1. What is the difference between shonen manga and shojo m.docx

1. What is the difference between shonen manga and shojo
manga?
2. What is hentai?
3. Differentiate these three terms: tankobon, bunkobon, akabon.
4. How important is manga to the Japanese publishing industry?
5. What was The Japan Punch?
6. Name the comic strip dog who served up propaganda during
World War II.
7. What was the plot formula for sports manga in the 1950s?
8. Why is Osamu Tezuka famous?
9. Name a TV cartoon produced by Mushi Production.
10. How is gekiga different from shonen and shojo?
11. In what way were creator’s rights in Japan different from
those in the U.S.?
12. What is Barefoot Gen about?
13. What is Go Nagai’s most famous work?
14. Name the manga Hayao Miyazaki spent thirteen years on.
15. List two of Miyazaki’s anime.
16. Who is Rumiko Takahashi?
17. What is shonen ai?
18. How did manga get popular in the U.S.?
19. What are Fujoshi? [Note: BL (Boys Love) is generally used
as an umbrella term for all the male-on-male romance written
for girls and women. Shonen ai focuses on romance, whereas
yaoi focuses on sex and includes explicit sexual content.]
20. The Fujoshi article does not use MLA format. What format
does it use instead?
21. What is “flow”?
22. What are Stuart Hall’s three types of reading?
23. What was the primary research method of the Fujoshi study?

24. What are the three “dimensions” the study identifies?
25. What are dōjinshi?
26. What are aniparo?
27. What does 24nengumi refer to?
28. Who was the first male protagonist in a girls’ comic?
29. According to Edward Said, what is Orientalism?
30. What role did Christianity play in Boys Love of the 1970s?
31. Which scholarly field has dominated the discussion of
manga in the U.S.?
32. What audience are Schwartz and Rubenstein-Ávila
addressing?
33. What is kanji?
34. What are the two main reasons why educators should give
attention to manga?
35. Why do librarians like manga?
36. What is New Literacy Studies?
37. What are the five spheres of manga?
38. Which sphere do the authors describe as “soft
pornography”?
39. What are Noel Carroll’s two types of monster?
40. What does Carroll see as the difference between “horrific
monsters” and fairy tale monsters?
41. What are chimera?
42. How did Shou Tucker create his latest chimera?
43. Why is manga monstrous to someone like Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing?
44. Why does Eric Livingston refer to reading manga as a kind
of alchemy?
Corresponding author:
Lesley-Anne Gallacher, Faculty of Education and Language
Studies, The Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

Email: [email protected]
cultural geographies
18(4) 457–473
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1474474010397639
cgj.sagepub.com
(Fullmetal) alchemy: the
monstrosity of reading words
and pictures in shonen manga
Lesley-Anne Gallacher
The Open University, UK
Abstract
Shonen manga (Japanese comics aimed at an audience of
teenage boys) are often teeming with monsters, but
the texts themselves are more monstrous still. The monstrous
combinations of words and picture dispersed
across the manga page seem to expose and challenge a fissure
within representation itself—but productively
so. Through reading a short section of Hiromu Arakawa’s
Fullmetal Alchemist, this paper explores the ways
in which words and pictures can be combined to produce
monstrous composite texts, which remain open-
ended even after they have been recognized and ‘domesticated’
through the practices of reading.
Keywords
Fullmetal Alchemist, manga, monsters, pictures, reading, words

I Textual Monsters
Monsters no longer swarm in religious imagery, but in science
fiction and children’s books. They are not
identified – and this must be progress of a kind – with
prodigious births, sports of nature, exotic marvels.
They have taken up their dwelling inside the minds of people
instead, and this poses new problems as
to their control.1
In his work on the philosophy of horror, Noel Carroll defines
two types of monster: ‘fusion crea-
tures’ or hybridized composites of heterogeneous elements, such
as the chimera or the basilisk; and
‘fission creatures’, the heterogeneous elements of which occupy
the same body but are not tempo-
rarily continuous (werewolves, for example, are both human and
wolf, but not simultaneously).2 In
either case, monsters are excessive. As ‘denizens of the
borderland’ they represent the extremities
of transgression and indicate the limits of the order of things.
While monsters may be grotesque,
dangerous, and/or impure, this is not what makes them
monstrous; their monstrosity derives
from their improbability. Monsters breach the accepted norms
of ontological propriety and do not
fit the possibilities conceived within normal science. As a
result, in some branches of evolutionary
biology unprecedented mutations are termed ‘hopeful monsters’
in that they may herald an entire
population of a species to come, which is not yet namable.3
For Carroll, only ‘horrific’ monsters can be improbable. The
monsters that inhabit mythologies,
folk and fairy tales are neither unnatural or surprising because
they can be fully accommodated
within the cosmology in which they occur; horrific monsters are

‘extraordinary character[s] in our
458 cultural geographies 18(4)
ordinary world’, while fairy tale or mythological monsters are
simply ‘ordinary creature[s] in an
extraordinary world’.4 Monsters surprise and scare us when
they encroach upon our ‘ordinary’
world; they are creatures with which we are not (pre-)prepared
to engage, and whose existence we
could not have anticipated.5 The etymology of the word monster
suggests exactly this. It comes to
English from the Latin monstrum. Monstrum, in turn, is derived
from a corruption of moneo by
monstrare. This links ‘advice’, ‘reminder’ or ‘warning’ with
‘showing’.6 As such, monsters reveal
something. To meet a monster is to encounter something
surprising in the world; it is to discover
the world is not as ‘ordinary’ or ‘familiar’ as it might have
seemed:
If we pay attention to them, monsters do have something to
reveal. They show us the reality of the
impossible or the things we label impossible; they point out that
the world we think we live in, and the
world we actually inhabit, may not be the same place at all.7
Monsters expose the difficulty of distinguishing between the
‘real’ and the ‘imagined’. Writing
about cinema, Gilles Deleuze argues that the imaginary is a
poor concept. The imaginary is not
unreal; rather, the concept of the imaginary refers to the
difficulty in distinguishing between the
real and unreal. While the two do remain distinct in the

imagination, the distinction itself continu-
ally shifts around. As such, Deleuze insists that it is more
useful to think of the imaginary as a set
of exchanges between the actual and the virtual (both of which
constitute the real). As creatures of
the imagination, monsters are unexpected, and often
unwelcome, migrants from the virtual.8
Thought of in this way, monsters allow us to glimpse the
ungraspable.9 They reveal the processuality
of the world, which is always-already becoming-otherwise. In
this sense, monsters are not defined
by the extent to which they fit into the world; the world is itself
monstrous.10 The monsters that
populate myths and fairy tales are no different to the art-horror
monsters described by Noel Carroll.
They are not ‘ordinary’ and their worlds are no less enchanted
than ours. It is simply that the
strange worlds of myth and fairy tale are better able to offer
hospitality to monsters because they
are not expected to conform to the deadened and disenchanted
visions of modern life that cause
Jane Bennett such dismay.11
The worlds of and in shonen manga Japanese comics (Japanese
comics intended primarily for
an audience of teenage boys) can prove similarly hospitable to
monsters. In particular, fantasy
action/adventure shonen manga series are often densely
populated with monsters. Fullmetal
Alchemist is a popular manga series by a female mangaka
(manga creator), Hiromu Arakawa,
which was serialized in Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine from
2002 to 2010. The series is set in
a fictional universe, which is loosely based on Europe during
the industrial revolution. The heroes
in the series have become both less and more than fully human

in form as a result of their strange
alchemic powers. As young children, the protagonists, Ed and
Al Elric, damaged their bodies in an
ill-fated alchemic attempt to resurrect their dead mother. Al lost
his body entirely. To save his
younger brother’s life, Ed alchemically attached Al’s
disembodied soul to a suit of armour, which
serves as his body throughout the series. Ed did not come out of
this alchemic disaster unscathed
either; he lost his leg and arm, which have been replaced with
biomechanical protheses known as
‘automail’. As a result, Ed’s body has become a monstrous
combination of human flesh and
machine, while Al exists only as an animated armour casing. At
age 15, Ed decided to become a
State Alchemist – to put his pseudo-scientific and semi-magical
alchemy at the service of the mili-
tary – in order to gain access to resources that might enable him
to restore his and his brother’s
bodies. As a State Alchemist he is known as the ‘Fullmetal
Alchemist’.
The Elric brother’s monstrosity, and that of many of the
characters they meet in the course of
their adventures, is a driving force for the events in the series,
but it does not seem out of place
within the context of their manga world. Monstrosity is not
simply an issue of plot, theme or char-
acterization in Fullmetal Alchemist; it is also a matter of form.
Fullmetal Alchemist is a composite
Gallacher 459
of texts made up of words and pictures, which are arranged in

panels, word balloons and gutters on
the page. As such, Fullmetal Alchemist – and, indeed, manga
more generally – can be considered
to be at least as monstrous as any of the characters within it. To
read Fullmetal Alchemist, readers
must offer some hospitality to monsters; indeed they must be
willing to summon them and bring
them forth by assembling the disparate and seemingly
incompossible elements they encounter on
the page. In this paper, I want to read through a short section of
Fullmetal Alchemist in which the
Elric brothers make the horrific discovery that Shou Tucker has
attempted to advance his military
career by making a talking chimera (a monstrous, composite
beast) by fusing his daughter and the
family dog. I argue that it is not simply the alchemy in the story
that produces this monster; the
story is itself monstrous because it emerges from an impossible
transformation of words and
pictures dispersed in panels separated by gutters. To understand
how readers assemble the story
from the disseminated fragments they encounter on the page, I
draw upon ideas from various
different disciplines in order to develop Eric Livingston’s
notion of reading as an alchemic process
from which the text emerges.12 I use the term alchemy here,
rather than ‘imagination’ or ‘imagina-
tive production’ because I want to emphasize the transformation
that reading produces in the text
itself (rather than in the reader). In doing so, I hope to
contribute to ongoing debates within cultural
geography about issues of representation, and particularly the
role of the visual in relation to other
forms of representation.13 The paper also connects with
attempts by other geographers to think
through the performativity of reading14 and of reading comics

