Manga Japanese · Day 1 of 15
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How a page works
Right to left, and the order of everything on it
Open a Japanese manga for the first time and the book is back to front, the panels run the wrong way and the words are stacked vertically. None of it is guessable and all of it is fixed, so half an hour spent on the format buys you every book in the shop.
The direction of everything
Four rules, and they never change:
The two rules combine: start at the top right of the page and move left, then drop to the next row and start at the right again. It is the same path your eye takes across an English page, mirrored. If you find yourself reading a conversation that makes no sense, you are almost certainly reading the replies before the questions.
One page, in order
A short scene laid out the way the page prints it. The numbers are the order you read them, not anything printed on the page:
Notice that the wide panel at the bottom holds the punchline, and that it gets a whole row to itself. Panel size is timing: a big panel is a long beat, a row of small ones is fast back and forth. You are being told how quickly to read, and once you notice it you can feel the pacing of a page before you read a word of it.
Which way does the book open
How to tell before you buy:
Most English language releases now keep the Japanese direction rather than mirroring the art, which is why they carry a stop, you are reading the wrong way page. Older translations flipped every page, which reversed the art and left every character right handed or left handed by accident. If you have read manga in English recently, you have already been reading right to left.
Carry over, from earlier days
Check yourself
8 questions. Nothing is saved unless you finish.