Original Manga Pages - 直筆原稿

The Basics

Original Manga Pages are basically impossible to come by, especially those produced by famous artists.  In fact CLAMP in general still has most of their original pages from the original run of Card Captor Sakura which they exhibited at the Mori Museum of Modern Art in 2018.  This is actually an area where the US Art Market is far superior for original comic book pages from US properties as opposed to Japanese Manga Titles in the Japanese Market.  There has been a move to producing manga digitally for the last ten years at bare minimum, but some artists still prefer their pens and paper, and those Mangaka just starting out or just getting big cannot always afford the expensive equipment to produce titles at the aggressive deadlines required by publishers.  In fact as of the writing of this article there are a set of original manga pages up for sale on Mandarake that were created in 2018.  So while rarer they are still being produced, if mostly only by newer artists.

The pages themselves are drawn on a heavy card stock that is specifically made for publishing Manga, usually first done in pencil, then inked, then screen tone and dialogue are applied last.  Most pages will have a ruler in a lighter color down the top and sides so that it is easier to draw boxes and measure out how all the pages will fit together.  In the set below you can see the faint blue ruler at the top of the page with the single character, in person the rulers are on all sides, as these scans are cropped.  These drawings are almost 20 years old so there is some yellowing in the card stock and the glue/paste used to stick the screen tone to the card stock is not being kind to the paper.  Sadly it is the nature of something that is essentially a mixed media art that makes these pages impermanent much like cel art.

Original Manga Pages from: Chapter 6 of, The Prince's Lesson by Mangaka: Matsumoto Temari

 

Where can I find these?

They are basically impossible to find.  I have only been tempted with what has shown up in the market once, and the result are the pages by Matsumoto-sensei showcased above.  These were acquired off of Mandarake over 5 years ago, they are also occasionally listed on Yahoo Japan, but from the looks of the current open listings most of these came from past Mandarake Auctions.  So I would recommend to just keep an eye out on Mandarake for these items if you are interested in collecting them.  It will basically come down to timing and luck, Mandarake is the most trustworthy source for original art so you won't have to worry about counterfeits so much.