UX in Manga Volumes
Translating Experiences
Recently I have been studying the importance of recognizing differences in culture and how it can affect interactions in design. On top of studying intercultural communication, I’ve been reading lots of Japanese manga. Over the years, I’ve read a great deal of manga and own many of the boxsets and volumes to different series such as Naruto, One Punch Man, Dragonball, Fullmetal Alchemist etc - there’s many.
This summer I’ve been making my way through the Shonen Jump series “Bleach” by Tite Kubo since it’s a series I’ve always glanced at, but never committed to reading. As I finished volume 17, I began to flick through the ads for other titles in the back of the volume. Subsequently, I landed on the “You’re reading the wrong way” page, which is found in every volume of English translated manga. If you’ve read manga, you mostly forget that this page exists (as did I), but I began to think about its purpose and the information included on it.
Whoops!
The “wrong way” page is essentially on-boarding for those who haven’t read manga before, or those confused as to why the book is printed backwards in comparison to a regular English printed book. While stumbling upon this page again, it hit me that the publishing company, Viz Media, has planned for an audience of first-time manga readers, and determined that they need to give a quick lesson as to how to navigate the book.
In terms of design, it’s also interesting to see that newer Shonen Jump volumes include a more simplified “wrong way” page that explains the way the book is meant to be read, as well as give a diagram of the reading order, but skip the reason why it’s read right to left. The choice to remove the history behind why the book is read right to left is interesting and brings into question if user research influenced the change. Do more people in the U.S. read manga now? Has it been translated long enough that people don’t need an in-depth explanation?
Not Lost in Translation
Traditionally, Japanese is read from right to left on the page and words are read vertically. This way of writing is called tategaki (縦書き) and is used in books as well as manga. Another form of writing used in manga is yokogaki (横書き) which is written horizontally and read from left to right. Yokogaki seems to be used more for sound effects and headings in manga, while tategaki is used more for speech and thought bubbles for the characters.
It’s important to understand the tradition of how Japanese books are read to understand why the U.S. version of the manga is printed the same way as the Japanese version.
The page shown in the image on the left (and some of the pages in the images shown above) has a short explanation stating that if the book were to be literally flipped (“flopped” as it states) it would taint the reading experience and confuse the English readers, as text, images, and overall page flow would be affected.
With Viz Media printing their manga in the original “unflopped” format, they are able to translate the reading experience correctly and make sure that the English reading audience is interacting with the manga the same way that the Japanese audience is interacting with the manga.
Audience and Delivery
Looking at the “wrong way” pages from manga is a great example of two things that can be remembered when designing an interaction, and those are (1) Audience, and (2) Format, or how the product is delivered.
In regards to the audience, we know that the manga is being translated specifically for people who read in the English language, and to be even more specific, people who read manga in the English language. Knowing the audience helps to determine how it will be experienced and if localization or translation is needed. In this case it’s for an English language audience, but the Japanese experience of the manga is being retained through the way it’s read, which is right to left.
With format, it’s important to think how the product will be delivered. Recently I’ve felt the term “UX design” seems to be closely associated with digital web and app experiences, when it can encompass much more such as interactive kiosks, physical items, and in this instance, print. Personally, I like to read my manga in print form because I enjoy the experience of reading right to left while turning the pages. Again, the purpose of the manga being translated and printed right to left is to preserve the Japanese reading experience for the English readers.
Like any other print publication, manga has also been digitized for mobile readers in the form of the Shonen Jump app. Even though there aren’t pages to turn, Viz Media has made sure to retain the right to left format when scrolling, and this time the “wrong way” page is located at the start of the manga if the reader swipes left. Like its print counterpart, the page includes directions and an explanation as to why the media is read the other way compared to English publications.
With more options on a digital landscape, the Shonen Jump app also utilizes way-finding in the way of a constant “read this way” icon in the lower left. The print version includes a “read this way” icon every so often through the volume, but the digital version the manga has a constant reminder to help the reader with the reading direction if they are distracted.
Manga is one of many examples of how culture can have an impact on products that are designed and how certain audiences interact with them. As I have looked further into this, it has made me think more about how my designs could be interpreted and emphasized the importance of audience definition. As I’ve grown accustomed to reading manga, the print orientation has become second nature to me, when to others, it is a completely new way of consumption. While I understand that we live in a digital designing era, printed manga is an example of how other forms of media can impact a person’s experience with a product.
