Category: 2020

When one thinks of manga, it is quite likely that your mind will go to the fantastic such as fantasy and sci-fi. However, it is important to remember that manga is a medium like any other and can be used to tell any story. While I’ve spoken about how I think basing media on true stories is overrated, I nonetheless find myself interested in the use of manga to tell true stories (this fascination might stem from how I feel that manga based on true stories is rarer than in other media).

I should probably clarify my criteria for what a manga based on a true story is. In my research on the subject, I saw people bring up historical manga such as Vinland Saga and Kingdom. While it is true that these manga are set in the real world and follow real events, I think referring to them as “based on a true story” gives the wrong idea. Instead, my focus is going to be on manga that tell very personal stories either about the mangaka or about someone else.

Contrary to popular belief, comedy is not a universal language with different cultures admiring some forms of comedy and rejecting others. The comedy of manga is no exception since it comes from a specific, historically isolated culture and the fact that a manga format requires a new method to time and deliver jokes.

Let’s start with Japanese comedy in general. Japanese comedy tends to be very heavily focused on both slapstick and puns. Slapstick, as you might imagine, is very visual and works well for the manga medium (although admittedly the set up is quite often dialogue heavy). In contrast, puns are extremely difficult to translate with your only choices typically being to explain the pun so that the audience understands it and drain all comedy from it or to create a new pun which works in the translated manga and retains the spirit of the original (also known as adaptive translation).