapas, and Manta. Just like how many popular manga are made into anime, popular manwa are often made into TV series-- often live action K-dramas. 

To the right and below are examples from the one manwa I was able to get my hands on today -- The Hellbound by Yeon Sang-Ho and Choi Gyu-Seok. Of course it's black and white rather than color.

The Hellbound. Notice how this book reads left to right, and how the illustrations are more realistic than the manga example.

Webtoons

A webtoon on the platform Naver WEBTOON,
displayed on a color e-reader, in Korean.

In the section above I mentioned that many manwa are initially webtoons. Webtoons (웹툰) are online comics that are generally designed for reading on devices like smart phones. Panels are laid out in vertical format to allow easy scrolling. Since they're published online, they're in color. The most popular site/app for webtoons is WEBTOON, owned by the South Korean company Naver. While not all webtoons on the English app are originally Korean (for example, the English-language Lore Olympus, by an author from New Zealand), a good number are. Popular webtoons often get turned into physical manwa, which are reformatted to flow better as printed books. Thanks to the ease of online distribution, webtoons and manwa have become popular outside of Korea, especially in the United States

Manhua

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, vol. 1

Moving over to China we have manhua (traditional: 漫畫, simplified: 漫画). Manhua has also been growing in popularity in recent years, though it's not yet reached the height of manga or manwa. Like manwa, manhua often starts online on sites like Douban and Weibo. Manhua art tends to be realistic rather than stylized and in full color. They generally are oriented left to right, following the way modern simplified Chinese is read. Popular series have been turned into live-action TV series, or animation called donghua (which means animation in general, but outside of China specifically means Chinese animation, much like how anime is used to mean Japanese animation). My example to the right and below is the popular series Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, which began as a webnovel (later printed physically) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and has since become a manhua, a donghua, and a live-action TV series.

A page from Grandmaster. Note the left-to-right speech bubble orientation.

Two light novels in our collection: Spy x Family: Family Portrait 
and Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind

Light Novels

Light novels (ライトノベル), abbreviated LN, are a kind of novel from Japan. I've heard them described as "like manga, but with fewer pictures/more words." This is incorrect. They're a specific format of novel, rather than sequential art like manga. They're short, usually
about 50,000 words, and have a few illustrations -- often one per chapter. They're generally targeted at young audiences -- teens and young adults. Some light novels began as webnovels, published online -- for example, the popular series Sword Art Online began life as a webnovel before being published physically as a light novel (and receiving manga and anime adaptations). Other light novels are spinoffs of already existing media, auch as Spy x Family: Family Portrait, which is a companion to a popular manga/anime series. Light novels are also infamous for often having very long titles that summarize the plot -- for example, I Parry Everything: What Do You Mean I'm the Strongest? I'm Not Even an Adventurer Yet! is a title of one series.

Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind is a light novel, so instead of sequential art and speech bubbles, it reads like any other standard novel.

Hopefully this introduction helps anyone who has come across requests for light novels, or has wondered what the difference between manga and manwa is. Feel free to post any questions you may have, I'm my library's selector for these formats.

Collection Development for Absolute Beginners

Have you ever wondered where your library gets all of its books? They must magically spawn there on the shelf, right? 

I hate to be the one to break it to you but there are no Book Elves that magically summon all the library books. 

Or, rather, there are people who summon the books, but it's a lot less magic and a lot more reading reviews and putting in order requests. These people are selectors and are responsible for collection development for their sections. Recently, I was made selector for my library's adult manga collection. 

Before I officially became a selector, I had already been helping one of our other selectors with a project. My coworker, I'll call them A-chan, is the selector for the Teen graphic and manga collection, and they asked for my opinion on the manga in the Adult collection and if I thought there was any that could be moved from Adult to Teen. Since they didn't have the time to look through the collection, I checked out several piles of manga and read through them over a break. In total, we moved 26 series from the Adult collection to Teen, having found that they'd be appropriate and interesting for younger readers. And we were right-- as soon as we put Mob Psycho 100, a comedy series, on the Teen shelf, a patron checked out every volume we had.

Soon after this, my manager, who at the time selected both adult manga and graphic novels, asked if I'd like to take over selecting adult manga. I've been a manga enthusiast for years, so this prospect excited me. December of 2023 was my first month of picking manga and I've been keeping my eye out for books that would be good to add to the collection.

So-- what's the process of selecting material for the library? 

 

Trade magazines like Booklist have reviews for general 
materials-- most of what you see at the library has
probably been reviewed in publications like this.

