So I just got in a few volumes of the original Evangelion manga. Yeah go ahead and laugh but I hadn't seen the series until a few weeks ago (never really been a big anime guy) and thought it was great so I decided that I might as well get something I at least am already slightly familiar with. Well anyways, to my surprise the entire Manga has furigana for every single Kanji. Now for me being a complete beginner this is great because it will allow me to look things up a lot easier but is it normal? I thought furigana was mainly for obscure Kanji and books aimed at young children? Evangelion doesn't really strike me as a children's story lol so I'm wondering what gives?

Yeah, it's normal for teenage typed manga. If you get into manga geared more towards older people (well, older than teenagers), there isn't furigana.

My Jump manga[ヒカルの碁、ナルト] all have furigana.

All Shounen is filled with furigana (It's aimed for 少年 so that's not surprising). Surprising however is that a lot of manga aimed at college kids are filled with furigana as well (honey and clover for example). Personally I don't like furigana at all so I'm a bit annoyed by it. 小説 ftw!

Most of my manga is filled with furigana... but then again I love 少年 manga

I'd recommend as a nice light read: ロサリオとバンパイア. It's funny and a pretty easy read.

So far, the only JP stuff I've seen without furigana is magazines and novels. While I'll admit that it's tempting to 'cheat' and look at the furigana, I've found that my eyes don't adjust quick enough if I'm reading the regular kana and kanji, so I end up reading the kanji for the ones I know and only looking at the ones I don't.

I guess not everyone can be blessed with bad eyesight.

Yeah, unfortunately I'm in the opposite camp. If there is furigana, my eyes automatically jump to it. If it's a kanji I haven't seen much, that small amount of time I need to stop at it is enough for my eyes to read the furigana. The only way I can be sure I'm 100% relying on kanji is to read novels.

It's usually all-or-nothing.

Either the manga has furigana for ALL kanji or NO furigana at at all.

Seeing as how computer's are used these days for everything, I can imagine that furigana can be automatically generated for each kanji (at least for text that was typed in) .

As others have said, 少年 and other youth-targeted manga tends to have full furigana. The trick is to realize that this category goes up higher than you'd think; Spriggan and Arms, for example, both qualify. Older-targeted manga has its furigana count drop precipitously, though it still varies (skimming through the copy of Young Jump I've got here shows that, say, 外天の夏 has a fair amount of the stuff, while ヘタコイ has almost none save names).

Just be careful, they'll still do things like obliterate furigana with emphasis markers and put alternative meanings (sometimes in kanji!) as furigana.

~J

I'm not much into manga/anime either, but one weird thing I've noticed is that manga that's actually for kids (EG Doraemon) often doesn't have furigana, whereas the ones aimed at teenagers usually do.

snallygaster Wrote:I'm not much into manga/anime either, but one weird thing I've noticed is that manga that's actually for kids (EG Doraemon) often doesn't have furigana, whereas the ones aimed at teenagers usually do.

Thats because kids manga such as Doraemon have almost everything in hiragana except for very basic kanji.

I've long wondered if all this furigana is really even necessary or if it's borne out of an irrational fear that the manga won't sell as well without it. For example, are most Japanese pre-teens truly lost without furigana? I understand why the kiddy manga needs it but once you get into the more intermediate junior high type stuff, I question if it is just a frivolous courtesy that hardly anybody really needs.

I've spoken to a few Japanese friends who say they don't even see the furigana while reading it. Basically, I think people are mostly oblivious to it and since they're marketing the books to kids who are still in school, there's not much reason not to have it.

Well, I really like furigana. They help with kanji you don't know. And help a lot. When you are reading for fun, it is great. I personally have a lot of trouble to memorize something I don't know the sound.

But like Ben said, I'm still just a begginer and I already disregard the furigana most of the time. Kanjis are so much easier to read, after you know the vocabulary well enough.