Abstract

Having evolved as a cheap, easily accessible form of entertainment for children and adolescents, manga has grown into a versatile medium capable of exploring identity issues. Manga are largely story-driven and receptive to readers’ needs, reflecting society and social issues. They utilise a wide range of themes, plots, motifs and characters to project fictional worlds where readers can ‘experience’ different selves and lives thereby enabling them to examine themselves and immediate issues in their life. One of the more intriguing motifs is reincarnation, which is the focus of this paper. The concept of reincarnation disturbs the view of an individual as unique and integral and questions further the value of each life. In general, believers in reincarnation maintain that they have lived another life before they were born and that some common characteristics exist between their previous personalities and their current personality. Can a self in the past and a self in the present be considered the same person? Is the past self “Other”? How is self constructed? Using various manga narratives, this paper will endeavour to discuss how the concepts of reincarnation are illustrated in manga, and how it explores identity issues and how such manga relates to society.