Anime-Beta TNG

Does anyone know what 文庫本 mean?

I was under the assumption that they are novels/light novel only, but can they also be manga?

Those three characters, when placed together, mean "paperback book". In regards to manga, that could just mean that they are not hard bound.

Great, thanks for putting the words into perspective!

Was looking at some manga-ish looking books on YHJ and saw 文庫 on the auction title and thought it means novel...I wonder if theres a word or phrase they use to distinguish manga from novel.

The first two characters, 文庫 , just refer to it being a paperback, with the first character meaning 'writing'. The last character, 本 , is book, and is a character you'll see advertising bookstores all throughout Japan. It's sort of redundant, but something I could see someone using who is more interested in using proper grammar at all times, and not someone who uses a lot of shorthand. Language always evolves into the easiest and simplest way of conveying a concept, especially now with the abundance of technological resources and imposed 140 character limitations.

Anyways, I'll shut up about language now. I'm a language nerd and I can go on for hours on how words can give insight into how a particular group of people think.

Have you tried just imputing an anime that has several novels and then clicking on an auction advertising one? YJ auctions usually break down into smaller categories, like 'cel', 'character name', 'anime name', etc. I would look at the listing and use that to narrow it down.

cutiebunny wrote:The first two characters, 文庫 , just refer to it being a paperback, with the first character meaning 'writing'. The last character, 本 , is book, and is a character you'll see advertising bookstores all throughout Japan. It's sort of redundant, but something I could see someone using who is more interested in using proper grammar at all times, and not someone who uses a lot of shorthand.

文庫本 In hanzi would mean literature storage volume, which is not even close to what it means in Kanji. It frustrates me to no end because I recall taking chinese classes as a foolproof way to raise my GPA. Although without knowing even the most basic Japanese background, my chinese don't amount to crap, and this seem to happen more often than I like while browsing Japanese sites-_-

cutiebunny wrote:Have you tried just imputing an anime that has several novels and then clicking on an auction advertising one? YJ auctions usually break down into smaller categories, like 'cel', 'character name', 'anime name', etc. I would look at the listing and use that to narrow it down.

Great idea, I'll definitely give it a try.