Gravitating towards manga

With each passing month, I find myself more and more attracted to manga. I’ve dipped in and out of some interesting scanlations over the years, but I’d never call myself a manga fan. Anime has always been my thing, as there are several aspects of it (as a medium) that are vital to my enjoyment of a good story. So, for example, I dare not even consider experiencing Berserk without Susumu Hirasawa’s accompanying score, as I doubt the characters would have worked for me as well as they did without his music; he adds so much life to the story. All those feelings are starting to change, though.

Just this morning, I received 3 new manga volumes and honestly, I feel so excited just to own them. I really want to read them. That’s how I used to feel about anime too, but for every series I’ll adore, like Berserk and Gankutsuou, there will be 10 more that I might enjoy but rarely leave me with a lasting impression. When I flick through manga, I love how it looks so unique, as if you can grasp exactly what the artist is trying to convey just by thumbing through his/her story at a natural pace. A lot of anime isn’t like that, as there is always this sense of something being compromised, be it animation quality/style or the story itself for the sake of a broader audience, running time or a tight budget. Once you acclimatize to those limitations, anime loses a lot of its charm and feels somewhat predictable. I’m not saying this because I’m falling out of love with anime, far from it, but that’s probably why I’m gravitating towards manga; it’s a freer, distilled and more creative form of story-telling.