Review: How to draw manga: Creating stories
I’m writing a review of this illusive book that I got a while ago. Sadly (and kind of funny in a weird way) the place that I got it for 6$ instead of 68$ as is the going price, burned down about a day or 2 after my order was shipped. So this book is making sure to stay rare.
For the most part, if you read a lot of manga out in the states and read/watch other entertainment to compare, most of the things presented in the book is really obvious. Especially the first about creating characters the main characters being awesome, the antagonist being the opposite and the love interest being the complement. It goes in to lengthy lists of what you should look for and include. In short, its like a formula for making characters for shounen/shoujo manga.
Which could be why the rating for this book is so high on Amazon. Had I found this 3 or more years ago I would praise this book but it has all the things that show up in most manga in the US. This doesn’t make the book bad as it does explain as to why people are attracted to manga and the writer knows a lot as he uses all kind of resources (even US references).
The other 2 parts are what I was more interested in but for the price of the book, you can find this info in other places or take your time to study the comics you read. The other books I’m talking of (yeah I know most people would say Scott McCloud) is
How to draw manga vl. 7
Comikers vl. 3
Deleters Manga techniques vl. 5
Which explains the pacing and panel layouts and how to plot out your story based on page counts. So if this book was cheaper I would recommend it. If you’re a beginner, it is actually a really comprehensive quick start in making a coherent comic.
Warning though, there is almost no illustrations to this book. I wish that they had it in a more digest size. Also, It can give a base to create original works, but it comes off like ‘the formula’ to creating manga. As a reader of a lot of manga, its getting harder for me to pick up a manga and not notice a formula based story when present. I don’t want readers to get stuck to this ‘formula’ but only to use it as just an other reference and keep adding to their library.