Hi, I'm back. This time with a short rant about how you're supposed to read manga...Although I'm not sure if it's necessary or not. There are a lot of people reading manga out there after all. But I wanted to update this more often and I thought, whatever!
Okay.
Japanese manga is read from right to left. Everybody's heard that before, right? But unlike American graphic novels, the panels in manga and their styles vary between artists/groups. For example, something by Clamp and something by Natsuki Takaya (author of Fruits Basket!) might be told differently, even if they were telling the same thing. Panels are the same. Different artists spread out their panels differently, so the readers just have to go along with that.
Panels are really interesting, especially with me since I kinda draw manga. I've been trying to take it piece by piece and figure it out. For example, take hair, and draw thousands (not literally) of different girl hair styles. (I can't draw guy hair T.T)
Anyway, back to the panel thing. To me, it's amazing how artists tell their stories in panels, since they can take any shape or size, zoom in or out, be open or closed, or even just take up the whole page. And did I mention how any part of anything could be portrayed in a single panel, or how something can overlap between panels, or the tone and the shading over some of them...
Overall, I think any artist that can use panels are amazing. Even just unknown ones, just practicing at home, to professionals.
Okay. Now I'm going to go back and rant about how you're supposed to read manga.
I was just reading Fruits Basket, (a post about it coming soon!) and obviously, as mentioned above, it's a Japanese manga. So, you read it from the right side of the book to the left. The panels of the pages are read that way too. From the right side of the page to the left, starting with the top right panel to the bottom left panel.
First it was confusing, but now it's a natural thing. So...try opening one next time you're in the library! (Oh, my. I sound ridiculous saying that...)
I like how you use labels, though I never use them anymore because my blog post topics fluctuate so much and because I can never keep track of them (if I use one label without caps, and another with, then when I search that label with caps, I don't get the results without).
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