Manga

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This article is about the comics published in East Asian countries. For other uses, see Manga (disambiguation).
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Manga (漫画?) listen (help·info) is the Japanese word for comic (sometimes also called komikku コミック) and print cartoons.[1][2] In their modern form, manga date from shortly after World War II[3] but have a long, complex history in earlier Japanese art.[4][5][6] In Japan, manga are widely read by children and adults of all ages,[7] so that a broad range of subjects and topics occur in manga, including action/adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce, among others.[7] Since the 1950s, manga have steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry,[3][8] representing a 481 billion yen market in Japan in 2006 [9] (approximately 4.4 billion dollars[10]). Manga have also become increasingly popular worldwide.[11][12] In 2006, the United States manga market was $175-200 million.[13]

Manga are typically printed in black-and-white,[14] although some full-color manga exist (e.g. Colorful[15]). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in telephone book-size manga magazines, often containing many stories each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue.[6][7] If the series is successful, collected chapters may be republished in paperback books called tankōbon.[6][7] A manga artist (mangaka in Japanese) typically works with a few assistants in a small studio and is associated with a creative editor from a commercial publishing company.[3] If a manga series is popular enough, it may be animated after or even during its run.[16] although sometimes manga are drawn centering on previously existing live-action or animated films[17][18] (e.g. Star Wars[19]).

Manga as a term outside of Japan refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan.[20] However, manga and manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in Korea ("manhwa")[21] and in the People's Republic of China, including Hong Kong ("manhua").[22] In France, "la nouvelle manga" is a form of bande dessinée drawn in styles influenced by Japanese manga.[23] In the United States, manga-like comics are called Amerimanga, world manga, or original English-language manga (OEL) manga.[24]

Contents

[edit] Etymology

Manga, literally translated, means "whimsical pictures". The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Santo Kyoden's picturebook "Shiji no yukikai" (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's "Manga hyakujo" (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai manga containing assorted drawings from the sketchbook of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. The first user of the word "manga" as its modern usage is Rakuten Kitazawa.[25]

[edit] History and characteristics of manga

Main article: History of manga

[edit] An overview of Ideas about manga history

Historians and writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. Their views differ in the relative importance they attribute to the role of cultural and historical events following World War II versus the role of pre-War, Meiji, and pre-Meiji Japanese culture and art.

The first view emphasizes events occurring during and after the US Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), and stresses that manga was strongly shaped by United States cultural influences, including US comics brought to Japan by the GIs and by images and themes from US television, film, and animated cartoons (especially Disney).[3][6] Kinsella also sees a central role for how the booming post-war Japanese publishing industry helped create a consumer-oriented society in which publishing giants like Kodansha could shape popular taste.[3]

Japanese scholars like Takashi Murakami have also stressed events after WWII, but Murakami sees Japan's staggering defeat and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having created long-lasting scars on the Japanese artistic psyche, which, in this view, lost its previously virile confidence in itself and sought solace in harmless and cute ("kawaii") images.[26] However, Takayumi Tatsumi sees a special role for a transpacific economic and cultural transnationalism that created a postmodern and shared international youth culture of cartooning, film, television, music, and related popular arts, which was, for Tatsumi the crucible in which modern manga have developed.[27]

For Murakami and Tatsumi, transnationalism (or globalization) refers specifically to the flow of cultural and subcultural material from one nation to another.[26][27] In their usage, the term does not refer to international corporate expansion, nor to international tourism, nor to cross-border international personal friendships, but to ways in which artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions influence each other across national boundaries.[26][27] An example of cultural transnationalism is the creation of Star Wars films in the United States, their transformation into manga by Japanese artists, and the marketing of Star Wars manga to the United States.[28] Another example is the transfer of hip-hop culture from the United States to Japan.[29] Wong also sees a major role for transnationalism in the recent history of manga.[11]

However, other writers stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions as central to the history of manga. These scholars include Frederik L. Schodt,[6][8] Kinko Ito,[30] and Adam L. Kern.[31][32]

