Welcome to Wired’s visual history of manga in America! We decided that the best way to explain the increasing popularity of this exciting medium was to to tell the story in the form of a manga. Like many of the popular manga that have been translated into English, we are using the Japanese page and panel order. Japanese writing reads from right to left, so pages and panels are sequenced in what seems like reverse order to Western readers. Start on the righthand page below and start reading “backward.” When you’re done with these pages, click the upper left corner to flip to the next page. You’ll soon get the hang of it!

Download the pdf (1.9 MB)

Art: Atsuhisa Okura