I’ve been reading manga since 2003 and because of that, I know a lot about manga and Japanese culture. I’m the type of reader who rereads a volume multiple times, carefully scanning translation notes, and paying attention to details. Yet there is SO much I did not know and learned through Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography. And what I’ve learned, I will take with me forever.

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography was created by Fumiyo Kouno. She is also the mangaka behind the popular manga series, In This Corner of the World. The guide uses short comics featuring characters from the famous Japanese scroll Choju-jinbutsu-giga to explain popular manga symbols, known as manpu, and their meaning. If this sounds unfamiliar to you, don’t worry! The guide includes a detailed explanation of the scroll too.

The comics themselves are adorable but the meaning they provide is priceless. There are SO many symbols I thought I knew, but learned that they can convey different meanings based on other context clues in the drawing. I also learned a lot about the cultural significance of certain symbols and how they originated in Japan.

A guide like this should be a staple in every manga collection. There is so much rich history behind these symbols and since I’ve learned about them, it has transformed the way I’ve been reading manga. There’s so much added context now and I find myself thinking of the layers of messaging a mangaka may be trying to convey.

I requested this book from NetGalley for my 9-year-old, who is a voracious consumer of manga. He was initially excited about reading it, but after finishing it, he found himself a bit disappointed. He said that it's a good guide for manga newcomers who may not understand how certain images or animations are being used. However, for someone like him who has read all of One Piece ten times, he found this to be unhelpful and basic. I originally thought it might be a cute gift idea for a manga lover, but he recommends it for beginners, not for long-term fans.

This title should be in every library next to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. It gives information on the development and explanations to understand the symbols and icons that are used in Manga and tells their meaning through the use of cute anthropomorphic animals.

A guidebook to manga iconography that uses examples from a four panel strip format, using characters from a 12th century Japanese scroll to illustrate the universal way in which these effects can be applied to any anthropomorphic creature or character.

Many of the icons will be familiar even to western readers of comics (as the foreword reminds us, pre-WWII western comics had a huge effect on Japanese manga conventions, so there are some shared icons) but others may be more challenging or difficult to parse. This handy guide explains them in a way that is simple, with multiple uses in a variety of ways in four panel strips. Some of the content, such as words spelled out in hiragana or onomatopoeias are sometimes changed to an anglicized equivalent, which can interrupt the image as a graphic element, but it largely doesn't detract from the content (especially since these are often translated in manga published in America, anyways). However, elements that aren't as familiar in the west are given simple explanations with multiple uses throughout the book (and often comics will contain prior explained icons as well) that effectively explain what might otherwise seem impenetrable, especially to new manga readers.

If someone can't parse the different symbols manga uses from western comics, this could be a useful reference. I also felt that the humor of the individual strips was funny, in an early Peanuts sort of way.

Views are my own and do not represent my institution.

I read this courtesy NetGalley and Udon Entertainment/Manga Classics. Insightful and instructional, this work by Fumiyo Kouno explains the iconography used by manga creators over the centuries, and how manga over the years have worked with Western artists, borrowing from each other. Anyone who’s read a comic book or a graphic novel or a manga, for that matter, will be familiar with the symbols that indicate the actions or even emotions that describe the story. Kouno uses traditional Japanese cartoon images of animals often seen, rabbits and turtles (yes, they do have a race, so it’s universal, so yes, there are examples of speed and frustration iconography) and monkeys and frogs and foxes. We’re learning about manga symbols in the most charming ways possible.
#GigaTown #NetGalley.

This is best as a reference guide rather than something to read front-to-back. Some concepts were very self-explanatory, especially in our modern age of emojis, but this is a quite comprehensive guide.

I found it difficult to identify the actual usage sometimes in the examples given. The art was whimsical and beautiful, though.

Thanks a lot to Udon Entertainmend for approving my request and Mangasplaining Extra for working together with Udon Ent. to bring this interesting book to English! Here's a short excerpt from my short review on my blog:

"As seen in the author’s note at the end of the book, Kouno suggests another method to go about the book at first, and Choju Giga style is an idea that pops into their mind soon after. This, to me, is the more fitting decision because historical scrolls where only visual cues and body language are used to tell a story couldn’t be more suitable for manga iconography."

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography is as it states, a guide to little additions to manga to help set the tone and vibe of a story, or a scene. It's presented in the 4-koma (four panel comic) style, which means that sometimes the joke, or the end of a story phrase is told over several of these 4-koma but do resolve in time. (And sometimes just in the one page itself!).