in particular.15
II Reading Fullmetal Alchemist
I want to begin by reading through a few pages from early in the
series – chapter five, in fact –
which I will return to throughout the paper. In this chapter, Ed
and Al visit Shou Tucker – the
‘Sewing-Life Alchemist’ – hoping to learn something useful
from his research. Tucker is a
biological alchemist, and an expert in chimera: monstrous
composite beasts. In these pages, the
boys return to Tucker’s house for a second day’s study.
1 Pages 26–27
Looking at Figure 1, the first panel is only partially framed and
shows only dark clouds and a rumbling
onomatopoeia. In the next panel we see Ed looking up at the sky
and remarking that it’s going to rain,
while Al rings the doorbell. We know that this is the Tucker
house because we saw Roy Mustang ring
the same doorbell when he took them to the house the previous
day. Having received no answer, Al
opens the door slightly and calls out to Tucker, who should be
expecting him. There is nothing inher-
ently unusual about these events, but the scene feels ominous.
This is partly because the onomatopoeia
– rumbling thunder, creaking doors, hushed corridors – and the
dark shadows create a foreboding
atmosphere. As ‘ordinary’ (as opposed to ‘scholarly’) readers,
encountering these pages within our
reading of the chapter in its entirety, we also contrast this with
the welcome the boys received the
previous day when they arrived at a busy – and messy – family
home, complete with a dog and bois-

terous toddler. Today the house is eerily still. The boys search
the seemingly empty house, calling out
to Tucker and his daughter, Nina, as they do so. Eventually,
they glimpse Tucker through a doorway.
He is kneeling in a darkened room and seems somewhat
distracted, but he greets the boys and shows
them his newest creation, which is hidden in the – very dark –
shadows next to him.
2 Pages 28–29
Turning the page (Figure 2), we discover that Tucker has
created a talking chimera, which doesn’t
look enormously delighted in its existence. Tucker demonstrates
its abilities by introducing Ed, who
Figure 2.
Figure 1.
Gallacher 461
is amazed and comes in for a closer look. The chimera continues
to repeat Ed’s name while Tucker
explains his luck in producing the chimera just in time for his
annual assessment, poor performance
in which will lead to the loss of his State Alchemist license –
and the generous research funding and
lifestyle that goes with it. The chimera moves from repeating,
‘Edward’, to call Ed, ‘Big...bruh...

ther’. Ed reacts with shock, which is emphasized by the
whiteness of his widened eyes against the
grainy screentone laid over him. It is common for younger
Japanese children to refer to older boys
as ‘big brother’,16 whether they are related or not. The previous
day, Tucker’s – now absent –
preschool-aged daughter, Nina, has been addressing both Ed and
Al in this way.
3 Pages 30–31
Over the page (Figure 3), Ed examines the chimera gently while
he interrogates Tucker in a series
of panels that get progressively taller as they switch between Ed
and Tucker until the final panel
bleeds off the bottom of the page. Ed establishes that Tucker
got his State Alchemist license two
years previously by making his first talking chimera; earlier in
the chapter, we learned that all that
unhappy creature said was, ‘I want to die’. At the same time –
two years ago – Tucker’s wife left
him and his daughter. With this timeline established, Ed wants
to ask one final question: he wants
to know where Nina and Alexander, the Tucker’s dog, are. Ed is
angry, and Tucker responds
despondently that he hates perceptive brats like Ed. From the
narrow panel squeezed between the
panels containing Ed and Tucker, it might appear that Al shares
Ed’s anger since he has a strange
glow in his, eyeless, eyeholes. But Al is not as perceptive as his
brother.
Figure 3.

4 Pages 32–33
On the next page (Figure 4), Ed pushes Tucker against the wall.
Al is shocked at this outburst. As
he holds Tucker against the wall, Ed explains that Tucker made
the talking chimera, on which his
State Alchemist career is based, by human experimentation: he
used his wife in the first instance,
and now he has turned his daughter and dog into a chimera. It is
only at this point that Al realizes
what has happened, although he is not enraged like his more
hotheaded older brother. The confron-
tation continues over the next few pages and, by the end of the
chapter, Tucker has been stripped
of his State Alchemy license and the wretched Nina-Alexander
chimera has been put out of its
misery by the mysterious new ‘villain’ of the series.
III Words and pictures
Words and pictures are often taken to belong to completely
different spheres of representation, with
no common ground between the two. To take a famous example
of such thinking, Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing argued that the purity of painting and poetry should
never be compromised.17 As a pure art
of language, poetry is necessarily extended in time, for words
can only be spoken sequentially;
painting is a pure art of vision, the elements of which are
arranged side-by-side. Painting, therefore,
belongs to space. To mix poetry and painting – language and
vision, words and pictures, time and
space – is to produce ‘freakish’ writing, the consequences of
which must necessarily be monstrous.

To weaken the boundaries between different realms of
representation is to compromise the integrity
of them all. Manga series like Fullmetal Alchemist (and comics
more generally) are monstrous
Figure 4.
Gallacher 463
because they insist on doing just this. They fall awkwardly
between the literary and visual arts,
such that looking at them seems to be neither reading nor
viewing, but some problematic composite
of the two. They are often understood as fundamentally
deficient, precisely for this ‘failure to be
either a real text or just a proper image’.18 They pose a problem
in their refusal, or perhaps their
inability, to choose.19
The seemingly unbridgeable gap between words and pictures
has consequences far beyond the
organization of the field of representation. The distinction
between the categories of representation
associated with ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ is mobilized in a vast
array of dualisms: the visual and
verbal, texts and images, words and pictures, and so on. This
poses something of a terminological
problem in that the words placed on the same side of the ‘and’
in each case (visual, images, pictures)
are not exactly interchangeable, although they are sometimes
used as such. One issue with the term
‘image’, in particular, is that it seems to fall on both sides of
the so-called divide; imagery is an art
of both language and vision. Rather than seeking to solve this

terminological problem, I have
mixed up the various terms somewhat in this paper (as have
many of the authors I cite within it).
This should be taken as a failure of the paper, or even laziness
on my part. This terminological
messiness is indicative of the willful disorderliness of
representation itself, and the necessary failure
of any project seeking to purify and organize it.
William Mitchell argues that the differences between modes of
representation are manifested in
the problems reconciling a culture of reading with a culture of
spectatorship. He wants to shift the
terms of the debate to focus, not on the difference between
forms, but on the ways in which words
and pictures are used and related to each other.
The real question to ask when presented with . . . image-text
relations is not, ‘what is the difference (or
similarity) between the words and the images?’, but, ‘what
difference do the differences (and similarities)
make?’. That is, why does it matter how words and images are
juxtaposed, blended, or separated?20
In what follows, I want to think through some of the different
ways in which words and pictures
can be combined to produce texts – which will involve a number
of detours into various different
kinds of writing – before returning to my reading of Fullmetal
Alchemist.
Gillian Rose is interested in the different uses of images in
social science writing.21 She identi-
fies two possible ways in which social scientists can relate
(written) texts and (pictorial) images in
order to produce social scientific accounts: images can be used

to support texts, or they can be used
to supplement them. When images are used to support texts,
they facilitate the research process
rather than produce the academic account itself. For example,
researchers often work with photo-
graphs, sometimes in conjunction with participants, in order to
draw out evidence or information
with which they hope to answer a set of research questions. The
photographs are instrumental in
carrying out the research, but they are superseded by the written
academic account derived from or
inspired by them. They enable researchers to access knowledge
about the world, but they do not
communicate that knowledge in and of themselves. At the end
of the research process, it is the
wordy text that must account for the research findings.
This may seem to have very little to do with reading Fullmetal
Alchemist. However, if we under-
stand the story as eluding the images with which it is told,22 we
might think of that story as wordy
entity resulting from reading, or looking at, a manga series.
That is, the reader might be considered
to construct a (verbal) narrative from the textual elements (both
words and pictures) with which
they were presented, and that this forms the entirety of the
story. Indeed, it could be said that I did
just this when I ‘read’ Fullmetal Alchemist in the previous
section; I produced the (verbal) story
(which I then typed out) from the pictures and words presented
on the page. Yet this written account
is inadequate in various ways. Comparing my version with the
images of the comic pages

themselves (in Figures 1 to 4), it is obvious that there is much
more to the story than is contained
in my written account. This would be true no matter how much
detail I put into my ‘story’ because
the pictures add something of their own to it, which cannot be
adequately substituted in words.
Returning to the practices of social science writing, Rose
explains that pictures add something
to a research account when they are employed as a supplement
to words. The pictures exceed the
written report in various ways and they can be allowed to show
themselves on, more or less, their
own terms. She identifies two particular kinds of supplemental
relationship between word and
picture in social science writing: ‘specified generalization’ and
‘texture’. Perhaps most tradition-
ally, pictures in social science texts are used to lend veracity to
an account by ‘specifying the
generalizations’ made in the text. Pictures are deployed as
‘figures’ and tied to the text through the
captions attached to them. Indeed, all of the figures in this
paper perform this kind of supplemen-
tary function in relation to the written account of the practices
of reading Fullmetal Alchemist, even
if my captions do little to explain them. Eric Livingston argues
that captioning reveals the work
involved in producing ‘instructed readings’ of this kind. For
example, he explains that photographs
displayed in introductory sociology textbooks are necessarily
divorced from their context and also
lack obvious thematic content; they display only the ‘sheer
presence’ of a scene. On their own, they
say nothing intelligibly sociological. Through captioning –

