Manga vs Manhua vs Manhwa Pt 1: the history and art

    Graphic novels, a genre that every kid, including me, loves. It can also be divided into many different sub-categories, comics, non-fiction, 4-koma, and many others depending on how produced, and since I am Chinese and lived there, obviously the graphic novels I read growing up were all from East Asia, which can be dissected into three sub-genres: Manga (漫画/マンガ), Manhua (漫画), and Manhwa (만화). Currently, these are also the most popular genres of graphic novels as western comics sales are steadily declining. So, today I am going to define their names, explain some history, and help you differentiate their art styles. 

    All three names come from the same root of the Chinese word "漫畫", "漫" meaning whimsical and "畫" meaning pictures or drawings.  The first of the three, manga, is claimed to have originated in the 12th century with scroll art. However it only became popular in the 18th century around the time of WWI, and during WWII where most of China and all of Korea became Japan's territory, after WWII when both countries were freed they were all influenced by Japanese manga which eventually evolved into modern Manhua and Manhwa (both were used before this, but only become mainstream after). 

    As manga is the oldest and by far the most popular, the amount of artist that draws this genre is also far greater than manhua and manhwa. This's means that the difference in art style is also significant. From what I have seen, the art style dependents a lot on the age demographic it is meant for, in Japan there are four age-related genres: Shoujo (girl), Shounen(boy), Josei(women), and Seinen(men). Shoujo and Shounen tend to have a lighthearted and more cartoony in contrast to Josei and Seinen's more realistic and serious art style. There's also a lot of grey areas in between all four so many long-lasting mangas' art style will evolve over time becoming more serious or just better in quality. Some mangas that the reader can experience some major art evolution includes the best selling manga of all time: One Piece, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and one of my favorite manga: Attack on Titan. 

Attack on Titan is nowhere near one of the longest-running manga of all time. However as you can see, even just in the span of 8 years the art style significantly changed into a slightly more realistic and definitely more detailed and clean style.

       Manhua and Manhwa, just like their pronounciations, are quite similar. Though they are just referring to any kind of graphic novels in their native definition, the western definition mainly referrs to the digital, long strip type of comics. commonly just called webtoon. Most of these comic are fully colored instead of just black and white like mangas, this also means the line art of the webtoons could be less detailed and much thinner. The artsyle of most webtoons are quite similar, with a slightly more proportional body and face compared to most cartoonish mangas. Manhua and Manhwa are very different to manga, to the point where I disliked them for a few years, however recently I've been enjoying them more.  

    

This is Solo Leveling, a korean webtoon I'm currently reading. Each scene is incredibly detail, however if you cut out the shading, the lineart becomes much simpler compared to manga. 

      There are many other differences between Manga, Manhua, and Manhwa like publications, plots, genres, reading platforms, animations, artists, and many more. However I'll save those for next time, thanks for reading and I hope you learned something new about Asian comics.

- Yan L