Although you might start out as a fan of both anime and manga, sooner or later, you’ll likely choose one as a favourite. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course – each medium has its own pros and cons. Today, we’ll take at the strengths and weaknesses of both.
Anime
The Good
Unless you exclusively buy collector’s edition boxsets, anime is undoubtedly less expensive than manga. Services like Crunchyroll and Funimation allow you to watch as much as you like for a nominal fee each month, whereas manga can cost up to $10 for a single volume. Sure, there are similar manga services, but you don’t get the same experience reading it online.
Good voice acting brings your favourite characters to life more than your imagination ever could. Also, while manga expresses movement and energy pretty well nowadays, nothing compares to actually seeing battles take place onscreen. Just look at Attack on Titan for a prime example of just how much anime can accomplish.
The Bad
There’s a good chance that manga readers already know how a show ends before the first episode has aired. As such, spoilers become harder to avoid, and especially if the show has multiple seasons. Game of Thrones is a great non-anime comparison: book readers were waaaaay ahead of the show, which led to some pretty significant unwanted revelations on social media.
Manga
The Good
There’s just something satisfying about having a full set of a particular manga. You get to combine your love of the medium with the satisfaction of physically turning the pages. You also don’t have to worry about your favourite title getting cancelled after season one. Look at Log Horizon: its second season ended on a cliff-hanger and there’s no third in sight, whereas the story continued long after this point in the manga.
It’s also a lot quicker to binge than anime. Each standard manga volume takes about 20 minutes to finish if you’re a quick reader, which means you can cover a few episodes worth of content in the time it takes anime viewers to watch one.
The Bad
Oh boy, if you thought waiting on a new season of anime was bad, waiting for manga will shock you. When you consider that most volumes of manga equate to about two or three episodes of a given show, it takes a far longer time to cover the same amount of material with manga.
Also, occasionally a major anime comes out of nowhere. In these cases, no manga exists, unless it’s adapted at a later date. For instance, you can’t read Yuri!! On ICE. In these cases, manga fans just have to bite the bullet and watch the show as it’s released.
