Thursday, September 5, 2024

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography by Fumiyo Kouno - OPTIONAL

Giga Town: The Guide to Manga Iconography by Fumiyo Kouno, 132 pages. GRAPHIC NOVEL. Udon Entertainment, 2024. $13.

Language: G (0 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: G; Violence: G

BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS - OPTIONAL

APPEALS TO: SOME

Kouno has put together a collection of short manga comic strips, like newspaper comics, that give examples of different visual cues used in manga to convey additional information. Some of the symbols give clues to the readers about what a character is feeling or what time of year it is. Laugh at these cute personified animals and learn something along the way.

If I’m being embarrassingly honest, I didn’t understand all of the jokes made in the cute little comic strips. Some of them were funny, but mostly I was looking for context for the symbols being used. Kouno explains the different nuances of symbols used if they have multiple meanings, and it was fun to learn some of the cultural reasons why the visual cues are what they are. This guide is intended for a very niche audience and is a quick read for anyone interested.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

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