As this book was written in Japanese, for a Japanese audience of people who aren't too familiar with manga (the mangaka wrote it with her elderly mom in mind!) I do wish when translated for areas outside of Japan there were a lot more translation notes added. As someone who's been reading manga over half my life, while I'm already familiar with basically everything in this book I could see where things definitely could have been explained better for foreign audiences -- like why are the characters throwing beans in the 'devil' explanations (it's Setsubun, and I think any foreign audience who reads this will already know what an oni is?)? Why is the frog guy wearing a cute hat (era-specific indicator!)? and just a bunch more other things. This could have been a great way to welcome someone who's used to reading manga, or has just started, even, into more things in Japanese culture that are a mainstay of manga, but also that the Japanese reader would get immediately where a foreign reader would not.

(Also, any time an introduction says, "Hah, I bet you didn't know x!" it seems that I am already well aware of the thing they're referencing. This intro did this at least twice and I think could have just stuck to introducing the book, the cultural relevance to using the old school style animal drawings, and what we're to expect.)

But overall it was fine, the drawings were cute and good and I think it'll be an important tome for reference -- I just wish there was more to it for people less already-familiar with the contents!

Thank you to NetGalley and Udon Entertainment for the eARC in exchange for review!

This is a wonderful primer for those who are new to reading Manga and want to understand the iconography and cultural contexts on page. My only struggle was with the bunnies. I almost wish there were human characters to help illustrate these concepts better but it was informative nonetheless.

When I saw a guide to manga iconography, I was super excited, because I love manga and things like this make it easier for people to get into manga and understand the medium. I still think this would be helpful for beginners in some circumstances, but I'm confused to the audience. The art appeals to people would would be more familiar and forgiving of manga and jokes like this, not to newer readers coming into manga. While some of the iconography seems helpful and useful to learn, others feel slightly off. I also don't think the images do that great of a job conveying the iconography itself, since sometimes it was difficult to find the symbols in the images itself.

Overall a miss for me, though I think other readers might find this helpful.

This is an entertaining and educational guide to the symbols of manga created by the artist of “In This Corner of the World.” I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is not just a guide, however, and really takes the form of various short slice-of-life comics following anthropomorphic animals based on the Chōjū-giga picture scrolls. Each comic introduces a new manga symbol and possible interpretations of their meaning. This made it far more entertaining than a strictly informational guide, and the drawings are charming and easy to follow.

I would highly recommend this to new readers of manga, but even as a life-long manga reader, I still learned new things from it.

Thank you to Udon Entertainment for my ARC provided through Netgalley.

Published by Udon Entertainment and available September 3, 2024, Giga Town is a unique encyclopedia of the symbolism and artistic shorthand of manga. Called manpu, these additions to the base art express movement, emotion, sound, and many other things-- in his introduction to the book, Matt Alt describes them as "a visual code for understanding the ways in which Japanese artists see and portray the world."

This visual code is illustrated in a series of 4-koma (four panel) comic strip, each strip illustrating a particular manpu. Helping us understand the symbolism are a cast of frogs, rabbits, and monkeys as a tribute to the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, a series of ancient Japanese scrolls depicting whimsical animals acting like humans, often considered a spiritual predecessor to modern manga. This collection of manuscripts is what gives the book its name, Giga Town. Each comic is accompanied by a short explanation of the symbol, with added cultural context when needed. The illustrations are charming and the skill in which Kouno recreates the Chōjū-giga animals is impressive, she's a great mangaka best known for In This Corner of the World.

This guide will prove indispensable to manga readers, whether seasoned otaku or new fans. I especially liked the visual component-- too often I read books that only describe visual media and don't include examples. Giga Town understands that manga is a visual medium and any discussion of it needs example images. The cute illustrations are fun and follow in the footsteps of early Japanese art will be appealing to both newcomers and people already interested in the historical art. I really enjoyed my time with this guide and already hope I can swing this as nonfiction manga, rather than a nonfiction work on art, so I can order it for my library collection.

A fabulous guide to manpu that is easily digestible and full of things that I did not know about the art form. This is great for the people who want to know a little more, the ones who want the meaning behind the art.

This book is a must for readers of mangas and for writers who want to branch into manga or just graphic novels in general.
This book explains the history and concepts of manga and then goes into different symbolism and what they indicate in these mangas. There are several symbols that I knew right away. But there are several that are based on cultural verbiage that I didn’t know. Example the kites in the sky, cherry blossoms, and the okay sigobut turned means money.
As an artist film maker I so want the physical copy of this book to keep on my self for reference.
The artwork through the book explains in picture form how the symbols work. The artwork is a beautiful simple lineart style.

