Customer Reviews

How NOT To Draw Manga Pocket Manga Edition (How to Draw Manga)

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The authors of this book are sheer geniuses! Honestly, I have never really thought about anime/manga stereotypes in the ways this book talks about them. Frankly, I never realized that in all anime and manga, there are only SIX stereotypes. This book is hilarious, and was worth EVERY penny I paid for it and more. Yes, my life has been changed by reading this. Honestly, I am proud to have held it in my hands.

Now I don't draw at all, but when I heard about this book I just had to get it. I figured that at the very least I'd get a few laughs out of it & pass it along to my manga drawing friends. Years later it's still very much in my possession & I still pull it out to laugh at the very true stereotypes & clichés it portrays.

This book is part manual & part manga. The general layout of the book is a manga telling you how not to avoid the clichés (or rather, how to spot them). The book gives us six characters that are the basis for just about every manga character out there. (No really, it's actually true.) You have the boy adventurer (think Ash from Pokemon), the average everyman (think Tenchi), the brooding villain/anti-hero (think Hellsing), the girl next door (there's one in each manga, take your pick), the sweet little sister type (think Sasami from Tenchi), as well as the sexy older woman/occasional villain type (think Ryoko from TM). The book goes over the various clichés in plot as well as clothing- most of the big clichés are all there!

Even if you aren't an artist you'll still get a kick out of reading this, especially if you are more than a little fed up with the overly clichéd mangas & characters out there. This isn't the deepest reading out there & most will finish it in about a half hour's time, but its well worth the price. It makes for an excellent reference guide, especially if you want to get into manga- or even "regular" comics or webcomics. There's a lot of clichés you don't want to fall into using! Totally worth it.

This book is an absolute must for the cynical manga enthusiast; the in-jokes alone are worth cover price. Chock-full of humorous observations on the "six basic" character models for any manga cast, How NOT To Draw Manga focuses on the artist-wannabes, their mistakes, and how to create a successful manga without having to "think" about it. The formulas for any fundamental genre are addressed, as well as the absolutely necessary section; the panty shot.

If nothing else, manga-kas in training will benefit from its frank points on the more trite aspects of the trade.

They make fun of manga stereotypes, but they not scoff at manga genre. They just try to induce to be more original.
Written as a comic book, it's far from complete and is little bit ineven.
But good.