At a time when entertainment saturates our screens and media compete for our attention, the first pages of a manga take on decisive value. They form the incipit: that threshold which must simultaneously plunge us into a fictional universe and hold us long enough to make us want to keep reading.

The term comes from the Latin expression incipit liber, “here begins the book.” Far from being a simple opening sentence, the incipit is a strategic place, a kind of “door” between reality and fiction. According to Andrea Del Lungo in L’Incipit romanesque (2003), these first lines constitute a narrative object in their own right: they must orient, seduce, and legitimize the story. But if this principle holds for the classical novel, it becomes a matter of survival in manga.

Please or Perish

Manga is indeed a serial art, subject to the merciless logic of weekly rankings and the Japanese publishing market. Where the novelist has many pages to establish atmosphere, the mangaka has only a few spreads. The first chapters function as pilot episodes: if they do not captivate immediately, the series risks cancellation. The incipit is therefore not merely an introduction: it is a promise of longevity.

In a sense, every artist is a kind of Scheherazade. Facing the sultan that is the reader, they must constantly rekindle the desire to read, for a narrative that no longer captivates is a condemned narrative. Storytelling thus becomes a survival strategy. Scheherazade tells stories to reach the morning; the mangaka hooks to keep the series alive. The heroine lasted a thousand and one nights; some authors have exceeded a hundred volumes of manga.

But can one really dissect a manga incipit without ending up repeating the same admiration for the authors’ stratagems? Isn’t that spoiling the pleasure of reading?

It is on this fragile and fascinating terrain that this blog wishes to settle. Leaving behind the paths of “great literature” to explore the graphic and popular narrative arts, we will analyze these mechanisms of immersion. How does a mangaka manage, in about forty pages, to seduce through rhythm and style while establishing the rules of the world and the stakes? How does the incipit become the construction site where a universe and the invitation to enter it are built simultaneously?

Welcome to the analysis of first moments, where everything is at stake.

Current Explorations

For now, I have mainly written down ideas in no particular order about the incipits of several manga: Naruto, My Hero Academia, Kaiju No. 8, All You Need Is Kill, Demon Slayer, Haikyuu, and Food Wars.

My guiding thread is simple: to see how these works inscribe themselves in a tradition in order to subvert it. For Food Wars, it is a gourmet manga that brings older motifs up to date. In Kaiju No. 8, the hero is not an all-powerful warrior; he handles cleanup after battles and becomes a monster himself. In All You Need Is Kill, the hero is caught in a time loop, and it is the same start of the day. As for Haikyuu, we see a subversion of the “best enemy” motif typical of sports manga, etc.

Another angle: the relationship to the father, or at least to the father figure. Naruto is an orphan, but the various masters around him treat him like a son, hence a strict demandingness because they care about him. In My Hero Academia, the hero, also an orphan, must convince All Might that he has value and that he should take him under his wing.

In short, each blog entry will be a reflection on these incipits, rather than an academic analysis. After all, we are in a blog.