EDIT: **Good god, I’ve just realised I typed in “tragic” instead of “graphic”… I’m looking for specifically graphic ones.**
Hello everyone! I’m looking to practice my Japanese reading, however, I find the general manga/anime-style graphic novels off-putting, because I don’t enjoy them visually. Do you have any recommendations for what isn’t in those kind of styles?
よろしくお願いします！
8 comments
**No Longer Human**.
Vampire Hunter D has anime, manga, and novelization variants. It’s gothic and quite tragic.
Buy Japanese translations of Western graphic novels. Or just read plain old novels with no pictures in them.
Natsume Soseki’s *Ten Nights of Dreams*
just shosetsu then, regular novels have very few pictures of any sort
Try Taiyō Matsumoto, Atsushi Kaneko, Hiroshi Hirata, Ryōichi Ikegami, Suehiro Maruo, Akane Torikai, Minetarō Mochizuki, Hiroaki Samura, Hinako Sugiura, Gō Tanabe.
Also Hideki Arai, Takehiko Inoue, Junji Itō, Fumiyo Kōno, Hiroya Oku, Boichi, Shūzō Mochizuki, Usumaru Furuya, Hinako Sugiura, Kengo Hanazawa, Masato Hisa, Tsukasa Hōjō might suit your tastes.
Hmm, I have a question about your post.
If I go to the Japanese bookstore and I look through the novel section, the books have no pictures at all.
Where are you seeing novels that have many pictures?
There are some manga artists were you can absolutely see that they got inspiration from graphic novels, american comics or french/belgian bds. They don’t all follow the same stilistic patterns, especially not those aimed at a mature audiences.
Its been said e.g. about horror mangaka Junji Ito that some of his works are closer to a graphic novel style and Jiro Taniguchi daws a lot of stories set in France with the drawing style to match. It’s definitely hard to search for. Good luck!