Manga

doi:10.1017/9781009255653.007

Chapter 4 - Manga

An Affective Form of Comics

from Part I - Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023

Jaqueline Berndt

Edited by

Maaheen Ahmed

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Maaheen Ahmed: Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium

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Summary

Taking the narrow notion of manga outside of Japan as its starting point, this chapter refrains from introducing the diversity of comics in Japan in support of a transculturally open approach. From a form-conscious perspective, it conceptualizes manga as a highly affective type of comics that share characteristics with non-Japanese comics far beyond the “manga” label. Following a brief historical survey of what “manga” has meant in English since the 1980s, the device of affective eyes takes center stage. Graphic narratives by Osamu Tezuka, Keiji Nakazawa, Keiko Takemiya, and Jirō Taniguchi serve as examples for how extreme close-ups of eyes have operated across periods and genres, namely, not only as representations of interiority or ethnicity, but also as material signposts and guides of visual perception: eyes draw attention, get readers involved prior to critical interpretation, establish intimacy with characters, provide a node for a page’s visual fragments, help to obscure the divide between inside and outside, subject and object, self and other. Moving gingerly into an ocular history of manga as an affective form of comics, the chapter seeks to turn away from essentialist, as well as culturalist, definitions of what manga is in favor of how it operates.

Keywords

graphic narratives gaze affect reader involvement materiality Japan

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 82 - 101

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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