Manga Terms and Glossary

Anime: short for Japanese Animation. Japanese Animated Cartoon TV shows, movies etc.

Manga: Japanese Comics

Manwha: Korean Comics

Manhua: Chinese Comics

Mangaka: The manga creator, often the main creator for a work is both writer and artist. Other times they are separate.

Light Novels: These are short novels often with manga/anime like concepts and sometimes they have generous illustrations too.

OEL: Original English Language comics. American comics and other countries too, these comics are often done in a manga inspired art style, paneling and pacing. There was a movement at some point to call these “World Manga” and etc since often they are not always published in English first. But honestly, I find too many terms confuses people and OEL is the term that most people recognize, so it’s the one I’m sticking to.

OOP: Out of Print

One Shot: This can refer to a manga that’s only one volume, but in scanlations, it refers to manga that is only a one chapter short story.

Scanlations: Combination of fan translation and scans. This is when fans scan in the original work and then replace the text in the bubbles with translations. This allows fans who can’t read Japanese (or Korean or etc) to read works not published in English.

Isekai: A popular genre of manga where the protagonist from our world goes to another world, usually a medieval fantasy type world.

Harem: This refers to a kind of story where several girls are chasing after the main character guy romantically. There's also Reverse Harem where several guys woo the same girl.