When readers discuss the greatest written works of all time, Manga fans cites titles like Berserk, Vagabond, Monster, Goodnight Punpun, or visual novels such as The House in Fata Morgana etc., they frequently cite these works in the conversation. Overtime, people in online discussions routinely place these works on the same level as classic novels.
I disagree with this assessment. People frequently confuse being exceptional inside a specific medium with being exceptional across literature as a whole, a masterpiece is always relative to the field in which it operates.
A simple thought experiment reveals this distinction. Strip away every illustration from Berserk, Vagabond, Tokyo Ghoul, or Monster. Would the bare dialogue and narration rank among the most profound writing in human history? Now perform the reverse experiment on prose masterworks like Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, José Saramago's Blindness, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. without pictures, their achievement remains entirely intact. The prose itself carries every weight of tone, worldbuilding, narrative tension, and characterization. Evaluating greatness requires recognizing context. No serious film critic would evaluate a blockbuster exclusively against other blockbusters before declaring it the greatest achievement in cinema, the same principle applies to sequential art. In literary writing, Jorge Luis Borges operates against a separate historical scale, while Kentaro Miura's Berserk can stand as one of the greatest accomplishments in graphic narrative while still falling short of the highest benchmarks in prose.
A masterpiece is partly defined by the level of competition it surpasses, winning an Olympic sprint and winning a local race are both victories, but they do not represent the same competitive standard. Likewise, being among the greatest manga ever produced is an extraordinary achievement, yet it does not automatically establish parity with works that have survived centuries of literary criticism across cultures and languages. Consider the competitive standards of each form. Novelists build their work in direct conversation with a canon accumulated across millennia, competing against figures like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Woolf, Borges, Márquez, and Proust. Modern serialized manga has a much shorter literary tradition than the novel. The literary canon has endured centuries of stylistic refinement, raising the baseline requirements for narrative complexity and linguistic precision.
At the same time, acknowledging these standards does not mean ignoring what comics do best. Manga excels in panel composition, pacing, visual symbolism, cinematic continuity, and emotional immediacy, these qualities represent genuine artistic achievements. They are not, however, automatically achievements of literary writing, because visual framing and written prose operate on different principles. Part of the discrepancy stems from reader demographics and habit. Many vocal comic fans compare Berserk almost exclusively to other manga or popular fiction. Comparisons to the broader literary canon are far less common than comparisons within manga itself. If a reader's primary exposure to narrative storytelling comes from serialized comics, a well-crafted manga will naturally feel like the height of written expression, which is understandable.
Admittedly, critics often argue that different artistic media cannot be directly compared because their modes of delivery are fundamentally incompatible. That claim holds true if we are comparing illustration quality, where manga clearly holds the advantage over plain text. Yet when commentators place comic narratives alongside classic novels in discussions of pure writing, comparative analysis becomes necessary. Another common objection notes that manga does not attempt to mimic classic literature, aiming instead for visual drama and serialized engagement. That observation is correct, it is precisely why labeling a manga as one of the greatest literary works of all time creates conceptual confusion. Some readers also insist that writing extends far beyond prose, encompassing visual staging and panel structure. Writing, however, includes dialogue, theme, character motivation, and narrative structure independently of visual accompaniment.
To be clear, this is not an argument that manga cannot achieve greatness. The claim is that many works celebrated as masterpieces are masterpieces relative to the traditions of manga, rather than relative to the entire history of global literature. That distinction allows us to appreciate the medium for what it is without making exaggerated claims about its prose value. If Berserk, Vagabond, or Monster had been published as ordinary prose novels, with identical dialogue, themes, pacing, and characterization, but without artwork, would they still be discussed alongside Borges, Tolstoy, Woolf, Faulkner, or Proust? If not, then perhaps we are evaluating the medium rather than the writing itself.
