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context: comics > how big?
Reading Speed
The excellent Frederik Schodt quotes figures implying that the average Japanese reader spends 3.75 seconds on each page. This means a typical anthology mag might last 20 minutes. This feeds into some points addressed in the next section about why manga are so enormous - it implies a high degree of visual literacy, an extraordinary facility for decoding and comprehending the words and pictures. It also fits with a culture where a common slogan thrown at kids facing exams is "Five hours sleep and failure, four hours and success" - offering an entertainment that you can carry with you and consume quickly is probably a necessity for mass success.