adding a line or two of text below, or
otherwise next to, the picture – a photograph can be offered to
the reader as an illustration of a
specific social phenomena. The caption offers a description that
is ‘plausible but not transparent’
from the photograph itself.23 In this way, captioned
photographs teach students to see the world in
terms of sociological analysis.
In sociology, students must be trained to view the familiar,
ordinary world of everyday action as providing
indicators of the structures of action that lie beneath it. The
captions use the natural analysability of
action – the possible ways in which photographs could be seen –
and distort and transform it, making the
photographs into evidence for interpretations of them. Their
authority comes to live within the objectivity
of the social phenomena that the photographs are intended to
illustrate, and in our ability to see photographs
as possible illustrations of those phenomena.24
Used in this way, pictures supplement a text but they are not
able to provide an account in and of
themselves. Used ‘texturally’, pictures gain considerably more
autonomy in producing the social
science account itself, at least, in part. They do something that
the words do not, and perhaps can-
not. For example, John Wylie’s ‘Smoothlands’ presents
fragments of the experience of landscape
in both written text and photographs.25 The photographs are
scattered throughout the text, and they
interrupt its flow, just as the text interrupts theirs. These
photographs are not ‘figures’ – readers’
attention is not directed towards the appropriate photograph
when he or she reaches the relevant
section of text – but evoke something in themselves that the

written account lacks, or at least
approaches differently.
Both of these concepts might be appropriate, to differing
degrees, in understanding the relation-
ships between words and pictures in Fullmetal Alchemist. While
they are not ‘captioned’ in any
recognizable way, the pictures might be said to specify the
generalizations of the written text,
however minimal that text is. For example, the first panel of
page 26 in the section I ‘read’ earlier
(Figure 1) shows a ‘rumbling’ onomatopoeia: ‘GRM RM RMB’.
Many things or events can pro-
duce this kind of rumbling sound: it could be traffic noise, a
rockfall, someone’s stomach, or
something else entirely. However, the onomatopoeia is
juxtaposed with a picture of dark clouds in
the panel. By relating the picture to the onomatopoeic ‘word’,26
readers are able to interpret it as
the rumbling of thunder. This reading is confirmed in the
following panel where Ed looks up
towards this sky and comments that it is going to rain. While it
is possible to interpret some
Gallacher 465
interactions between word and picture in Fullmetal Alchemist in
this way, the autonomy given to
images in telling the story make ‘texture’ a more useful notion
in explaining the relationship
between them. The story is told as much – if not more so – in
pictures as it is in words. The two
perform different functions, but the tale is told between them
both. In this way, the relationship can

be said to be somewhat less ‘supplemental’ than it is
‘symbiotic’.
IV Illustration
The comics artist Will Eisner makes a distinction between
visuals and illustrations.27 Visuals are
somewhat autonomous; they can replace a written text to
varying degrees. Illustrations remain tied
to a written text and can only reinforce and repeat that text.
However, the addition of pictures to a
text is a process in which neither the text nor the pictures are
passive, and from which neither can
emerge unaltered. William Moebius explains that children’s
picturebooks are more than albums of
pictures, or texts with some pictures thrown in. Picturebooks
present a more integral relationship
between word and picture, such that readers experience them as
a ‘total design’. The pictures
and text in a picturebook probably can stand in isolation to
some extent, but the story is certainly
diminished for it.
The story in the child’s picturebook . . . unfolds for us just now,
a variety-show of images and texts. We
anticipate the next while looking at the one before, we laugh
now that we see a character that we had not
noticed before, we let our eyes wander off a familiar character’s
face to a puzzling word on the page and
back again. Unlike the framed settings of a Biblical text of a
Raphael or Rembrandt, the pictures in a
picturebook cannot hang by themselves; picturebook texts do
not fare well when they are extracted and
anthologized in various bibles of children’s literature. Each
works with the other in a bound sequence of
images/text, inseparable in our reading experience one from the

other . . . In the picturebook, we read
images and text together as the mutually complementary story
of a consciousness, of Lyle the Crocodile’s
ways of being, his growing and suffering in the world.28
William Mitchell is interested in considering the specific
constellations of pictures and text that are
mobilized in particular media, and in specific works. The
obvious starting point for such investiga-
tions may appear to be those media – such as, film, television
and manga – in which the relation of
image and word is already posed as a problem. However, for
Mitchell, the problem does not simply
arise between different forms of representation, nor does it
trouble only those that would insist on
amalgamating them; the issue is unavoidably present within
representation itself. Put simply, all
arts are ‘composite’ and all media are ‘mixed’. There is no
purity to be found in representational
practice, however much ‘modernity’ might have tried to
convince itself otherwise. The practice of
writing itself deconstructs the possibility of pure representation,
either verbal or visual. In its
graphic form, writing is more than a supplement to speech; it is
an inseparable stitching of the
visual and the verbal. As an art of both language and vision,
writing is ‘the imagetext incarnate’.29
Similarly, the visual burrows inside the verbal through the
imagery conjured up in words through
all manner of ekphrastic strategies.30
Mitchell identifies three broad ways of conceiving of the
relationship between the visual and
the verbal: ‘imagetext’, ‘image-text’ and ‘image/text’. In
‘imagetexts’, words and pictures are
combined to produce a composite, synthetic whole. For

example, David Carrier argues that comics
(including manga) are not a hybrid medium; they are a
composite art.31 Successful comics seam-
lessly combine the visual and the verbal. It is in this sense that
Carrier positions the word balloon
(or speech bubble) as their defining characteristic: comics are a
narrative sequence with speech
balloons. In the speech bubble, the (verbal) word is made
image, but the word balloon itself is
always as conventional as the letters and punctuation marks it
contains. These balloons blur the
word/image binary because they are neither within the picture
space, nor are they external to it.
Thus, word balloons are always ‘imagetexts’.
Thierry Groensteen argues that comics form a system based on
the relational play of a plurality
of interdependent images, which are both separated by and over-
determined by their coexistence
on the page.32 These images are arranged spatio-topologically
in panels on an individual page,
and across pages. Word balloons create a network within this
spatio-topological apparatus, which
allows comics to simultaneously mobilize the verbal and the
visual. While the layout of the page is
important in comics, it remains inert in isolation from the
relations to which it is submitted in the
process of reading that comic, which Groensteen terms
arthrology.33 To emphasize the relation –
and, indeed, the very relate-ability – of words and pictures
within a medium in this way is to

understand a work as an ‘image-text’.
Yet, these relationships always are somewhat uneasy. For
Groensteen the problems of ‘depth’ in
the relationship between the comics panel and the word balloon
reveal unreconcilable tensions
between ‘textuality’ and ‘pictoriality’. The pictures belong to
the panel, and the ‘image zone’
created by it; the word balloon creates a ‘textual zone’ that
floats over the panel and obscures part
of the image. The pictures rely on perspectival codes and the
practices of staging planes in order to
create an illusion of three-dimensionality. The word balloon, as
a textual zone, asserts the flatness
of the writing surface and, in so-doing, betrays the illusion of
depth in the pictorial zone of the
panel beneath it. The word balloon can never be fully
accommodated within the pictorial panel,
but it cannot be entirely autonomous either. The bubble, and the
words it contains, is a visual
approximation of those uttered and/or heard within the panel.
The utterance belongs to the panel,
even if it seems to assert a surface from which the picture pulls
away. The balloon and the picture,
therefore, cannot belong to different planes; they are always
complementary pieces of a puzzle
arrayed on the surface of the panel, however problematic their
assemblage may be. For example,
these tensions are obvious in the relationship between the
speech balloon on the left-hand side and
the picture in the fourth panel in Figure 1. Arakawa has
achieved an illusion of depth in the image,
but the speech bubble remains resolutely flat. Nonetheless, she
has tried to indicate the direction of
the sound ‘backwards’ towards Al within the image by curving
its tail.

In this way, word balloons reveal a disjuncture within
representation itself. Frank Cioffi argues
that the problematic gap between the visual and the verbal is
always-already at work in comics.34
He argues that some comics – such as Art Spiegelman’s much
celebrated Maus35 – are particu-
larly successful because they are able to productively exploit
the dissonances between words and
pictures, and to make effective use of the impossibility of
perceiving the two simultaneously and
identically. This rupture in representation is the problem posed
by ‘image/text’ relations. And the
important thing in ‘image/text’ relation – for Mitchell at least –
is the maintenance of their radical
incommensurability. That is, the possibility of their being both
relation and non-relation between
the visual and the verbal in a work.36 The monstrosity of
Fullmetal Alchemist arises from the
incommensurability of words and pictures. Yet, to read
Fullmetal Alchemist, readers must begin
to domesticate these monsters even as they summon them forth;
they must make use of the ten-
sions between the words and pictures to find and produce the
story in the elements they encounter
on the page.
Writing about children’s picturebooks, Perry Nodelman argues
that there is necessarily a degree
of irony in the relationship between words and pictures.
However closely matched they may seem,
they can never be fully congruent.37 In children’s picturebooks,
the two interact in complex and
dynamic ways, such that the story is told in neither one nor the
other, but by both simultaneously.
The text and illustrations do not, and cannot, simply mirror one

another (although neither can they
Gallacher 467
easily stand apart). This is, in part, because of the different
valences of the words and pictures, as
Christina Desai explains:
The art is an integral part of the story without which much of
the meaning and mood would be missing.
Whether the plot of the story could be understood without the
illustrations is an irrelevant question, since
the illustrations do have an impact in either case.38
Words and pictures come together to tell the story – each
contributes something of its own. As
such, the practice of illustration is not simply additive, and
never redundant; the practice of adding
pictures to a written text transforms both pictures and text and
results in a story that cannot be
reduced to any of its constituent parts. Desai explains
something of this effect through the relation-
ships between word and picture in Allen Say’s illustrated novel,
El Chino.39 The novel relates what
might, at first, seem to be an ‘ordinary’ sports story about a boy
who takes up bullfighting. The text
closely follows the classic structure of its genre: despite an
initial lack of ability, the main character
perseveres and overcomes obstacles to become proficient in a
sport and, eventually, he is able to
compete and win. But El Chino is not a ‘generic’ sports story
(although it would not necessarily be
a failure if it were) because it is transformed by its illustrations.
The words and pictures are closely

complementary, but their juxtaposition utterly changes the
character of the story. While the text
seems to relate a straightforward action tale, which employs a
minimum of poetic device, the
illustrations enable the protagonist’s emotional transformation
to become the central theme of the
story. The text drives the plot forward; the illustrations slow
down the action and create a mood of
introspection. In serving these different functions, the
interaction between words and pictures
make El Chino both an action tale and a character study
simultaneously.
The illustrated story exceeds both the written text and the
pictures through which it is told and
must, therefore, always be monstrous. Yet, it is by virtue of
their monstrosity that picturebooks
might be said to present a ‘poetry’ of word and picture, which
communicates something of that
which lies beyond the reach of either words or pictures. For
Moebius, such poetic qualities can
enable children’s picturebooks to seem far more profound than
might be expected: ‘the best
picturebooks can and do portray the intangible and invisible . . .
ideas that escape easy definition
in picture or words’.40 Desai explains how, in El Chino, Allen
Say uses words and pictures to say
something more than either could alone, and to enable the story
to succeed in more than one
genre simultaneously. This is the ‘magic’ of a well-crafted
picturebook, an unarticulated – and
unarticulatable – force through which word and pictures
combine to become something other
than they could be alone. But, like any good magic trick, it
obscures and misdirects its own work-
ings in order to succeed at all.41