First, it's finding it. For more general books, like nonfiction, fiction, and children's material, reviews can be found in publications like Booklist (https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist) and Kirkus Reviews (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/). For more specialized material, like manga, I have to look for specialized reviews. Sites like myanimelist.net and anilist.co are great for up to-the-minute reviews from readers and for tracking new and upcoming releases. Professional reviews can be found online on MyAnimeList and Anime News Network (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/) and in print in the one remaining anime and manga magazine in America, Otaku USA (https://otakuusamagazine.com/). Knowing what to select is easier if you're familiar with the area already -- I was already into manga before becoming a selector, so I had a place to start. This is all to say if you're a library selector, make sure you familiarize yourself with your area, even if it's not within your personal interests. It makes it a lot easier to know what people are going to want to read if you're not blindfolding yourself and throwing darts for next month's selection.

Reading Otaku USA Magazine

Before I started getting new books, I had to find out what we had in the collection already. To do this I made a spreadsheet of all books in the catalogue. The list then was expanded to include the total number of circulations and the number of circulations in 2023. This helped me gauge how popular individual volumes are, which suggests to me which series should be continued and what should even be weeded. 

Click to enlarge

I found that among our most popular series were Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler, Spy x Family, Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, and Chainsaw Man. This gives me an idea not only of what to continue selecting in the future (in fact, the first book I selected was a replacement for a missing volume of Chainsaw Man), but what genres and themes are most interesting to our patrons. Drama, action, and romance top the list, followed by a nonfiction memoir, slice of life, and horror. 

This list also helped me weed material that hadn't been checked out for too long-- one series totaled over 20 volumes but had barely been checked out, with most volumes never even circulating once, so it was weeded, making room on our sadly very small bookcase. I only have so much room and I have to keep adding new books to the collection, so some things have to go. This is all part of collection development-- deciding what should and shouldn't be in your area of the collection. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings like that. Weeded books get put in the Friends of the Library book sale-- so make sure you check the sales, that book you love might someday be there waiting for you.

Now that I've found what I have and what I no longer need, I'm free to start selecting what I should add. Our library orders most of our books through the distributor Baker & Taylor (https://www.baker-taylor.com/) and this is the exciting part-- getting ready to order my books.

A book page on Baker & Taylor

Here I can search for books and add them to my cart. Carts are then transferred to the librarian who handles the actual purchase-- all I have to do is choose what I want and send them on to the purchaser. This system may differ between libraries. When the books arrive at the library from the distributor, I decide what the spine label should be and pass them on to the cataloger, who then passes them on to processing to get them ready for going on the shelf.

More about manga

When I told one of my friends, best known to this blog as my Research Assistant N, about this job, I was asked a good question. "What does 'adult' manga entail?"

Manga is published according to demographic: shounen and shoujo for teen/young adult boys and girls, and seinen and josei for adult men and women. Some shounen and shoujo are aimed at an older teen/young adult audience that puts them into my territory rather than the Teen selector's. In English, the term "adult" manga suggests "adult" themes of violence and sexuality, which, just like in Western graphic novels, do exist in manga. However, manga is a very popular form of media in Japan with hundreds of topics, so there's something for everyone. Many seinen and josei manga deal with adult life-- jobs, family, and things adults experience that wouldn't appeal to younger readers. Very few kids want to read about working in an office. Likewise, shounen and shoujo focus on topics younger readers relate to-- school and coming of age stories are common, even in fantastical settings. 

Since my area is for adults, I focus primarily on seinen and josei manga and some shounen and shoujo aimed at an older, young/new adult audience. As I mentioned above when talking about my analysis of material already in the collection, I found that action and drama are our most popular genres. This information tells me what to pay attention to-- otherwise we would all just order whatever interests us personally. There's an old saying in broadcasting that "many a station has gone bankrupt playing the owner's favorite music." The same goes for choosing books. 

Sometimes a series I find would work better for the Teen collection-- that was the issue earlier last year when my coworker and I started going through the Adult collection and finding series that fit better for younger readers. Sometimes it's the opposite, recently I was given a book my coworker had initially intended for Teen only to realize it fit better in the adult collection. 

That's about all I have about selecting for now, though I can go more in depth in the future if anyone is interested. Next time, I'm going to write a review of a manga that's absolutely captured my heart, Frau Faust by Kore Yamazaki, and later I will be reporting on my experiences cataloging every cemetery in my home county.

Until then, happy reading!