What defines the art-style of Japanese manga?


Even though manga has lots of different art styles we still have an idea that
certain styles are "manga style" and other ones aren't. What is it about an
art style that lets us know it's manga style? What elements reappear across
many manga? What distinguishes our idea of manga style from our idea of
Western comics style?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZqLhM.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZqLhM.jpg)




I'm not sure there is a specific answer to this. As you acknowledge, different
artists have different styles. Both Japanese and western books vary from
"cartoony" to "realistic". There are cultural differences seen in the art,
such as in Japanese media adults often smoke, while in American media, they
seldom do -- definitely not in titles geared to children. (Maybe they do in
French media; that's why I switched from "western" to "American".)

Hell, sometimes an artist has extremes in his own work; consider Yoshiro
Togashi and his "bad days" on [Hunter x
Hunter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_%C3%97_Hunter). Here is a
comparison of a page that got published in the weekly mag, versus how he
improved it for the HxH volume:

[![poorly drawn page on left, well-drawn on
right](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kQnNK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kQnNK.png)

Is the left even identifiable as manga vs comic book (vs fan art)? On the
right, the main clue as to being a manga, at least to me, is the eyes of the
upper right character. Otherwise it could be from a (somewhat dark) American
funny-animal comic book, a la "[Fritz the
Cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_the_Cat) visits a jungle".

Let's look at another page:

[![First Kingdom, Book 6
cover](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gsEC4.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gsEC4.jpg)

Is there anything innately Japanese or western concerning [Jack
Katz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Katz_\(artist\))' work on _The First
Kingdom_? If I didn't already know, I could not tell anything except that he
is a remarkable artist (a mangaka in every sense of the word except his
nationality). ... Hmm, maybe in Japan they would have to fade-out all the
nipples.

I myself instantly recognize manga because the pages have to be read from
right to left. The other instantly recognizable hint is that manga are
typically b&w, whereas western comics are usually color.