V Panels and gutters
Of course, while both picturebooks and manga combine words
and pictures, there are many nota-
ble differences between the two. One difference is to be found
in the structural organization of
manga (and comics more generally) into panels, which are
usually separated by gutters. Thierry
Groensteen regards the panel as the smallest unit in the system
of comics. This does not mean,
however, that the panel is the least unit of signification in
comics; the panel may be broken up into
the different informational elements it contains, but it cannot be
reduced. Framed and isolated by
empty space, the panels in Fullmetal Alchemist are contained by
and take part in the sequential
continuum of the manga. The panels – as discretely packaged
pictures, or combinations of pictures
and words – share space on the page before they enter into any
other relationship. As such, the
system of comics, as it is described by Groensteen, is always
primarily spatio-topological.42
Fullmetal Alchemist is composed of multiple panels arranged on
the page. The story emerges from
the relations between, and within, the panels, which Groensteen
terms ‘arthrology’. For Groensteen,
the function of separation – what would be referred to in cinema
as ‘the cut’43 – is crucial to the
system of comics: ‘[t]he spatio-topia, let us not forget, is a part
and a condition of arthrology: one

could not connect the visual utterances if they were not
distinct’.44
The comics artist and theorist, Scott McCloud explains that the
gutter – the empty space that
separates the panels on the page – ‘plays host to much of the
magic and mystery that are at the very
heart of comics’.45 This is because the gutters participate as
much in the work of conjunction and
relation (the arthrology) as they do in the processes of
scattering and distribution. In this way, the
gutter can be understood as the site of semantic articulation in
comics. In presupposing that
there is meaning to be found within a comic, readers search for
ways in which the isolated panels
relate to each other. In so-doing, they produce meaning and
come to believe that it exists in the text
itself. Groensteen argues that the comics panel is fragmentary
but always caught up in a system of
proliferation; the panel can only ever be rendered meaningful as
a component in a larger apparatus
because it can never, in itself, produce the totality of an
utterance.46
To read Fullmetal Alchemist, readers need to produce a range of
relations – both proximal and
distal, linear and non-linear – between the various elements on
the page: the words and pictures,
panels and gutters. For example, the first panel on page 26 (in
Figure 1) contains, or fails to fully
contain, a picture of dark clouds and some free floating letters.
These letters are an onomatopoeia –
‘GRM RM RMB’ – a rumbling sound. Readers are able to
identify this as a meterological rumbling
because they are able to relate the onomatopoeia to the dark
clouds with which it is juxtaposed in

the panel. This is further confirmed in the foreground of the
next panel, where we see Ed looking
upwards. The rumbling onomatopoeia is repeated in this panel,
just above his head. A speech
bubble floats above the onomatopoeia and its tail points down
towards Ed. The bubble contains
the text, ‘It’s gonna rain for sure today’. Linking these elements
together, we are able to read
this as Ed’s reaction to seeing the dark clouds in the sky above
him, and hearing the rumbling
of thunder.
In the background of this second panel, we find Ed’s brother,
Al, standing in front of a door,
holding on to a chain that is hanging from a bell. We know that
Al is ringing the doorbell because
an onomatopoeic ‘ding ding’ has been placed next to the bell.
Small lines have also been placed
either side of the bell to indicate objective motion in the still
image: the bell is moving from side
to side. We can identify this doorway as the Tucker’s front door
by relating it back to the second
panel of page 12 of the chapter, where we saw Roy Mustang
standing in front of the same doorway
and ringing the same doorbell (drawn from almost exactly the
same angle) when he brought the
boys to the house the previous day. We are also able to identify
Ed and Al as the protagonists of the
series from having seen them in repeated panels within this
chapter, and perhaps in other chapters
in the series.
In the next panel, we look out at Al from inside the house as he
holds the door open. The ono-
matopoeia in the top left-hand corner of the panel indicates that
the door has creaked as it opened.

The two speech bubbles, each with a tail directed towards Al,
contain the text, ‘Hello…Mr Tucker?
It’s us again.’ The next panel ‘pulls away’ to provide a longer
view of the corridor with Al silhouet-
ted in the doorway. The onomatopoeic ‘Hush…’ emphasizes the
stillness of the dark, empty cor-
ridor. Al was expecting an answer but the house appears to be
deserted. On the left-hand side of
the panel there is a speech balloon containing the text, ‘Huh?’,
the tail of which appears to point
‘back’ towards Al in the ‘depths’ of the image. From this we
know that Al is surprised to find the
house empty. The three panels here – showing Al ringing the
doorbell, calling through the open
Gallacher 469
door, and then puzzling over the lack of response – are not
sufficient to explain Al’s confusion.
And they certainly don’t explain why the boys go on to search
the house in the next panel.
It is not unusual to call at a house only to discover that the
inhabitants have gone out. The usual
course of action in such circumstances would be to come back
again later, or perhaps to leave a
note. However, on page 21 of the chapter, it was established
that the boys would be returning to the
house today and that the Tuckers were expecting them, even
looking forward to their visit. This is
why Al did not expect to find the house empty. Indeed, he
expected the kind of welcome they
received the previous day (on pages twelve to thirteen), when
Ed was pounced upon by the family

dog, Alexander, as Nina and Tucker ran to greet their visitors at
the door. Today, the house seems
very different from the chaotic family home the boys arrived at
the previous day. An ominous
mood is created through the contrast between the house as it
was presented on the earlier pages and
the eerie stillness extended across all of the panels in this
spread, with their dark shadows, grainy
screentones, and creepy sound effects.
VI Monstrous texts
To read Fullmetal Alchemist, then, is to bridge the gutters and
to make connections between the
words and pictures and the fragmented and dispersed panels on
the page. the story emerges from
the efforts of readers who must produce this network of
relations, which yield a (story) ‘world’ that
cannot be reduced to any or all of the panels from which it
appears to be composed. In this way, to
read Fullmetal Alchemist is to perform a kind of magic, which
Eric Livingston refers to as an
‘alchemy’.47 His use of the term alchemy is somewhat strange,
and he never fully explains it.
Alchemy is commonly understood as a primitive and semi-
mystical version of chemistry. However,
this evolutionary notion obscures the ways in which the two
differ in type. Brian Massumi explains
that alchemy is a ‘qualitative science of impossible
transformation’, while chemistry, and physics,
are ‘quantitative sciences of elemental causes’.48 As an
alchemy, the practices of reading manga
transmute the fragmented text – the words and pictures arranged
on a page – in order to produce
something meaningful (the story).

Yet, Livingston explains that the reading – or the story, as that
which is read – is not literally in
the text, but neither is it not in the text.49 Texts only come to
exist as meaningful objects in and
through the practices of reading. The read-text emerges from
the alchemic practices of reading; the
elements of a text – words and pictures, which are themselves
nothing more than splashes of
ink on a page – are transformed such that they seem meaningful
in and of themselves. Through
reading, written texts cease to be ‘fragile things’ – ‘made up of
nothing stronger or more lasting
than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks’, as
Neil Gaiman reminds us50 – and
hold together as stories in their own right. The coherence of a
text is always equivalent to the coher-
ence and continuity of reading’s work. But this coherence, and
seeming self-sufficiency, are only
ever retrospective.
Much the same can be said about the scattered words and
pictures arranged on the manga page.
The elements from which they are constituted may differ
somewhat, but comics texts are no less
‘fragile’ than those conveyed entirely in writing. In an argument
that is striking similar to
Livingston’s, Moebius argues that the associations between
words and pictures do not reside in the
texts themselves, but arise in the active imagination of the
reader. He describes this as a kind of
‘plate tectonics’, in which words and pictures remain
distinguishable as they scrape and slide
against each other. This causes ‘semic slippage’ between the
two – as well among the pictures and,
indeed, among the words themselves. The alchemy of reading
manga produces a monster in that it

necessarily relates and assembles the words and pictures
dispersed on the page itself to produce a
story that seems to have been there all along. It is not only Ed
Elric that has a discovery to make in
these pages of Fullmetal Alchemist; we (as readers) dicovered –
and, indeed, produced – the text
within the elements presented to us. In this way, to read
Fullmetal Alchemist is not to interpret it,
but to experiment with it. Shou Tucker is not the only one
making monsters here.
Indeed, to read Fullmetal Alchemist, we must offer some
hospitality to monsters – we must
assemble the disparate and seemingly incompossible elements
found on the page – but that is not
to say that we can, or should allow the monster to run amok.
Derrida explains that to welcome a
monster is, inevitably, to recognize it as a monster. In doing so,
one must become accustomed to
it – and to have it do the same to you. The act of recognition
necessarily legitimates and normalizes
the monster and, eventually, masters and tames it. The manga
page, then, charges its readers ‘to
welcome the monstrous arrivant, to welcome, that is, to accord
hospitality to that which is abso-
lutely foreign or strange, but also, one must add, to try to
domesticate it, that is, to make it part of
the household and have it assume new habits, to make us
assume new habits’.51 To live with, and
to welcome, monsters is to believe in an enlivened world
capable of surprise and to allow oneself

