Manga as a medium is meant to be intimate. Something portable to carry in your hands, whether bound in a thick, glossy magazine, or glowing from the screen of your phone.

Anime adaptations of manga may add sound, motion, and color, creating worlds that seem to leap off the page. But the true power of manga is its ability to compress entire universes into stark black-and-white panels, inviting the reader to exercise their imagination.

As the first large-scale exhibition of its kind in North America, Art of Manga at San Francisco’s de Young Museum feels like stepping inside one of those panels. A feast for fans, but still accessible to manga outsiders, it guides the viewer patiently through the genre’s terms, stories, storyboard sketches, influences and techniques.

Twelve artists’ work fr

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