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Along with the subject of anime, one usually comes across manga, or Japanese comic books. Manga usually shares the same drawing style as anime, and many series were first manga before they because anime. Some of these are Card Captor Sakura, Akira, Love Hina as well as many more. This often causes the two to go together and share similar themes. In some cases, manga is made to follow and anime instead the other way around. However, sometimes one may be longer or shorter then the other, depending on the type of anime or manga it is as well is its audience.
Manga is made for various age groups, just like anime, and is given a proper title according to the audience at which it is aimed at. Girl's manga and anime, as the two often go hand in hand, is called shoujo, and includes stories that often interest girls in their teenage years (ex. Marmalade Boy, Utena). Boy's manga and anime, or shonen, is aired at the same age audience but consists of themes that interest guys. Some shonen manga, such as Love Hina and Angelic Layer, appeals to girls as well, though the Love Hina manga is a little more graphic then the anime. From here on, there are also terms such as "bishoujo" and "bishonen" used for pretty girl/boy manga or anime, from which the pilots of Gundam Wing are often referred to as bishonen. Besides those, there are also other titles such as seinen-manga, which are men's comics consisting of milliray thrillers and such, as well as hentai anime and manga which is adult, and Doujinshi, which is basically the manga version of fan-fiction. There is also lots of other manga, that can be referred as adventure, action, or horror.
An anime made after a manga usually has the same character design as the manga or, at least something that appears close. The movie Metropolis was made after a 1949 manga, which is why the character design has a cartoonish look against modern animation. Most anime follows the story of the manga to some extent but, usually until the audience gets familiar with the trends of the characters, after which it may pick up a completely different storyline that only touches up at some places of the manga or, that arranges the occurrences in a different order. Often, however, a manga and anime are generally similar, with some rare cases of exception. Manga that has been produced especially after the anime is often almost the same.
If a manga is not finished or still running while an anime is produced, the crew producing it may decide on its own ending, since anime usually runs for about 26 episodes, and manga may run for 6 to 30 volumes and up. Anime, however, tends to stretch or shrink the storyline as well as alter it, so something that may have taken 1 volume or less would take 6 or 7 episodes. This is generally common for shoujo manga, which has various incidents that can be stretched for the greatest impact on the audience. Anime after such manga, however, is hard to produce and often has many episodes, so there is a lot of shoujo manga that is never animated. Adventure or action manga and anime is, on the other hand, very common, since it has scenes that look better animated along with story lines that can be easily arranged into episodes.
In appearance, anime is more appealing then manga for action of adventure stories, where even though occasionally it works well, shoujo manga is often left as manga. However, manga is definitely worth looking at, since it is often very masterfully made, and looks like anime on paper. It differs from American comic books because it's mostly black and white. Texture and color-like appearance is created through the use of transparent paper with pre printed designs, called screen tones, that are pasted on top of the drawing to fill up the background, or the pattern of character's clothing. Color manga can be found, but it is usually printed to follow the story line of the anime version of a anime series or movie, such as Princess Mononoke or Akira. Black and white does give it a very unique appearance, and most manga is extremely similar to anime in story line and look, so if you like one, it's very likely that you at least won't hate the other.
Written for the Anime Hydra by
Vivie from