to be enchanted ‘by the extraordinary that lives amid the
familiar and the everyday’.52 For surprise
is nothing more than a miss in habitual reception – it is a simple
lack of recognition.53 The act
of affording hospitality to monsters is important because, in
doing so, one is able to welcome
the future as future. It is to accept the world as more than a set
of pre-calculated possibilities to
be managed, but as brimming with potential, unforseen and
unforseeable. This is to embrace the
future as monstrous:
The future is necessarily monstrous: the figure of the future,
that is, that which can only be surprising,
that for which we are not prepared, you see, is heralded by
species of monsters. A future that would not
be monstrous would not be a future; it would already be a
predictable, calculable and programmable
tomorrow.54
In its monstrosity, Fullmetal Alchemist is constitutionally open-
ended. This may have seemed
obvious during its serialization, when each month would bring a
new installment. Yet, even when
this serialization came to an end and there was no more textual
material to be assembled into the
story, the work of reading is never really finished. Although it
may seem to be a stable material
‘thing’ (ink on pages, collected into volumes bound as books),
Stanley Fish insists that all literature
is a ‘kinetic art’. For this reason it does not lend itself to static
interpretation. He argues that critics
and theorists should attend to the practices of reading and
interpretation through which the text is
actualized, rather than analysing the static shape of the printed
page and idealizing the assumed

reader who can meet the demands of the text. He explains that
meaning cannot be understood as an
entity contained in the formal patterns of the text prior to and
independent of the activities of read-
ers. For Fish, meaning is always an event created in and through
the practices of reading. Conceived
of in this way, Fullmetal Alchemist can neither stand still nor
can it allow its readers to do so.
The objectivity of the text is an illusion and, more over, a
dangerous illusion, because it is so physically
convincing. The illusion is one of self-sufficiency and
completeness. A line of print or a page is so
obviously there – it can be handled, photographed, or put away
– that it seems to be the sole repository of
whatever value and meaning we associate with it . . . This is of
course the unspoken assumption behind the
word ‘content’. The line or page or book contains –
everything.55
Fullmetal Alchemist does not feature a pre-given reality (to be
recovered by a sufficiently competent
reader); the action of reading effects a somewhat mysterious
transformation of the pre-given
material on the page – an impossible, and monstrous,
transformation.56 Meaning is never a (pre-)
Gallacher 471
definable entity belonging to a text, but an event – a dynamic
happening.57 In this way, the alchemy
of reading is always an impossible transformation, rather than
an ‘equivalent exchange’. In the
Fullmetal Alchemist story, the alchemic ‘law’ of equivalent

exchange is articulated almost as a
version of the scientific principle of the conservation of mass. It
is said to be the fundamental
principle underlying all alchemic reactions. However, through
his adventures, Ed Elric discovers
that alchemy does not operate according to this principle in the
way he’d always been led to
believe; it’s impossible transformations are never as calculable
as he’d hoped. Similarly, the
monstrous story produced through the alchemy of reading
Fullmetal Alchemist necessarily exceeds
the elements of the text, even if it is never entirely estranged
from them. This is the case, even
though, upon reading, the story-world seems to belong to those
splashes on ink (the words and
pictures, panels and gutters) on the page that we encounter as
the text of Fullmetal Alchemist.
Acknowledgements
This paper results from my doctoral research at the University
of Edinburgh, which was funded by an ESRC
scholarship. I would like to thank my supervisors, Eric Laurier,
Jane Jacobs and Liz Bondi and three anony-
mous reviewers, for their helpful comments and suggestions on
earlier versions of this paper. I’d also like to
thank my colleagues at the Open University, Alison Clark, Sara
Bragg and Keiron Sheehy, for their construc-
tive criticism of the paper. Thanks also to Ignaz Strebel,
Leonidas Koutsoumpos and Allyson Nobel and the
‘Sensei session’ members at the University of Edinburgh for
their help and support in data analysis. Thanks
to James Ash for this support, ideas and suggestions.
Notes

1 M. Warner, No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and
Making Mock (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 258.
2 N. Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the
Heart (London: Routledge, 1990).
3 C.N. Milburn, ‘Monsters in Eden: Darwin and Derrida’,
MLN, 118(3), 2003, p. 603.
4 Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, p. 19.
5 J. Derrida, ‘Passages: From Traumatism to Promise’, in E.
Weber (ed.), Points…: Interviews, 1974–1994
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 386.
6 M. Warner, Six Myths of our Time: Little Angels, Little
Monsters, Beautiful Beasts, and More (New York:
Vintage Books, 1996).
7 J.M. Greer, Monsters: An Investigator’s Guide to Magical
Beings (St Paul: Llewellyn Press, 2001),
pp. 3–4.
8 G. Deleuze, Negotiations: 1972–1990 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1995).
9 J.-D. Dewsbury, ‘Performativity and the Event: Enacting a
Philosophy of Difference’, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 2000, pp. 473–496.
10 B. Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect,
Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press,
2002), p. 233.
11 J. Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments,
Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001).
12 E. Livingston, An Anthropology of Reading (Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,

1995).
13 See, for example, the papers in the ‘Intervation Roundtable:
Geographical Knowledge and Visual
Practices’ section of Antipode, 35(2), 2003.
14 See, S. Hones, ‘Text as it Happens: Literary Geography’,
Geography Compass, 2(5), 2008, pp. 1301–17;
J.L. Romanillos, ‘“Outside it is Snowing”: Experience and
Finitude in the Nonrepresentational Land-
scapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet’, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, 25, 2008, pp. 795–822.
15 For example, M. Doel and D.B. Clarke, ‘The Artistry of
Cities: Chris Ware’s Comic Strips’, in T. Beyes,
S.T. Krempl and A. Deuflhard (eds), Parcitypate: Art And
Urban Space (Zurich: Verlag Niggli AG);
J. Dittmer, ‘Comic Book Visualities: A Methodological
Manifesto on Geography, Montage and Narration’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(2),
2010, pp. 222–36.
16 お兄さん (onii-san) or お兄ちゃん (onii-chan) depending upon
the level of familiarity shared.
17 G. Lessing, Laocoon: Or, the Limits of Poetry And Painting
(London: Ridgeway, 1836).
18 D. Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics (University Park:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 68–69.
19 Jared Gardiner argues that comics are unable, and perhaps
unwilling, to choose between more than just
word and picture. They also insist on mixing past and future,

and presence and absence. ‘Archives,
Collectors and the New Media Work of Comics’, MFS: Modern
Fiction Studies, 52, 2006, pp. 787–805.
20 W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Visual and
Verbal Representation (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994), p. 91.
21 G. Rose. Visual Methodologies (2nd Rdition) (London:
SAGE, 2007).
22 T. Groensteen, The System of Comics (Jackson: University
of Mississippi Press, 2007), p. 9.
23 Livingston, An Anthropology of Reading, p. 80.
24 Livingston, An Anthropology of Reading, p. 81.
25 J. Wylie, ‘Smoothlands: Fragments/Landscapes/Fragments’,
cultural geographies, 13, 2006, pp.458–65.
26 ‘GRM RM RMB’ is not really a word in the traditional
sense; it is a written approximation of the sound
made rather than a completely arbitrary rendition of the idea of
that sound. The word ‘rumble’ is itself
onomatopoeic, whereas the word ‘thunder’ is not.
27 W. Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art: The Principles and
Practice of the World’s Most Popular Art
Form (2nd Edition) (Parasmus: Poorhouse Press, 1990).
28 W. Moebius, ‘Introduction to Picturebook Codes’, Word and
Image, 2(2), 1986, p. 141.
29 Mitchell, Picture Theory.
30 Mitchell devotes a whole chapter of Picture Theory to
ekphrasis, and the different ways in which the
seemingly impossible practice of rendering the visual verbally
is both welcomed and feared.
31 Carrier (Aesthetics) understands the rapprochement of word

and picture as essentially narratological;
words and images are united in the service of the story, which
he conceives of only in narrative terms.
This serves to reduce the category of ‘story’ and the experience
of reading a comic, in all manner of
unhelpful ways.
32 Groensteen, System of Comics.
33 Groensteen acquires this terms via the Greek word arthron,
which translates as ‘articulation’.
34 F.L. Cioffi, ‘Disturbing Comics: The Disjunction of Word
and Image in the Comics of Andrzej Mleczko,
Ben Katchor, R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman’, in R. Varnum and
C.T. Gibbons (eds), The Language of
Comics: Word and Image (Jackson: University of Mississippi
Press, 2001), pp. 97–122.
35 A. Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (New York:
Pantheon, 1996).
36 Mitchell, Picture Theory.
37 P. Nodelman, Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of
Children’s Picture Books (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1988).
38 C. Desai, ‘Weaving Words and Pictures: Allen Say and the
Art of Illustration’, The Lion and the Unicorn,
28, 2004, p. 409.
39 A. Say, El Chino (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
40 Moebius, ‘Picturebook Codes’, p. 146.
41 Livingston, An Anthropology of Reading.
42 Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen’s translation of The System of
Comics refers to the arrangement of comics

pages – the spatiotopie in Groensteen’s French – as ‘spatio-
topical’ throughout. Spatio-topological
is closer to Groensteen’s meaning, however, in that he wishes to
stress that the spatial positioning of
panels on the physical page such that they enable particular
kinds of relations to emerge. As such, the
spatio-topia does not map a topograpahy, but a topology; what
matters is the relations that can emerge
between the panels, not their situation as such.
43 For a discussion of the separative function of the cut and the
development of montage in film, see M. Doel
and D.B. Clarke, ‘Afterimages’, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, 25, 2007, pp.
890–910.
44 Groensteen, System of Comics, p. 45.
45 S. McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New
York: Harper, 1993), p. 66.
Gallacher 473
48 Massumi, Parables, p. 112.
49 E. Livingston, ‘The Textuality of Pleasure’, New Literary
History, 37(3), 2006, pp. 655–72.
50 N. Gaiman, Fragile Things (London: Headline Review,
2007), p. 26.
51 Derrida, ‘Passages’, p. 387.
52 Bennett, Enchantment, p. 4.
53 Massumi, Parables, pp. 220–1.
54 Derrida, ‘Passages’, p. 387.
55 S. Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of

Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1980), p. 43.
56 W. Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary
Anthropology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1993), p. 258.
57 W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic
Response (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1978), p. 22.
Biographical note
Lesley-Anne Gallacher is a lecturer in the Centre for Childhood,
Development and Learning at the Open
University. She recently completed her PhD at the University of
Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the
cultural geographies of childhood, including the practices and
cultures among English-speaking anime and
manga fan communities and the material cultures of early
childhood.
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T E R A C Y 5 0 : 1 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 640
Adam Schwartz, Eliane Rubinstein-Ávila
Understanding the manga hype: Uncovering the
multimodality of comic-book literacies
Understanding the manga hype: Uncovering the
multimodality of comic-book literacies
The sharp rise in manga’s popularity in the
United States warrants directing educators’
attention toward these comics.
It’s regrettable, but teachers and par-
ents often undermine the ability to
make meaning from the myriad of
popular culture texts to which young
people are exposed. Comics, television,
and video games are often perceived as
contributing to students’ short atten-
tion spans, passivity, and lack of creativity and as
providing distractions from educational practices
(Gee, 2004). Therefore, the hype around the popu-
larity of Japanese-style comics, or manga
(Japanese for “amusing drawings”), among youths
in the United States is viewed with bewilderment
and amazement (Wolk, 2001). While some teach-

ers are banning manga from their classrooms,
some public librarians are rejoicing because they
are unable to keep manga on the shelves (e.g.,
Carey, Reid, & Kawasaki, 2005).
In the meantime, literacy researchers not
only validate but also expand upon the ways
youths engage with and use popular culture as a
tool for literacy development and critical inquiry
(Alvermann & Xu, 2003; Gee, 2004). A growing
number of scholars even argue that engagement
with sophisticated computer games is associated
with distinct cognitive development, increase in
rapid decision making, and enhancement of
hand–eye coordination (Carrington, 2004).
Those of us who have not been socialized from a
young age into the postindustrial, saturated con-
sumer culture of computer games,
film, interactive toys, e-mail, and
DVDs may find the visual grammar
and storytelling used in manga chal-
lenging to follow. Not to mention that
its multimodality is difficult to com-
prehend and build upon to make
meaning.
So far, we find that discussions
regarding manga are dominated by
scholars in the field of cultural studies (Grigsby,
1998; Ito, 2002; Kinsella, 1999, 2000; Martinez,
1998; Ogi, 2003; Schodt, 1996). Although several
scholars in education have explored the role of
popular culture in youths’ literacy and meaning

making (e.g.,Alvermann, 2004; Alvermann &
Heron, 2001; Alvermann & Xu, 2003; Gee, 2004;
Muspratt, Luke, & Freebody, 1997), the manga
hype among young adults, which has swept the
United States for the past few years, has not been
addressed by educators and literacy researchers.
We intend to raise educators’ awareness about
manga, explore manga’s semiotic features, and
underscore the multimodal demands of these
popular culture texts on readers.
What are manga, anyway?
For the benefit of educators and researchers, it is
important to differentiate between manga and
Schwartz is a doctoral
student and teaches at the
University of Arizona in
Tucson (Language, Reading,
& Culture, 1430 E. 2nd
Street, 512 Education
Building, Tucson, AZ 85721-
0069, USA). E-mail
[email protected]
Rubinstein-Ávila teaches at
the same university.
anime. Many are likely to confuse and inter-
change these terms, which both refer to Japanese

varieties of what U.S. audiences would consider
to be “cartoons.” Specifically, manga are printed
comics found in graphic-novel format, whereas
anime are animated cartoons (i.e., moving images
on television, movies, or video games). What be-
gins as manga in Japan and ultimately gains pop-
ularity is likely to become anime. Conversely,
what originates as anime is often also appropriat-
ed into printed manga form. Sailormoon is a per-
fect example of this fluidity; this popular series is
about a superheroine who fights for “justice”
against the “Dark Kingdom” (Grigsby, 1998). The
series began in Japan as manga in 1992 and was
quickly reproduced as anime, filling a primetime
Saturday night slot on TV Asahi. It has since been
widely released internationally as both manga
and anime (Grigsby).
There is little doubt that proficient manga
reading demands a reader who is a negotiator of
multimodalities. Manga are said to require “a
complex visual reading on the part of the reader”
(Adams, 1999, p. 71). Proficient manga readers
are adept at negotiating multimodality, “using
image plus language in increasingly complex
ways” (Bearne, 2003, p. 98) as they partake in the
dynamic interplay among cultures, identities,
texts, and literacies. Manga readers are likely to
attend to graphical information at the same hier-
archical level as the printed text. This is a drastic
change from traditional reading that involves at-
tending first and foremost to the written text, us-
ing pictures and illustrations only as supplements
to it (Carrington, 2004).
Manga are reflective of Japanese communi-

cation. They rely on highly contextual cues, com-
bining visual and auditory modalities: facial
expressions, tone of voice, and grunts (Ito, 2005).
The integrative storytelling style of manga relies
heavily on homonyms and onomatopoeia, usual-
ly expressed through Japanese characters called
katakana, to create dynamics and atmosphere
(Ito). It is not unusual for subjects of the comics
to be drawn breaking out of their rectangular
frames, an artistic technique intended to capture
certain feelings and emotions (Adams, 1999).
Moreover, the dialogue and the visuals in manga
are not just expressed through the written words,
drawn characters, and landscapes within (or jut-
ting out of ) a strip’s rectangles. Readers in Japan
must negotiate a variety of fonts and script styles;
dialogue may be printed in kanji (Chinese char-
acters), alternate between the two Japanese char-
acter families of hiragana and katakana, or
borrow from English or romanized Japanese
(Allen & Ingulsrud, 2003). The variation in direc-
tionality, frame, and font is also found to apply, if
to a lesser extent, in English editions of manga
(Allen & Ingulsrud). It is interesting that many of
the U.S. manga translations have retained the
original Japanese style, artistic format, and right-
to-left directionality (Colford, 2004; Wheeler,
2004). The series that conform to Japanese direc-
tionality are perceived by U.S. readers as being
more authentic. But because dialogues may be
read from right to left, left to right, and at times
horizontally, even proficient readers of English—
who are not experienced with this level of multi-
modality and have been socialized into more
traditional, nonhypertext, story lines—may find

manga, as we do, to be a challenging read.
Why should we care about
manga?
We contend that there are two main reasons that
warrant drawing educators’ attention toward
manga: (1) the comics’ sheer popularity—evident
by the sale of manga across the United States—
and (2) the unique multimodal reading that
manga seem to demand. Manga sales in the
United States have exceeded publishers’ predic-
tions. Sales were estimated to gross US$100 mil-
lion in 2003, at least 75% higher than the
previous fiscal year, and were anticipated to clear
US$120 million for 2004 (Wheeler, 2004). Public
libraries are having a hard time keeping the
bound manga books on their shelves. Librarians
are delighted; the manga hype has lured many
Understanding the manga hype: Uncovering the multimodality
of comic book literacies
T E R A C Y 5 0 : 1 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 6 41
new patrons among U.S. youths to public li-
braries (Carey, Reid, & Kawasaki, 2005). Given
the popularity of manga among young adults, it
is surprising that these comics have not been ex-
plored in greater depth in the literacy research
literature.
Manga, like other multimodal texts of con-
sumer culture, may be dismissed as another form

of lowbrow, popular culture. Nevertheless, the
multimodality of manga texts “extend[s] the tra-
ditional notions of text and literacy” (Carrington,
2004, p. 215). Several scholars have claimed that
manga require multimodal reading skills and a
sharp critical inquiry stance. For example, recent
studies have reported on how manga have been
used as both a teaching tool and a subject of cul-
tural study (Allen & Ingulsrud, 2003; Frey &
Fisher, 2004). Ultimately, like any cultural texts,
manga provide a way for youths to negotiate al-
ternative identities. By engaging with a wide
range of manga characters, dynamic plots, and
storyboards, children and young adults make
connections between these popular texts and
their own life experiences (Allender, 2004; Frey &
Fisher).
Multimodality and the New
Literacy Studies
Here we return to Grigsby (1998), who para-
phrased Sailormoon in great detail. Usagi is the
name of an ordinary Japanese schoolgirl who
transforms magically into the valiant super-
heroine Sailormoon.
Usagi has a fight with her brother, then goes to her
room and takes a nap. The black cat Luna arrives,
from whom Usagi learns that she is Sailormoon. The
cat convinces her by giving her a “cute” pendant.
Usagi goes to the mirror and looks at herself with it
on. The brooch begins shining.... Usagi becomes
Sailormoon! Make up! Prism power!
Meanwhile, in a subplot, the jewelry store owner and
mother of Usagi’s friend have been taken hostage by

the evil ones. Luna guides Sailormoon to defeat the
evil ones and save her friend’s mother.... At one point,
she pitches another little tantrum and says she has had
enough and wants to go home. (p. 71)
Unlike many Western comic strips geared
toward youths, manga plots are rather indirect: It
is not always clear who the main protagonists are
(although Sailormoon, which focuses on the con-
quests of a schoolgirl-turned-heroine, is an obvi-
ous exception). Moreover, the plots are usually
nonlinear, much like soap operas or movies.
Subplots are highly common, as shown in the
above example. Gender is addressed more flexi-
bly, less moralistically, and in greater complexity
than in traditional U.S. comics. For instance,
characters may appear in the nude when taking a
bath; nevertheless, nudity is not necessarily con-
noted with sexual activity. In a very popular se-
ries, a young man, who is a martial artist, is
occasionally transformed into a voluptuous
young woman as a result of his accidental dipping
into magical waters; his father, by the way, is occa-
sionally transformed into a panda bear. Contrary
to what might be expected, these reoccurring flip-
flops do not seem to have a major impact on the
young man’s developing (heterosexual) romantic
relationship with a young woman, who is also a
martial artist. Thus, it is possible that manga sto-
ry lines not only afford readers a nonlinear, rich
imaginative read of the world but also tap into an
array of complexities in human experiences to-
ward which young adults seem to feel great affini-
ty.