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography by Fumiyo Kouno, 132 pages. GRAPHIC NOVEL. Udon Entertainment, 2024. $13.
Language: G (0 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: G; Violence: G
BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS - OPTIONAL
APPEALS TO: SOME
Kouno has put together a collection of short manga comic strips, like newspaper comics, that give examples of different visual cues used in manga to convey additional information. Some of the symbols give clues to the readers about what a character is feeling or what time of year it is. Laugh at these cute personified animals and learn something along the way.
If I’m being embarrassingly honest, I didn’t understand all of the jokes made in the cute little comic strips. Some of them were funny, but mostly I was looking for context for the symbols being used. Kouno explains the different nuances of symbols used if they have multiple meanings, and it was fun to learn some of the cultural reasons why the visual cues are what they are. This guide is intended for a very niche audience and is a quick read for anyone interested.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

Giga Town is a visual dictionary for symbols that appear throughout manga. Formatted in a 4-koma style, the guide is easy to follow for anyone from kids to adults who aren't familiar with the medium.

The art style is charming and Kouno uses anthropomorphic animals to depict these symbols being used in a short comic. The 4-koma format allows readers who are unfamiliar with comics and manga to follow the examples with ease. I like that this guide builds on itself by referencing symbols from earlier examples later in the book. It quizzes the readers, and it shows how different symbols can be combined to achieve a different mood or effect. Some of the icons they discuss in the book are outdated or rarely used, but I see the value in defining it. Readers won't always be reading the latest releases. Though I wish they discussed paneling more thoroughly or earlier in the book, I understand that they wanted to keep this simple and not overwhelm the reader. The small guide they provide at the end is a good introduction to it. It would have been nice if they had more examples of these full paneled for readers to get a better idea of how varied these pages can get. The numbers at the bottom right corner of the panels was a nice touch, and I had no idea that manga used to include those numbers and it got lost to time!

Overall, Giga Town is an informative guide for anyone who is new to manga and wants to get a better understanding of the effects used in each panel.

Fumiyo Kouno's Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography! is a superb handbook to understanding manga's visual language, “manpu” – symbols that add non-verbal expression. Kouno’s clever approach uses animal depictions from a famous-known 12th-century scroll to illustrate over 100 manpu in the book.

Originally serialized in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and later published in 2018, this new edition marks the first full English translation thanks to Ko Ransom’s efforts. A poignant afterword by Kouno adds a few new panels, replete with manpu, detailing the book's conception, inspirations, and publication.

Each manpu gets a dedicated four-panel comic. While some symbols like "!" for surprise or "$" for wealth are universally understood, Kouno emphasizes the significance of placement in manga. Subtle shifts can convey different meanings. Some manpu even have dual meanings, cleverly depicted in the short comics. Additionally, “Cultural Context” boxes explain unfamiliar objects, phrases, or images for non-Japanese readers.

A minor critique for a potential future edition: onomatopoeia translation is occasionally inconsistent between Japanese and English. Since wordplay might be involved, these phrases could benefit from further explanation for non-Japanese speakers. Additionally, the well-done "Cultural Context" boxes left me wanting more.

These critiques are minor compared to the book's comprehensive nature and humorous illustrations. Giga Town is a valuable resource for both manga fans and students, offering a deeper understanding of the art's interplay between text and image.

There’s a bit of a learning curve to reading comics. Sure, in a lot of ways they’re quicker and easier to understand than prose books, but getting used to the format can take a little time, and not all of the visual conventions are self-explanatory. In Western comics, a new reader might wonder what different styles of balloons mean or how the uses of breath marks can differ. In Japanese manga, the lexicon of symbols to indicate particular moods, sounds, and actions—called manpu—can be even broader and more abstract.

But if you’ve ever felt intimidated by manga, or just wondered about the meaning or origin of a symbol you keep seeing, good news: there’s a handy book that demystifies manpu one by one. In Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography, mangaka Fumiyo Kouno goes through dozens of icons that accompany people and objects on the page—from the ubiquitous, like sweat drops and anger bursts, to ones that might be less familiar to American readers, like sakura petals, flying money, and dragonflies. In addition, she goes over some common character poses and expressions that communicate various states of being.

Each entry is illustrated with examples inspired by the anthropomorphic animals of the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, the 12th-century Japanese scrolls that are sometimes referred to as the “first manga.” The afterword also features a guide to reading order, balloon styles, and backgrounds. Whether you’re new to manga or just want to level up your manpu knowledge, this useful guide is worth a read.

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography delivers on its premise and does so with several bonuses.
The book is designed like a manga or a well-detailed and finalised storyboard.
Many of the icons were new for me therefore I took away plenty out of this book.
On top of this, I enjoyed the unique characters and the way the information was presented.

Full disclosure: I have been a great fan of Fumiyo Kouno for ages, and Giga Town does not disappoint! Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography introduces symbolic or iconic expressions commonly used in manga on each page with a four-panel comedic strip staring whimsical animals to exemplify each symbol. A must-read for manga fans.