Schodt points to the existence in the 1200s of illustrated picture scrolls like the Tobae scrolls that told stories in sequential images with humor and wit.[6] Schodt also stresses continuities of aesthetic style and vision between ukiyo-e and shunga woodblock prints and modern manga (all three fulfill Eisner's criteria [33] for sequential art). Schodt also sees a particularly significant role for kamishibai, a form of street theater where itinerant artists displayed pictures in a light box while narrating the story to audiences in the street.[6] Torrance has pointed to similarities between modern manga and the Osaka popular novel between the 1890s and 1940, and argues that the development of widespread literacy in Meiji and post-Meiji Japan helped create audiences for stories told in words and pictures.[34]

Kinko Ito also roots manga historically in aesthetic continuity with pre-Meiji art, but she sees its post-World War II history as driven in part by consumer enthusiasm for the rich imagery and narrative of the newly developing manga tradition. Ito describes how this tradition has steadily produced new genres and markets, e.g., for girls' (shōjo) manga in the late 1960s and for ladies comics (redisu) in the 1980s.[30]

Kern has suggested that kibyoshi, illustrated picture books from the late 1700s, may have been the world's first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes.[31] Although Kern does not believe that kibyoshi were a direct forerunner of manga, nonetheless, for Kern the existence of kibyoshi points to a Japanese willingness to mix words and pictures in a popular story-telling medium.[32] The first recorded use of the term "manga" to mean "whimsical or impromptu pictures" comes from this tradition in 1798, which, Kern points out, predates Katsushika Hokusai's better known later usage by several decades (Kern, 2006, pp. 139-144; Figure 3.3).[31]

Similarly, Inoue sees manga as being a mixture of image- and word-centered elements, each pre-dating the U.S.A. occupation of Japan. In his view, Japanese image-centered (pictocentric) art ultimately derives from Japan's long history of engagement with Chinese graphic art, whereas word-centered (logocentric) art, like the novel, was stimulated by social and economic needs of Meiji and pre-War Japanese nationalism for a populace unified by a common written language. Both fuse in what Inoue sees as a symbiosis in manga.[35]

Thus, these scholars see the history of manga as involving historical continuities and discontinuities between the aesthetic and cultural past as it interacts with post-World War II innovation and transnationalism.

[edit] Manga after World War II

Modern manga originates in the Occupation (1945-1952) and post-Occupation years (1952-early 1960s), when a previously militaristic and ultranationalist Japan was rebuilding its political and economic infrastructure.[6][36] Although United States Occupation censorship policies specifically targeted art and writing that glorified war and Japanese militarism,[6] those policies did not prevent the publication of other kinds of material, including manga. Furthermore, the 1947 Japanese Constitution (Article 21) prohibited all forms of censorship.[37] One result was an explosion of artistic creativity in this period.[6]

Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique as seen in Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island).
Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique as seen in Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island).

In the forefront of this period are two manga series and characters that influenced much of the future history of manga. These are Osamu Tezuka's Mighty Atom (Astro Boy in the United States; begun in 1951) and Machiko Hasegawa's Sazae-san (begun in 1946).

Astro Boy himself was both a superpowered robot and a naive little boy.[38] Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience nor what kind of robot programming could make him so deeply affiliative.[38] Both seem innate to Astro Boy, and represent a Japanese sociality and community-oriented masculinity differing very much from the Emperor-worship and militaristic obedience enforced during the previous period of Japanese imperialism.[38] Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere as an icon and hero of a new world of peace and the renunciation of war, as also seen in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.[37][38] Similar themes occur in Tezuka's New World and Metropolis.[6][38]

