Japanese manga is read right-to-left, beginning at what an English-language reader would call the back cover. This is a function of Japanese-language text direction, which is traditionally written vertically and right-to-left. When manga began to be translated into English on a large scale in the 1990s, publishers initially flipped pages horizontally for left-to-right reading. The shift to preserving original right-to-left layout happened gradually through the 2000s.
Why manga is right-to-left
Traditional Japanese text is written in columns running top-to-bottom, with the columns ordered right to left. A manga panel sequence follows the same direction: panels are read from the top-right of the page, working leftward and downward. The convention is universal across genres and publishers in Japan.
The flip era
Early English-language manga publication — including the first translations from Eclipse Comics (Mai, the Psychic Girl, 1987) and Viz Media's 1980s and 1990s releases — flipped pages horizontally so they would read left-to-right. The flipping created characteristic problems: left-handed characters became right-handed, on-screen text on cars and signs read mirror-image, and battle choreography sometimes reversed direction mid-fight. Tokyopop's late-1990s decision to publish manga in 'authentic' right-to-left orientation, with explanatory diagrams in the front of each volume, was widely adopted across the industry and is now the standard.
Webtoon and the vertical format
The Korean webtoon format, which is read by scrolling vertically on a phone screen, has substantially changed the reading-direction picture again. Webtoons are typically composed for single-column vertical scroll, often in colour, with horizontal text. Japanese publishers have launched parallel vertical-scroll manga services to compete; these are typically not flipped versions of right-to-left manga but newly composed verticals.