Major Genres

Death Note
Death Note
A shonen manga, controversial due to its plot, Death Note is a popular series that deals with themes of good versus evil and moral ambiguity. The protagonist is Yagami Light, who discovers a magical notebook – the eponymous Death Note – that can bring about the death of any person whose name is written inside.

In the era before advanced special effects, huge costume budgets, and computer graphics imagery allowed the seemingly impossible to come to life on film, the graphic artwork of manga and animation were the primary means to visualize concretely narratives of superhuman abilities, fantastical creatures, and other worlds--past, present, and future. The only limits to putting authors’ fictional worlds into believable physical forms in manga were their skills and imagination as illustrators. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to see that science fiction, fantasy, and historical adventures dominate in manga. From Astro Boy to Akira, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to X, Princess Knight to The Rose of Versailles, our exhibition is filled with examples of these three popular genres. Supernatural horror is another story type that benefits from imaginative graphic imagery, as exemplified by The Spiral and also Death Note.

While some manga genres and their content are very familiar to us from popular fiction and film, such as the detective story techniques and tropes that structure the episodes of Case Closed, or the professional criminal theme that enlivens works such as Golgo 13, some emphases in manga may surprise us. Food and culinary culture, for example, providing different focal points for each of the 104 volumes of Oishinbo, comprise an unexpectedly major theme in manga. The number of sports manga, ranging from baseball and basketball to boxing and golf, is also startling. Martial arts themes, a related topic, also provide the material for a large number of manga, from Fist of the North Star to Naruto. Additionally, many manga cross between genres, such as the fantasy tinged realism of Fruits Basket or Bleach, or the unclassifiable JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Fruits Basket
Fruits Basket
In this shojo manga, schoolgirl Honda Tohru becomes acquainted with the Sohma family, several members of which are cursed to become animals of the Chinese zodiac if they are embraced by a person of the opposite gender. This series stands out for its deep treatment of themes such as love, friendship, trauma, and emotional healing.
Case Closed (U.S. title)
Case Closed (U.S. title)
“The Famous Sleuth Conan” is a shonen detective manga. The protagonist is an amateur crime investigator named Kudo Shin’ichi who accidentally transforms into a child, and adopts the name Conan to keep his real identity a secret. The series is exceptionally popular in Japan, with both anime and live-action adaptations.
Bleach
Bleach
While Bleach shows the influence of other standard shonen manga such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece, its story is darker in tone and more violent than similar works of the genre. The focus is on the coming-of-age of Kurosaki Ichigo, a high school teenager with the ability to see the dead who does battle with evil spirits to protect the living.