Manga, manhwa, and manhua are all comics or illustrated stories, a type of book used to represent ideas visually, often combined with other text or visual information.
Even so, manga, manhwa and manhua still have some different aspects and also don’t come from the same country.
1. Definition of manga, manhwa, manhua
Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto manga
– Manga refers to comic books from Japan, in Japanese, according to the kanji alphabet (a type of hieroglyph, used in the modern Japanese writing system), manga is pronounced: mang-ga.
– Manhwa refers to comics from Korea, according to Korean hanja, manhwa is pronounced: man-hwa.
Manhua refers to comics from China, Taiwan (China) and Hong Kong (China).
The words manhwa and manga originate from the Chinese word, manhua meaning ‘improvised sketch’.
2. Differences in drawing techniques for manga, manhwa, and manhua
– Manga is characterized by comic content drawn in black and white with colored covers.
Technically, the mangaka was influenced by Tezuka Osamu’s depiction style, making the characters less realistic with big eyes, small mouths, and cute expressions.
– The two comic genres Manhwa and manhua are often released in digital form with many colorful nuances.
Characters in manhua and manhua are often drawn more realistically than manga, but sometimes they are too painful for the eyes with their characters’ extravagant outfits.
3. Differences in reading manga, manhwa, and manhua
– A characteristic of manga is that character conversations and story content are read from right to left.
– Manhwa and Manhua comics are read from left to right.
4. Name places and characters in manga, manhwa, manhua
As for naming characters and locations, both manga, manhwa, and manhua are often based on the `mother tongue` of each country of origin.
For example, the manga character is named Ichigo Kurosaki, the manhwa character is Park Se-jeong, and the manhua character is Xian Yi.