My daughter recently checked out the first volume of Death Note (manga) from the school library. She says they also have Bleach there, so I told her to get the first one for me so I could see what it looks like.
Anyway, the other day she got out the Death Note book so she could show it to me, and she flipped open the front cover. I told her, "You know you have to read that from front to back, bottom to top."
"What?" she said.
"That's how they write in Japanese, so that's how they put their books together. They just replace the words in the word bubbles with English, but you still have to read it back to front, bottom to top."
So she said, "No wonder it wasn't making any sense!"
Actually, that's "back to front, right to left on page, top to bottom." Unless the publisher "flipped" the manga (such as the early Dark Horse publications). Most Del Rey and TokyoPop manga have a useful little "how to read this book" guide in them, too.
ReplyDeleteHere's a good guide: http://mangaforkids.com/images/howto-spread.jpg
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