How to Get Into Manga

Manga (pronounced mahn – Ga), or comics in Japanese, cover a wide variety of subject areas targeting both children and adults Translated comics are fun to read and is also an easy way to learn about popular Japanese culture.

Steps

1. Decide what type of manga you are interested in. There are several different kinds to choose from, usually grouped by the gender and age of the target audience, including:
   
   
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  Fan drawing of Tohru from Fruits Basket
  ShojoManga designed to target 13-18 year-old females through character-driven stories. Popular shojo themes include: magical girl (see below), school romance, historical romance, modern romance, science fiction, sports, gothic horror/vampires, boys love (yaoi) manga (see Josei section below) and girls love (yuri).fruits basket Hot Gimmick, Fushigi Yugi, Peach Girl, Please Save My Earth, Nothing But Loving You, Emma, Godchild and Kare Kano are examples of shoujo manga.
  
  
  
  
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  Sailor Moon trading cards.

  Magical girl (mahou shoujo) is a popular subgenre of shoujo featuring young girls who use their
  
  superhuman powers to fight evil and protect the Earth. Examples of
  
  magical girl manga include:Sailor moon , card captor, Sakura , Alice 19th, Tokyo Mew Mew and Wedding Peach.

• Bi-shoujo titles involve extremely cute girls or silly animals. Think cuteness overload. Example titles include Hamtaro.
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  Shounen: Action-themed stories written for young boys. Shounen manga is usually involves humorous plots featuring male protagonists. Camaraderie between boys and men in sports team and fighting squads are often plot elements. Shounen titles often feature attractive female characters with exaggerated features. Example titles include: Naruto,One Piece, Death Note, Gon, Ranma 1/2, Slam Dunk, Lupin III, Bleach, Inuyasha, Prince of Tennis, the aforementioned Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo!, Initial D and Full Metal Panic!.
• Mecha is a common subgenre of shounen involving giant robots. Mecha titles include Gundam Wing, Voltron and Big O.
• Bi-Shounen: Stories involving affection between boy characters targeting a mainly female audience. Unlike yaoi, bi-shounen manga is specifically aimed at teenage girls and involves pretty, effeminate characters resembling boy bands like
   NSYNC.
• Seinen manga targets college-aged men, although some titles are aimed at men well into their 40s. Unlike shounen manga, seinen manga features a wider variety of artistic styles and subject matter ranging from avant-garde to pornographic. While seinen manga contains many of the same themes as shounen manga, it is more rooted in reality with a stronger emphasis on plot. Works of manga that are the most acclaimed for their depth and maturity, such as Maison Ikoku and Ghost in the Shell, come from the Seinen genre. Other popular seinen titles include Lone Wolf & Cub, Golgo 13, Eagle and Monster.
• Josei is the female equivalent of seinen manga and considered the manga equivalent of a Harlequin novel. Most of the josei manga found in the United States, fits into the yaoi genre (see below). Storylines usually involve: office life,  marriage, babies, infidelity, families and romance. Non-yaoi titles include Paradise Kiss, Happy Mania, Tramps Like Us, Blue, Walking Butterfly and Honey and Clover.
  
  
• Yaoi is manga involving graphic depictions of homosexuality. Yaoi manga is produced by women, for women.

2. Learn the rating system. Because some manga contains adult themes, there is a rating system set up for manga which is very similar to that for video games and movies. Some U.S. manga publishers use the following ratings:
   
   

• A (All Ages)
• Y (Youth, 10+)
• T (Teen ages 13+)
• OT (Older Teen, 16+)
• M (Mature, 18+)
3. Read anime publications. NewType, AnimeInsider and Animerica are good sources to turn to for manga reviews.
4. Find places to get manga, including the following:
   
   
• Anime magazines like Shounen Jump and Shoujo Beat -- monthly serialized anime compilations which allow you to sample many titles at a time.
• Bookstores Many large chain bookstores have sections for manga and graphic novels.
• Online Sellers Many manga online manga shops can be found simply by searching for manga in Google 
• Comic Book Shops
• Online Rental Services Just like you can rent movies online through Netflix and Blockbuster, there are online rental services such as Anime TakeOut that allow you to rent books of manga.
• Your Local Library: Yes, you read that correctly: your local Library. More and more libraries these days have sections devoted to graphic novels and manga to encourage "reluctant readers" and bring more traffic into the library. If your library doesn't have the titles you want, you can often request items or obtain them from another library via Interlibrary Loan.
5. Read manga from the farthest right page to the farthest left, and read each individual page from the top right to the bottom left. Some manga exported out of Japan is reversed, so that it is read from top left to bottom right. If this seems confusing to you, don't worry, open up a manga like you would open a regular book , and there will often be a page that will tell you how to read it.
6. Find fellow fans. See if there is a manga/anime group at your school or in your town. Many metro areas host manga meetups. Many colleges and high schools now have manga and anime clubs. In addition, you can attend anime conventions which bring fellow manga/anime fans together.
   
   
   
   source wikihow.com