Scholars who directly or indirectly con-
tribute to what we have come to term the “New
Literacy Studies” all point to the need to broaden
our understanding of literacy. These scholars
hope to encourage a shift from educators’ tradi-
tional perceptions of literacy as an autonomous
set of skills to be mastered to a view of literacies
as a range of social practices affected by social
factors, such as socioeconomic status, race, or
gender, and linked to broader social goals (Barton
& Hamilton, 2000). The theoretical framework
that has come to be known as the New Literacy
Studies encourages educators and researchers to
examine the range of literacy practices that peo-
ple engage in to mediate and make meaning of
their lives outside the context of formal school-
ing. The New Literacy Studies not only encourage
a critical reexamination of what counts as literacy
but also broaden the definition of texts. This
framework is especially beneficial to examine the
multimodal literacy practices of manga readers.
Today, people are more likely to negotiate a
range of texts and contexts simultaneously, which
often overlap the physical and the virtual world
(Jacobs, 2004). As critical educators, it is our role
to encourage students to “value the multiple

forms of literacy and representation that consti-
tute their lived experiences” (Williams, 2001, p.
26). But to do so, we educators and literacy re-
searchers need to broaden our definitions of texts
and recognize that our bias toward written text is
a result of our own socialization in a print-
dominated world. It is doubtful that teacher-
training programs and K–12 curricula are en-
couraging teachers and students to develop an
adequate metalanguage to help them understand
the construction and features of visual texts.
Some educators argue that 21st-century metalit-
eracy skills are to be taught explicitly in schools,
to help youths to analyze and evaluate the con-
stant barrage of information in “today’s visually
drenched world” (Abilock, 2003, p. 30).
Semiotics of manga speak directly to “the
overlapping nature of image and text and the
shift towards the primacy of the image”
(Carrington, 2004, p. 218). Visual texts, however,
can be more effective than verbal text in express-
ing perceptual information such as colors, shapes,
textures, positions in space, sizes, and patterns
(Williams, 2001). Several scholars have under-
scored the impact of new technologies on how we
use and think of language and define communi-
cation (e.g., Jacobs, 2004).
Proficiency in manga and anime, as in Short
Messages (SMs), requires an understanding of the
semiotics of languages and literacies. For exam-
ple, in order to communicate efficiently using
SMs, the user must be proficient in communicat-
ing through Squeeze Text (Carrington, 2004).

This means that to adhere to the limits of 160
characters per message, English text needs to be
converted to its most compact format, which typ-
ically equates to a compression ratio of 30% to
40%. Thus, to maximize compression, Squeeze
Text has its own rules; for example, all text is con-
verted into lowercase, and certain words are con-
verted to a single symbol without losing their
meaning. So the word for is converted to 4, less to
–, more to +, and most to ++. Thus, while many
parents and teachers may dismiss manga reading,
avid manga readers are strategic literary negotia-
tors of that form of text.
A brief history of manga
The art of manga boasts a lengthy history, even if
its origins are debatable (Gravett, 2004; Kinsella,
2000; Schodt, 1986). For a more in-depth account
of manga’s place within the context of Japanese
history, see Ito (2005). Schodt estimated that
Japanese narrative comic art is perhaps as old as
the civilization itself, noting caricatures uncov-
ered in the 7th-century Horyuji Buddhist temple.
The roots of early modern manga, however, are
neither religious nor mundane but social and po-
litical. Misaka (2004) constructed the history of
modern manga as an artistic movement birthed
by European political cartoonists living in Japan
in the 19th century—a form of “east meets west”
(p. 23) in a newly industrialized Japanese society.
Misaka also argued that the explicit and often
elaborate political statements and social com-
mentaries were fitting for story manga, with their
strip style and multiple boxed frames that im-
plied the passage of time. Like the older elaborate
picture scrolls, they told a story.

The evolution of manga as serialized comic
art opened the doors for more complex stories
and messages. Scholars in cultural studies and so-
ciology assign the agenda of adult manga as texts
that directly reflect a broad array of political edi-
torializing, from social change to proestablish-
ment rhetoric (Kinsella, 1999, 2000; Misaka,
2004). The 1920s and 1930s featured manga as an
outlet for response to Japan’s postindustrialist
Westernization (Misaka), whereas the late 1960s
reflected political and avant-garde manga move-
ments that included publications of leftist inter-
est, focusing on social issues that other Japanese
media dared not cover (Kinsella, 1999). The so-
cial and economic turbulence of the mid-1980s
marked a time when manga were first appropriat-
ed by corporations and government agencies as a
means of balancing pop culture movements with
the political interests of the Japanese state
(Kinsella, 1999).
But the politically charged story manga
quickly progressed into marketable mass enter-
tainment for all ages. Manga are commonly ac-
cessible as serialized strips found in magazines
and newspapers, although comic shops in both

Japan and the United States offer story manga in
bound compilations (Kinsella, 2000; Misaka,
2004). These compilations, more commonly
known as graphic novels, present a manga series
in its entirety (Misaka). The black-and-white
graphic novels resemble a thick paperback book
and often include advertisements for other man-
ga collections on their glossy, colorful back cov-
ers.
Since the mid-1990s, however, and partially
due to the competition from and demand for
newer entertainment media such as video games
and DVDs, sales of manga in Japan have been in a
steady decline (Misaka, 2004). Thus, publishers
resorted to U.S. audiences as a new marketing
frontier, one where the success of manga has been
astounding (Misaka). Manga have been referred
to as the fastest growing genre in U.S. publishing;
the demand for authentic, original manga strips
and graphic novels is high despite the cost—
ranging from US$10 to over US$20 per book.
Before the publication of manga, a series of
visual formats or anime (video games, films, and
television cartoon programs) was pitched at U.S.
youths. Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-
Oh!, and Pokémon ushered in the manga hype
(the last two were also marketed as interactive,
collecting card games). Manga comics with anime
counterparts in English are likely to sell better in
the United States (Wolk, 2001). Although manga
are geared mainly toward adolescents, specifically
in the 12 to 17 age bracket, rising popularity
among older readers has encouraged publishers

to invest in the U.S. market.
The five spheres of manga
In Japan, it’s hard to avoid manga. In addition to
graphic novels, strips of manga can be found in
newspapers and magazines—with topics ranging
from finance and economics to sports and leisure.
Recently, even tax guidelines have been distrib-
uted in manga form. This popularity is greatly
due to manga’s tailoring for a wide range of target
audiences, accommodating a variety of “tastes, in-
terests and stages of life” (Gravett, 2004, p. 5). The
four main genres of manga to emerge after World
War II are shonen (boys’) manga, shojo (girls’)
manga, seinen (adult) manga, and rediisu
komikku (ladies’ comics). These four categories
may also overlap into a fifth manga category that
includes “hobby, specialist, sports, erotic and
pornographic” (Kinsella, 2000, p. 45). We expand
on three categories here.
Boys’ manga: Compassionate competition.
Although manga as an industry originally catered
to boys, in 1996 only 40.6% of Japanese manga
publication was geared specifically toward young
male audiences (Kinsella, 2000). Nevertheless,
boys’ comics, in which friendship and struggle are
often popular themes, are a forceful mainstay in
modern story manga. Gravett (2004) argued that
manga series such as Shonen Jump appeal to boys
and men by stressing values such as friendship,
perseverance, and winning. He paralleled this
popularity to the rebuilding of Japan following
World War II and the revival of the Japanese
economy.

Tales of competition are often developed by
situating manga characters in national sports
such as baseball, sumo wrestling, basketball, soc-
cer, and even fishing and car racing (Gravett,
2004). Ever since the 1950s manga have been
credited for increasing Japanese youths’ interest
in sport; a “sports manga hero is bound to win, or
lose well, so the thrill comes from reading how he
overcomes all challenges with determination and
honesty” (p. 54). Sport, then, becomes a
metaphor for life; often these boys’ manga follow
the life of an ordinary male protagonist who
fights his way through the big leagues as an un-
derdog. Through training—not just physical but
also mental and psychological—the young boy
becomes a man, whose masculinity is defined by
values of “heart” and “perseverance.”
But boys’ manga are not just about sports
heroes. Postwar advances in modern technology
inspired new ways of constructing the underdog
type of hero to entertain and enlighten male au-
diences, and this formula has been widely applied
to a variety of settings “from martial arts, fantasy
and science fiction, to big business, and power
politics” (Gravett, 2004, p. 54). The arrival of
Mazinger Z in 1972 introduced the adventures of

