What is KunManga?

Japanese comics and anime shows are starting to top their Western counterparts in terms of popularity and sales. In fact, once you visit any of the popular comic stores in the United States, you’ll pretty soon realize that mangas occupy two-thirds of their complete catalog. Even giants like Marvel and DC can’t cope with the latest manga.

To understand why this is so, you can check out KunManga.com—the most popular manga portal in Japan. With more than 5,000 manga series available, KunManga offers its visitors free and legal comics that consist of all genres and styles. From yaoi and doujinshi to shounen ai and yuri, you can dive into romance, fantasy (isekai), and school life stories without paying a pretty penny.

KunManga

In essence, KunManga is a fan-managed site that provides its visitors with a wide collection of manga comics. It’s a non-profit portal, meaning that you can read any manga series for free. But how so? Well, it’s the users who upload their comics in PDF for others to enjoy. They scan page by page to bring you, their fellow manga lover, new chapters of your favorite manga series.

Manga reading is made even easier with the KunManga Android app. You can find it on Google Play. However, if for some reason it’s not there, you can download it as an APK file from various moder sites and install it yourself for mobile reading. Both the app and the site are perfectly optimized with quick loading speeds that will ensure you enjoy webcomic reading at its finest.

Different types of Manga

What makes manga comics so interesting is that they branch into various genres and editorial categories. From one-shot stories to Korean manhwa and Chinese manhua comics, you can find all sorts of stories and themes that relate to a specific demographic group. Hence, allow us to lead you through some basic manga types in the following few paragraphs.

Shojo manga

Namely, shojo manga represents an editorial category of manga comics. It targets adolescent females and YA women. Its roots lie in the 20th-century Japanese female culture. It developed into what we know as shojo manga in the 50s, and in the 60s and 70s, female artists and writers began to work on them instead of their male predecessors.

As mentioned, Shojo refers to its target audience, not a genre in itself. Hence, Shojo mangas can work with various themes, including fantasy, mystery, and so on, as long as it’s meant for teen girls. Nevertheless, we can distinguish two types of Shojo—Shoujo-ai and Yuri. The first one refers to soft depictions of love and relationships, while the other includes explicit sex scenes.

Shōnen manga

Just like the term shojo, shōnen refers to its specific target audience. In this case, it’s all about boys and young men. Nevertheless, people who enjoy shōnen don’t necessarily have to be in this demographic group. All they have to be is people who enjoy action (martial arts) and mecha robots, which are dominantly seen throughout shōnen manga comics.

Even though action and male leads are constant in shōnen mangas, they often delve into other genres and subgenres. They include sci-fi and time travel, romance, and slice-of-life narratives that mix well with adventure. In many ways, this is the most popular form of mangas both in Japan and across the world, occupying the most shelves in comic book stores and webcomic sites.

Seinen manga

Again, seinen mangas are one of the primary categories of Japanese comics. Their target audience is adult men from the ages of 18 to 40. The main focus of seinen includes royal family politics, relationships between office workers, comedy, gender bender and crossdressing themes, and science fiction, all coupled with action narratives.

Many seinen mangas have their anime and live-action adaptations, further increasing their popularity. Some of the most famous seinen mangas include AKIRA, Hellsing, Tokyo Ghoul, and 20th Century Boys. Of course, there are thousands upon thousands of seinen mangas out there, all worth checking out for die-hard enthusiasts of Japanese pop culture.

Josei manga

Lastly, we have josei manga. Like others, the term is meant to define its primary audience, and in this case, it’s adult women. Josei mangas deal with a variety of themes, but they mostly focus on relationships and modern life, including stories about work and romance. In some cases, they delve into pornography with ecchi, smut, and even reverse harem themes.

Most josei mangas are written and drawn by female authors and artists. And ever since the 2000s, they have become the biggest inspiration for webtoon and anime adaptations. Some of the most popular josei manga series include Your Name, A Silent Voice, Daytime Shooting Star, Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku, House of the Sun, Honey and Clover.

The history and origin of KunManga

As a term, manga began appearing as early as the 17th century and was used to describe various illustrations, some similar to modern comics. However, it wasn’t until the 1920s that it began to exclusively refer to comic books. After WWII, the manga industry saw its biggest boom, and it was mostly influenced by western comics of the time. Over the last few years, various fan-run sites began to pop up on the internet. One of them is KunManga, which now offers some of the best Japanese comics in all genres and subgenres.

Benefits of reading Manga, and its growing popularity in the West

Although they might appear weird at first, most mangas have interesting themes and sometimes controversial topics that they cover. Unlike modern western comics—Marvel and DC especially—Japanese comics aren’t afraid to tackle themes that are pretty out there. As such, they are gaining more and more traction in the west as they offer something new and unique.

On the other hand, their popularity has a lot to do with anime and live-action adaptations of the source material. Generations of western people have now grown up watching Dragon Ball z or Naruto, and it’s only logical for them to search for more of the same, and mangas are a perfect place to start. Then again, there’s the art style, which is again unique and appealing to look at.

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Simply put, KunManga is a website that is run entirely by fans and offers its users access to a vast archive of manga comics. KunManga provides its users with access to free and legal comics that span a wide variety of genres and artistic styles. Manga comics are so interesting because they cover a lot of different genres and types of stories. Like KunManga, Speechify Audiobooks offers various Japanese genre’s you can choose from. With over 70,000 audiobooks in our collection – there is no shortage of Japanese literature for you to enjoy. Sign up for Speechify audiobooks and enjoy your first audiobook for free.