By contrast, Sazae-san (meaning "Ms. Sazae") was drawn starting in 1946 by Machiko Hasegawa, a young woman artist who made her heroine a stand-in for millions of Japanese men and especially women rendered homeless by the war.[6][7] Sazae-san does not face an easy or simple life, but, like Astro Boy, she too is highly affiliative and is deeply involved with her immediate and extended family. She is also a very strong character, in striking contrast to the officially sanctioned Neo-Confucianist principles of feminine meekness and obedience to the "good wife, wise mother" (ryōsai kenbo, りょうさいけんぼ; 良妻賢母) ideal taught by the previous military regime.[39][40][41] Sazae-san faces the world with cheerful resilience,[7][42]what Hayao Kawai calls a "woman of endurance" (Kawai, 1996, chapter 7, pp. 125-142).[43] Sazae-san sold more than 62 million copies over the next half century.[44]

A kami-shibai story teller from Sazae-san by Machiko Hasegawa. Sazae is the woman with her hair in a bun.
A kami-shibai story teller from Sazae-san by Machiko Hasegawa. Sazae is the woman with her hair in a bun.

Tezuka and Hasegawa were also both stylistic innovators. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots.[6] This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.[6] Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shojo manga.[7][42][45]

Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shonen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.[6][46] Up to 1969, shōjo manga was drawn primarily by adult men for young female readers.[6][47]

Two very popular and influential male-authored manga for girls from this period were Osamu Tezuka's 1953-1956 Ribon no Kishi ("Princess Knight" or "Knight in Ribbons") and Matsuteru Yokoyama's 1966 Mahōtsukai Sarii ("Little Witch Sally").[6]

Ribon no Kishi dealt with the adventures of Princess Sapphire of a fantasy kingdom who had been born with male and female souls, and whose sword-swinging battles and romances blurred the boundaries of otherwise rigid gender roles.[6] Sarii, the pre-teen princess heroine of Mahōtsukai Sarii,[48] came from her home in the magical lands to live on earth, go to school, and perform a variety of magical good deeds for her friends and schoolmates.[49] Yokoyama's Mahōtsukai Sarii was influenced by the US TV sitcom Bewitched,[50] but unlike Samantha, the main character of Bewitched, a married woman with her own daughter, Sarii is a pre-teenager who faces the problems of growing up and mastering the responsibilities of forthcoming adulthood. Mahōtsukai Sarii helped create the now very popular mahō shōjo or "magical girl" subgenre of later manga.[49] Both series were and still are very popular.[6][49]

[edit] Shōjo manga

In 1969 a group of women mangaka later called "The Magnificent 24s" made their shōjo manga debut (the term comes from the Japanese name for 1949, when many of these artists were born[1]).[7] The group included Hagio Moto, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Oshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Riyoko Yamagishi[7] and they marked the first major entry of women artists into manga.[6][7] Thereafter, shōjo manga would be drawn primarily by women artists for an audience of girls and young women.[6][46][47]

In 1971, Ikeda began her immensely popular shōjo manga Beresaiyu no Bara ("The Rose of Versailles"), a story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, a cross-dressing woman who was a Captain in Marie Antoinette's Palace Guards in pre-Revolutionary France.[6][7][51] In the end, Oscar dies as a revolutionary leading a charge of her troops against the Bastille. Likewise, Hagio Moto's work challenged Neo-Confucianist limits on women's roles and activities [39][40][41] as in her 1975 They Were Eleven, a shōjo science fiction story about a young woman cadet in a future space academy.[52]

These women artists also created considerable stylistic innovations. In its focus on the heroine's inner experiences and feelings, shōjo manga are "picture poems" (Schodt 1986, p. 88)[6] with delicate and complex designs that often eliminate panel borders completely to create prolonged, non-narrative extensions of time.[6][7][46][47](McCloud, 1993, pp. 77-82)[53] All of these innovations – strong and independent female characters, intense emotionality, and complex design – remain characteristic of shōjo manga up to the present day.[45][51]

[edit] Shōjo manga and Ladies' Comics from 1975 to today

In the following decades (1975-present), shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres.[54] Major subgenres have included romance, superheroines, and redisu / josei 女性 じょせい, whose boundaries are sometimes indistinguishable from each other and from shonen manga.[55][8]

