What you read
Over the summer I read a series of Manga. Some of the mangas I read include- karakai jouzu takagi-san, golden kamuy, ajin, etc. Manga is a Japanese style comic/graphic novel which includes both words and pictures.
Personal Response (what did I think about it?)
I enjoy reading manga a lot, simply because it allows you to experience another world (sometimes not even the earth we know of). Through the images, we are able to see exactly what the author wants us to see. By using images, mangas are able to immerse their audience into the story and create a scene in which the audience can feel as if they are apart of it. In the context of Karakai Jouzu, we are able to feel the bittersweet love and the wholesomeness shared between the two characters. For Golden Kamuy, we are able to feel obnoxious from the main character and a wild bear tearing each other’s flesh apart in an intense battle. This is all achieved through the detail in the drawing. Words in manga are often used for monologues or dialogues and are hardly used for description. However, this also means that our creativity is limited, as the scene its self is self-explanatory through images, and we are only able to use our creativity when predicting the outcome.
Overall, reading manga was something very new for me and not only was I able to enjoy it, but I was also able to learn Japanese from it. I did not read manga as I always thought normal Japanese books would be better, but this summer was an eye-opener to something new.
Literary/non-literary features
Literary features of mangas include- images, symbols, metaphor.
Concept (how can it link to something else?)
One concept a manga can link to is interpretation. How we interpret a text is dependent on our own context. Although I stated earlier that manga restricts our thinking, how we interpret certain actions, decisions, scenarios can vary significantly. This creates a divide between ‘favourite characters’ otherwise known in Japanese as an ‘oshi’.
