Why Manga Is So Popular and What It Really Takes To Create One

People often wonder why manga is so popular, but the answers they are given are usually too simplistic. “Because manga is full of action.” “Because there are lots of beautiful girls.” Or, “Because anime helps drive its success.” Yes, all of these things can play a part, but they do not explain the full picture.

One of the reasons manga is so popular in my opinion, and one that is discussed far less often, is that in most cases a manga reflects the vision of a single author. More often than not, the Mangaka, the Manga Artist, is both Writer and Illustrator. That gives the work a particular sense of unity, especially when compared with Western comics, where writing and drawing are often divided between different professionals. Manga does involve the support of Editors and Assistants, of course, but the work is still shaped by one central vision, and readers can feel it. They are not simply reading a story. They are entering a world shaped by one mind, with all its force, obsessions and limitations, and that is part of the magic.

Another reason for manga’s broad appeal is its extraordinary range of target audiences and genres. It can move effortlessly from sport to horror, from romance to historical drama, from psychological thriller to comedy, all the way to slice of life, while speaking with remarkable precision to readers of different ages, from children to adults. It is able to capture the reader’s attention quickly and then hold it through rhythm, clarity, tension and emotional force, regardless of the subject it deals with or the kind of story it tells. That is why manga can be equally compelling when telling the story of an epic journey across a sea of pirates or the seemingly uneventful daily life of a cat and an old man.

How can it do that? Because it is highly readable, emotionally immediate and structurally sophisticated. In short, much of its power lies in its storytelling. The fact that this is not always understood outside specialist circles is something I care deeply about, both as a proud reader and, above all, as an author.

My own path towards manga was neither quick nor straightforward. For a young Western woman who wanted to create manga, there was no obvious road to follow. The milestones I eventually reached, winning the Grand Prix at the Silent Manga Audition in 2018 with The Cruelest Rule, and later being the first European Artist to publish a one shot on Shonen Jump Plus in 2023 with Miriam of the Skulls, only came after years of attempts, failures and learning. And they only became possible once I understood something essential: the secret of manga is not “correct drawing”. Of course, drawing matters. Visual impact matters, and so do distinctive designs. But beautiful drawings alone are not enough to create the kind of experience that makes readers forget the world around them and keep turning pages. Manga is not simply illustration plus plot. It is immersive storytelling through images that are functional to the story, with strong emphasis on expressiveness, emotional clarity and character development. Understanding this changed the way I work. Before drawing, priority has to be given to the characters and to the way their emotions are represented and intensified on the page. A good manga page does not simply communicate a sequence of events. It makes the reader live those events. That is also one of the biggest reasons why manga can be so compelling to read, and one of the real reasons for its lasting strength.

From my point of view as an author, manga becomes truly powerful when its main elements begin to reinforce each other: characters, emotional expressiveness and mise en scène, by which I mean the visual construction and direction of the scene on the page, including layout, framing and choice of angles. Only when all these elements are orchestrated harmoniously, characters on the page begin to feel alive, with their desires, contradictions, vulnerability and strength, and the attention of the reader is captured. This became even clearer to me while I was working on Miriam of the Skulls. The gothic setting, the skulls, the bones and the atmosphere of Naples were visually interesting, but they were not enough on their own. Something was missing. I had to work more deeply on Miriam herself, giving her more distinctive qualities so that she would feel alive enough to carry the world around her.

Over time, manga has developed an extremely refined visual grammar, and it is well worth studying if you want to understand how it creates clarity, tension and emotion so efficiently, and how you might recreate that in your own work. For instance, if your idea is “a girl walks into a room and discovers a secret”, that is perfectly fine, but it is only the surface of the scene. For that moment to be truly experienced by the reader, you need to ask and answer much sharper questions. Does she enter cautiously, or with force? Does she understand what she sees immediately, or only little by little? Does the room feel empty, hostile, sacred, or somehow wrong? What is being hidden from the reader, and for how long? And many more besides. The answers then need to be represented and connected across several panels in order to build the scene.

I believe many people misunderstand what it really takes to create manga. One of the most common and misleading assumptions is that drawing ability is the decisive criterion for whether someone can make manga or not. Well, for some of you this may come as a shock, but being able to draw “well”, and by that I mean correct anatomy and perspective, does not automatically mean being able to create manga. For a manga story to be interesting, it also, and above all, requires the ability to build scenes, shape emotion, control narrative rhythm and guide the reader through the page. Another mistaken belief is that you should not start planning your own manga until you are satisfied with your drawing skills. An author may still be growing technically and yet already be capable of creating early works that are interesting, coherent and emotionally alive. ONE is an excellent example of this: from his mind came One-Punch Man. In any case, if you never begin practising storytelling through short but complete works, you are unlikely to get very far.

These ideas are central to the way I teach. My course at Escape Studios, Mastering Manga Storytelling: Characters, Pages and Narrative Flow, is built around character creation, story structure, page flow and the development of a nemu, or storyboard, with a strong emphasis on the reader’s emotional engagement and on narrative clarity. It is designed for Writers, Artists and visual Storytellers who do not want to stop at the surface of manga, but want to understand how it truly works.

That is also what I will be exploring in my free webinar on Wednesday 8th April, where I will talk about manga as a narrative form that can be studied, understood and practised consciously, and where I will also have the chance to share some behind-the-scenes insight into the making of Miriam of the Skulls.

If you really want to make manga, stop thinking only about how to draw well, and start thinking more precisely about storytelling, about how to build a character whose emotions the reader can truly experience.

That is where creating manga really begins.