Advantage to Unflipped Manga Art

Stemming from a post on Johanna's blog the question of reading unflipped manga art has started me thinking on why I like reading it in that form now.

When I first encountered the right to left format it was a tough go, years of reading habits had to be unlearned in order to lose myself in the story. Yet eventually it became normal, though to this day I still have to concentrate when I read.

Which is good in a fashion, because it makes me pay attention to the art more. Something that I shamefully must admit I don't pay a lot of attention to normally in regular comics as long as the art is competent.

Yet because I have to concentrate I pick up on far more visual clues than I once did, and if I get lost I find it interesting to try to determine why I read things out of order. Most times it was because of word balloon placement, or slant of the panel that led my eye in a direction that it wasn't supposed to.

Yet still it can be a fascinating exercise, and has even crossed over a bit into my normal left to right reading now as well.