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Terms and Definitions

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Anime: animated cartoons produced mostly in Japan, often adapted from a manga series
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Binding types: you'll here these terms to describe how books are bound together for sale
  • Collected Edition: A collection of single-issue comicbooks bound together, often by series or storyline.  There are several types:
  • Hardcover
  • Trade paperbacks 
  • Omnibus: usually used for collected editions of Manga
  • Single-issue/Floppy: comicbooks published in magazine-style issues, typically around 20-30 pages.

Comicbooks: (At the behest of Stan Lee at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, I use the term "comicbook" as one word.  These books can be, but are not always funny, so the space between the words creates a misnomer that comic books are funny novels.)
  • Comicbooks are stories in serialization, featuring comic drawings, generally following the adventures of superheroes, villains, etc. These are usually presented in a single-issue, paperback format

Creative Team: The team of individuals who put together comicbooks, which can include (adapted from How to Love Comics):
  • Writer: who actually comes up with the story
  • Penciler: who draws the outlines of the art
  • Inker: who finalizes the drawings with pen
  • Colorist: who adds colors to the drawings
  • Letterer: who picks out fonts and adds the story as speech bubbles and narration
  • Editor: who checks everything once its put together

Crossover: when storylines jump between characters and/or across single-issues to create one cohesive story

Event: when crossovers happen on a large scale and cover multiple characters' storylines, or when an entire line of comics come together to participate in one storyline through all of their single-issues, and can have long-lasting implications

Graphic Novel: A story told with sequential, illustrated panels

Manfra: manga by French creators

Manga (pronounced mahn-gah): Japanese-style comics, usually read right to left if printed in original Japanese format

Manga Audiences (info adapted from Book Riot):
  • Josei: books written and published with young women (20+) as the target audience.
  • Kodomomuke: Japanese manga that, literally translated, means "directed at children."  These stories have light-hearted storylines and can also teach life lessons we want kids to learn, such as sharing, working together, hard work, etc.
  • Seinen: books written and published with young men (20+) as the target audience.
  • Shōjo: books written and published with girls as the target audience
  • Shōnen: books written and published with boys​ as the target audience.
  • Yaoi/Boys love: books where the main characters or plot involves homosexual relationships between men, with young women as the target audience.
  • Yuri: books where the main characters or plot involves homosexual relationships between women, with young men and women as the target audience.

Manga Genres: Manga has some familiar genres, like sci-fi and horror, but here are some genres that are unique or have specific terms from Japanese (some info adapted from the NYPL)
  • Battle: stories that are centered around battles between good and evil and/or characters training to become better at fighting.
  • Dungeons/Games: manga that includes elements of a role-playing game (RPG), and might include characters battling their way through dungeons like Dungeons & Dragons. This can also be combined with other genres, like Isekai or Food.
  • Ecchi: "raunchy" stories that have playful, often sexual themes but are not entirely pornographic in nature
  • Food: stories that include cooking, eating food, and often include recipes.
  • Harem: the main character, generally a male, has an abundance of love interests (of the opposite sex or same-sex)
  • Isekai: a storyline where the main character is transported to another world.
  • Iyashikei: generally also crosses over into other sub-genres (especially slice-of-life), this sub-genre is meant to have a "healing" effect - it's storylines are soothing, the art is soft, and everything is very peaceful.
  • Magical girl: stories that focus on a main girl or team of girls who have power or a magical item that give them powers they use to fight evil.
  • Mecha: storylines revolve around giant robots in battle.
  • Reverse harem: the main character, generally a female, has an abundance of love interests (of the opposite sex or same-sex).
  • School Life: stories that are set in a school, or focus mainly on the characters attending the school or being in school. This genre is often combined with others, like LGBTQ stories or Battle manga.
  • Slice-of-life: chapters present small snippets of the life of the main character, generally of them doing normal, every-day tasks. Sometimes the storylines are connected to form a larger story, but not always.
  • Tokusatsu: based traditionally in TV and movies, this refers to types of action storylines that require a lot of special effects, particularly actors in full-body suits and lots of models of cities. In manga, this has come to mean sci-fi action stories with heroes and villains in full power suits or fighting large aliens, kaiju/kajin, or other larger creatures.

​Mangaka: the creator for a manga; can mean the writer, the artist, or both

Manhua: manga by Chinese creators 

Manhwa: manga by Korean creators

Original Graphic Novel (OGN): a story that is published in a full-length graphic novel without being published as single-issue floppies first

Panel: one box within the page of a comicbook/manga

Splash page: a single panel that covers the entire page 

Two-page spread: a splash page that covers both pages, across the split for the spine
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​© 2022 Sara Smith

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