In modern shōjo manga romance, love is a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization.[56] Japanese manga/anime critic Eri Izawa defines romance as symbolizing "the emotional, the grand, the epic; the taste of heroism, fantastic adventure, and the melancholy; passionate love, personal struggle, and eternal longing" set into imaginative, individualistic, and passionate narrative frameworks.[57]

These romances are sometimes long narratives that can deal with distinguishing between false and true love, coping with sexual intercourse, and growing up in a complex world, themes inherited by subsequent animated versions of the story.(Schodt 1996 p. 14)[8][46][56] These "coming of age" or bildungsroman themes occur in both shōjo and shonen manga.[58][59]

In the bildungsroman, the protagonist must deal with adversity and conflict,[59] and examples in shōjo manga of romantic conflict are common. They include Miwa Ueda's Peach Girl,[60][61] Fuyumi Soryo's Mars,[62] and, for mature readers, Moyoco Anno's Happy Mania,[47][63] Yayoi Ogawa's Tramps Like Us,[64] and Ai Yazawa's Nana.[65][66] In another shōjo manga bildungsroman narrative device, the young heroine is transported to an alien place or time where she meets strangers and must survive on her own (including Hagio Moto's They Were Eleven,[67] Kyoko Hikawa's From Far Away,[68] Yû Watase's Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play,[69] and Chiho Saito's The World Exists For Me[70]).

Yet another such device involves meeting unusual or strange people and beings, for example, Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket[71] – one of the most popular shōjo manga in the United States[72] – whose orphaned heroine Tohru must survive living in the woods in a house filled with people who can transform into the animals of the Chinese zodiac. In Harako Iida's Crescent Moon, heroine Mahiru meets a group of supernatural beings, finally to discover that she herself too has a supernatural ancestry when she and a young tengu demon fall in love.[73]

With the superheroines, shōjo manga continued to break away from neo-Confucianist norms of female meekness and obedience.[8][46][43] Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon (Bishōjo Senshi Seiramun: "Pretty Girl Soldier Sailor Moon") is a sustained, 18-volume narrative about a group of young heroines simultaneously heroic and introspective, active and emotional, dutiful and ambitious.[74][75] The combination proved extremely successful, and Sailor Moon became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats.(Schodt 1996 p. 92)[8][74] Another example is CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth, whose three young heroines, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, are magically transported to the world of Cephiro to become armed magical warriors in the service of saving Cephiro from internal and external enemies.[76][77]

The superheroine subgenre also extensively developed the notion of teams (sentai) of girls working together,[78] like the Sailor Senshi in Sailor Moon, the Magic Knights in Magic Knight Rayearth, and the Mew Mew girls from Mia Ikumi's Tokyo Mew Mew.[79] By today, the superheroine narrative template has been widely used (e.g., Kanan's Galaxy Angel[80] and Nao Yazawa's Wedding Peach[81]) and parodied (Hyper Rune by Tamayo Akiyama[82]).

In the mid-1980s and thereafter, as girls who had read shōjo manga as teenagers matured and entered the job market, shōjo manga elaborated subgenres directed at women in their 20s and 30s.[54] This "Ladies Comic" subgenre (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レヂィーコミ, and josei) has dealt with themes of young adulthood: jobs, the emotions and problems of sexual intercourse, and friendships or love among women.[54][83][84][85][86]

