An Overview of Tankobon And Other Interesting Manga Formats

I’ve spoken before about how manga is typically released within manga magazines in Japan. However, I have not spoken about (or if I have, only touched upon) how manga is released when a number of chapters are collected together and released in a single book. Considering how important these releases are for the medium of manga, both within Japan and without, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at an overview of tankobon and other formats.

Having already mentioned it, let’s take a look at tankobon and what they are. The most typical way for manga chapters to be collected into, tankobon are volumes of manga that typically collect 180-200 pages of a manga (although exceptions do exist) into a single book. These books are typically 11 cm by 17.5 cm and higher quality paper than what would be seen in a manga magazine. Most Western releases of manga are released in this format as well although it’s worth pointing out that the majority of Western tankobon are slightly bigger with dimensions of 13 cm by 19 cm.

If you have heard of any other format of manga, it’s probably an aizoban. Literally translating as “favourite printing edition”, these releases are notably higher quality than a tankobon. The paper quality is higher, additional extras will be included such as exclusive artwork, interviews etc. as well as colour pages instead of the monochromatic pages released in tankobon.

Another decently well-known manga format would be bunkoban. These volumes have a smaller trim size than tankobon in an attempt to be more easily transportable and space efficient. However, it’s noteworthy that these volumes tend to include more pages than tankobon. A good example of this is the series City Hunter which saw a 35 volume release in the tankobon format but was later rereleased in 18 bunkoban volumes.

With regards to other editions of manga, kanzenban is also notable although a little rarer than other formats. Kanzenban have a larger trim size than tankobon with much higher quality paper and contain more pages than a standard tankobon. Shinsoban is another format that appears to be a rerelease of a series that sees certain pages redrawn and reedited by the original author in addition to some new extras. Two notable series that have seen shinsoban releases are Sailor Moon and Slam Dunk.

Soshuhen seems to be the most recent format to have been developed and was pioneered by Shueisha to rerelease their series. These releases use a larger trim size than tankoban, feature colour pages and extras and contains about 3-4 times as many pages as tankobon although this figure can vary. However, it does appear that the paper quality is lower than in tankobon or other editions. Finally, I’d like to mention wide-ban which is also referred to as waidoban. As far as I can tell, the only major differences between a wide-ban and a tankoban is that a wide-ban has a larger trim size and contains more pages.

It’s been surprisingly difficult to research these manga formats since it seems that so little is written about them in the West. However, I hope that this article has intrigued you when it comes to these formats and how they sometimes influence their Western release. Let me know your thoughts on the overview of tankobon and other interesting manga formats, which ones you’ve heard of before, whether you’ve seen any of them, if you have more information about the differences between each format and any additional information you might have on this topic.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!