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[This question](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/4113/what-was-the-
first-manga-in-color) triggered my curiosity for this question. Why most of
manga are black and white? Is this because of more cost if they add colors to
it?


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manga-production manga-history
Why are manga black and white?


There can be different reasons for that, let's try to imagine some of them.

  * Lower cost. This is obvious (just compare the prices for black ink cartridges and color cartridges for your printer to see the difference). Also, consider that the lower cost of production causes lower prices for the end product - so the readers will be more eager to buy manga.

  * Faster production. Unlike comics in the US, for example, which usually comes out on a monthly basis, a lot of manga comes out weekly. Coloring would take additional time and make it harder to release new chapters in time.

  * Manga artists usually don't have a lot of staff to help them, and sometimes even work alone. Thus, they don't have enough time (and, not rarely, enough skill) to color their works well, because:

    * Coloring is completely different from line art. Not all people that can draw good line art can color well, and vice versa. If you talk about comics, there are usually at least two artists making them: one artist that draws line art, and another artist that is responsible for coloring (this artist is called a [colorist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorist)). Believe me, coloring is _hard_. And of course, that person also needs to be paid :P
  * It also somehow raises the interest of manga fans in watching anime (which is in color), but I doubt this is really a valuable reason, so think of it as of an interesting observation.


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Making manga is a lot of work. It takes several hours to make 1 page of manga
according to one of my friends. So just imagine how long would it take to make
the entire manga just in black and white. And also, the manga artists have
lots of manga to make within certain deadlines and they are paid to make manga
the best within that deadline. They literally don't have time to color their
work.


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As an artist, I can say that coloring with high quality really requires a LOT
of time and effort even for anime art styles. It is nothing like a coloring
book, because you really have to make it perfect or near-perfect for a public
audience, and you also have to do shading and highlights (for most styles).
So, coloring is generally reserved for finer drawings like the the cover
image.

Also, for manga that is to be published in a physical form, it's more
expensive to make full-colored pages, so colored pages are usually reserved
for art books (which are expensive like $30-$100 range partially for that
reason), or for a few special pages in the beginning of a manga (rarely).


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Because traditionally images were drawn  
[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dJWvm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dJWvm.jpg)  
Ink, especially in different colors, were not widely available or affordable.  
As mentioned before the time needed for coloring was an important factor as
well.

Why are webtoons colored? Because it takes hours instead of weeks or months to
color pictures with photoshop instead of a brush.


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