a high-tech robot, a character that inspired
decades of spin-offs and appropriations that pit-
ted technology, intelligence, and strategy against
the world’s evil. Boys’ manga also include a share
of lighthearted humor—gags, pranks, jokes—and
a strong appeal to the male libido (Gravett).
Girls’ manga: Compensatory sexuality. Postwar
Japan (particularly the 1960s) was also a water-
shed time and place for girls’ manga, which
evolved into the construction of female empow-
erment. At the turn of the century, Shojo Kai
(Girls’ World) generally idealized domesticity and
servitude. Male artists created story lines and
characters to project female roles—for example,
the role of mother and homemaker as submissive
and sexually available companion. This image
was particularly manifest in the physical drawings
of women in girls’ manga—the large eyes and
pupils; long lashes; slim torso, limbs, and hips;
and the petite noses, mouths, and breasts. Such
elements persist today, although breasts are often
grossly exaggerated (Gravett, 2004; Ito, 2002; Ogi,
2003).
Much as in the past, today’s girls’ manga
dabble in love and romance; however, similar to
boys’ manga, they often pit a young female pro-
tagonist in a position of self-empowerment.
Sailormoon is a fine example. This particular se-
ries presents a female protagonist in an action-
adventure role and her pursuits to protect the
earth from the queen of the “Dark Kingdom.” She
is, therefore, required to be strong, intelligent, and
authoritative. But in her transformation to her su-
perheroine alter-ego, through the jewelry that

provides her with magical powers, Sailormoon
seems to “compensate” with traditional notions of
heterosexual femininity as her svelte adolescent
features are transformed with more womanly
characteristics (Grigsby, 1998; for a discussion on
“compensatory” and “apologetic” behavior as it
originally relates to sport and female sexuality, see
Festle, 1996). In other words, Sailormoon’s brave,
heroic conquests to save the world seem to require
compensatory conventional, heterosexual femi-
ninity to appeal to young female readers who are
in the process of constructing their own gender
identities (Grigsby). Sailormoon’s transformation
from child to woman also invokes parallels to the
state of affairs in Japan: “Part of the popularity of
the character may be because at one level she re-
solves major tensions present in contemporary
Japan with respect to the diminishing primacy of
the mother role for women” (p. 75).
What could be defined as the epitome of the
modern protagonist in girls’ manga—a character
designed for and by women—is often construed
as paradoxical. This paradox is also found fre-
quently in contemporary young adult literature
in which young women are the main protago-
nists. In reviewing the research literature, we
found that the so-called strong and powerful
young female protagonists are also the ones who
compliantly fulfill their caretaker roles (as good
daughters, granddaughters, or girlfriends). They
respond readily to the needs of their families and
communities (before their own needs—although
those are seldom voiced explicitly). Although
these contemporary female protagonists are pro-
claimed by reviewers and literacy researchers to

be nontraditional, they seldom, if ever, cross, dis-
obey, or transgress mainstream, acceptable,
gender-role boundaries (Rubinstein-Ávila, 2005).
The image of sexually powerful young
women in manga is paradoxical in this regard as
well as in another sense: The comics are designed
and drawn to entice male consumers as much as
to entice young women seeking modern-day
heroines as role models (Gravett, 2004). This par-
adoxical issue of power is also present in ladies’
manga.
Ladies’ manga: Tensions between empowerment
and conformity. At some point, the readers of
girls’ manga adopt a more mature, sophisticated
style. The genre rediisu komikku, or ladies’ comics,
was born in the 1980s as a more mature extension
of the classical themes found in shojo manga (Ito,
2002). As a type of feminist discourse, ladies’
manga attempt to address the experiences, de-
sires, and needs of women and to present role
models for the modern Japanese woman (Ogi,
2003). Rediisu komikku tend to focus on the reali-
ty of life as experienced by the modern Japanese
woman, whether she is a housewife, office worker,
or college student—stories tend to focus on

themes such as love, romance, female friendship,
careers, mother–child relations, and more recent-
ly sexism, divorce, and even domestic violence.
Ito (2002) quoted one rediisu dialogue between a
heroine and her girlfriend, who are reflecting on
marriage as a rite of passage into adult life. The
heroine says,
I have also been thinking that I do not want to marry.
I have a very difficult time taking care of myself. Once
married I would not have any freedom, and then I
must protect my family and make everyone happy.
However, I started to think that turning my back on
marriage will not lead to my growth as a human be-
ing. I think it is very important for me to be positive
and take the first step [to marry] (p. 73).
In ladies’ comics, protagonists tend to be vic-
tims of gender stereotyping, often trapped in op-
pressive spaces of marriage and family life. As
heroines, the lady characters often overcome life’s
barriers in some empowering, positive way.
However, these challenges are consistently laced
with romantic fantasy and “lustful perversion” (Ito,
2002, p. 77), which complicate the idea of manga
as a site of empowerment for female readers. Even
while considering her unhappiness or dissatisfac-
tion with life, the female protagonist consistently
reinforces the idea that Japanese women’s ultimate
life goal is to find and marry a Prince Charming.
According to Ito, the protagonist provides the
reader with a sort of psychological reward: The fe-
male adult reader can vicariously relive her youth-
ful dreams and experiences.

Ultimately, ladies’ manga might be viewed
as soft pornography, often showcasing what is
traditionally private and personal: voyeurism,
masturbation, and bodily fluids (Ito, 2002).
Topics seemingly taboo to the U.S. reader are of-
ten framed as natural, playful, and nonsexual in
manga. Nudity, gender-bending, homosexuality,
and dream-like fantasies are common in girls’
and ladies’ manga, often without the intent to be
sexual discourse (Gravett, 2004).
Is there a place for manga in
the classroom?
Although there are many reasons for educators to
carefully consider the pros and cons of bringing
alternative (especially alternative, unsanctioned)
literacies into the classroom, some educators are
making use of graphic novels to develop students’
traditional writing skills. For example, Frey and
Fisher (2004) used Will Eisner’s graphic novel
about city life to encourage urban high school
students’ development of reading and written
communication skills. The class collectively read
Hydrant, a wordless graphic novel that illustrates
the life of a woman living in a housing project
without running water. Considering the connec-
tions between popular culture and critical litera-
cies, the authors encouraged students to
collectively list the techniques the artist used to
convey meaning; after brainstorming colorful vo-
cabulary, students were encouraged to rely on the

elicited vocabulary to narrate their own individ-
ual stories in a written composition. Students ex-
perimented with first- and third-person
narrations, as well as various ways to describe
tone and mood. Frey and Fisher also used this ex-
ercise as a springboard to instruct students on
how to effectively convey multiple ideas in fewer
words. Ultimately, the semiotics of the wordless
graphic novel inspired Frey and Fisher’s students
to become not only more descriptive writers but
also critical “consumers of ideas and informa-
tion” (p. 24) as they produced concise, original
stories of their own. Nevertheless, Frey and
Fisher’s exercise, which succeeded in teaching
writing technique and the art of “consuming
ideas and information,” failed to serve as a prac-
tice of critical pedagogy. No efforts were made to
construct Eisner’s text as an impetus for raising
awareness on poverty and the greater social issues
being conveyed.
Manga could be used in the classroom to
develop students’ analytical and critical reading of
visual texts. As Alvermann and Heron (2001)
contended, critical reading of unique media like
manga “calls for both the expression and exami-
nation of multiple points of view” (p. 121). In the
case of students using manga for classroom study,
they can use the mechanics and multimodalities
of the comic strips to learn “how to question their
own pleasures” (Alvermann & Heron, p. 121).

For example, students can examine how a
manga storyboard “works to invite and produce
particular views” (Alvermann & Heron, 2001, p.
121). This technique was used with great success
in a reading of the computer-based anime
Dragon Ball Z (DBZ). As in the case of various
manga serials from which it originates, DBZ uses
storyboards to constantly negotiate a good-and-
evil character dichotomy. Students can use this
dichotomy to investigate how the animator, as au-
thor of the texts, “visually portrays the characters
in ways that convey traits of altruism and treach-
ery..., [how] characters change position (from
hero to villain), revert to their original position,
or appear to operate from both positions at the
same time” (p. 121).
As Kress (2000) reminded us, multiliteracies
go beyond just communication through myriad
modes; each mode has its own regularities.
Critical educators can encourage youths’ reflexiv-
ity about their use of popular culture by selecting
appropriate texts for the classroom that help stu-
dents situate themselves in the world around
them and underscore how power shapes “our
emotional, political, social and material lives”
(Alvermann & Xu, 2003, p. 148). Gilles Poitras, a
librarian and manga enthusiast in northern
California, provides librarians and teachers with
resources through an up-to-date guide to anime
and manga accessible through his website at
www.koyagi.com.
In the spirit of situated literacies and influ-
encing students to think as critical consumers of

ideas and information (Frey & Fisher, 2004), old-
er students could also use Kinsella’s (2000) manga
spheres as an entry point for critically examining
societal disparities in the representation of gender
and sexuality. Although manga is by origin a
Japanese genre, inequalities in the representation
of males and females persist cross-
culturally. For example, students may survey ex-
amples of girls’ and ladies’ manga to analyze the
female paradox of power and submission. How,
for instance, is the consistent image of the sexual-
ly enticing yet assertive, powerful female in man-
ga mirrored in Western advertising campaigns,
television, and movies? On another note, how, for
example, do boys’ manga frame athletic success as
a venue for proving socially acceptable notions of
masculinity? How might this view of athletics
contrast or compare with conceptions of sport in
U.S. society?
Skills may transfer
This article introduces the world of manga to ed-
ucators; manga’s hype among young adult readers
is examined through the New Literacy Studies.
The genre is the embodiment of hybrid texts.
Manga are in line with the current literacy revo-
lution, as traditional reading is being expanded

into postmodern readings that combine print
text, graphic images, and sounds. It is not surpris-
ing that the multimodal and iconographic fea-
tures of manga attract consumers across age
groups, cultures, languages, and genders.
The skills manga readers use may transfer
well to other media, and vice versa. For example,
reading manga is very much like playing video
games if we consider both as literacy “domains”—
as space for deciphering images and practices. Gee
(2004) argued that it is highly beneficial for ado-
lescents to practice negotiating semiotics in order
to develop critical and multidimensional thinking.
Thus, the popularity of manga among youths and
young adults on the cusp of the 21st century may
be precisely a consequence of this genre’s highly
multimodal and semiotic properties.
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