Redisu manga retains many of the narrative stylistics of shōjo manga but has been drawn by and written for adult women.(Schodt 1996 p. 124-129)[8] Redisu manga has been often, but not always, sexually explicit, but sexuality has characteristically been set into complex narratives of pleasure and erotic arousal combined with emotional risk.[8][83][84] Examples include Ramiya Ryo's Luminous Girls,[87] Masako Watanabe's Kinpeibai (Toku, 2005, p. 59),[46] and the work of Shungicu Uchida (Schodt, 1996, pp. 173-177).[8] Another subgenre of shōjo/redisu manga deals with emotional and sexual relationships among women (akogare and yuri),[88] in work by Erica Sakurazawa,[89] Ebine Yamaji,[90] and Chiho Saito.[91] Other subgenres of shōjo/redisu manga have also developed, e.g., fashion (oshare) manga, like Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss[92][93] and horror/vampire/gothic manga, like Matsuri Hino‘s Vampire Knight,[94] Kaori Yuki's Cain Saga,[95] and Peach-Pit‘s Rozen Maiden,[96][97] which interact with street fashions, costume play ("cosplay"), J-Pop music, and goth subcultures in complex ways.[98][99][100]

By the start of the 21st century, manga for women and girls thus represented a broad spectrum of material for pre- and early teenagers to material for adult women.

[edit] Gekiga

A page from the Marmalade Boy manga, volume 1 (Japanese version)
A page from the Marmalade Boy manga, volume 1 (Japanese version)

Another important trend in manga was gekiga ("Dramatic Pictures"). Between the 1960s and the 1970s, there were two forms of comic serialization. One, the manga format, was based on the sales of anthology magazines which contained dozens of titles. The other, gekiga, was based on a rental format of an individual manga "book" of single title. Manga was based on weekly or biweekly magazine publications, so production was prompt, and the deadline was paramount. Consequently, most manga artists adopted Tezuka's style of drawing, where characters are drawn in a simpler but exaggerated manner, typified by the large round eyes regarded abroad as a defining feature of Japanese comics. In contrast, gekiga typically had more complex and mature story lines, with higher production value per page. For this reason, gekiga was considered to be artistically superior. However, gekiga's rental business model eventually died out in the 1970s, while manga artists significantly improved their graphic quality. Eventually, gekiga was absorbed into manga and now is used to describe a manga style which does not use cartoon-like drawing. Some examples of the gekiga-style manga are Kamui-den by Shirato Sanpei, Kyojin-no Hoshi by Kawasaki Noboru, Gorgo 13 by Saito Takao, and probably most famous abroad Akira by Ōtomo Katsuhiro.

However, gekiga did not only influence the art style of manga: after the 1970s, more mature-themed pictures and plot lines were used in manga. Many had significant depictions of violence and sexual activity, and were marketed at teenagers: unlike in Tezuka's time, children in the 1970s had more disposable income, so they could directly purchase manga without asking their parents to buy it for them. Thus, manga publishers did not need to justify their products to the parents. Moreover, the dominance of the serialized manga format on a weekly basis meant that manga was increasingly becoming "pulp fiction", with large amounts of violent content and some nudity (especially, although not exclusively, in manga aimed at boys). Representative titles of this genre were Harenchi Gakuen by Gō Nagai and Makoto-chan by Kazuo Umezu, both of which had copious amounts of gore, nudity, and vulgar (often scatological) jokes. Much like in the United States during the Comic book scare in the 40's and 50's, teachers and parents had objections to the content of manga, but unlike the U.S. no attempt was made to create an oversight board like the Comics Code Authority. Interestingly, manga magazines "for children" in the 1970s arguably had more vulgar themes (due to the fact that it was the only major publishing format available), but by the 1980s and 1990s, new magazines catering to teenagers and young adults had come into play.

[edit] Cultural importance

Strip of the yonkoma manga series OL Shinkaron. Common to Japan but rarely localized for other countries, yonkoma closely resemble Western comic strips.
Strip of the yonkoma manga series OL Shinkaron. Common to Japan but rarely localized for other countries, yonkoma closely resemble Western comic strips.

Though roughly equivalent of the US comic book, manga holds more importance in Japanese culture than comics do in US culture. In economic terms, weekly sales of comics in Japan exceed the entire annual output of the US comic industry [citation needed]. Additionally, manga and comics in general are more widely consumed among the adult population of Japan than in America. [citation needed] In 2003, Manga was a $5 billion a year industry, and accounted for 40% of all books and magazines sold in Japan (15 titles per person each year).[101] By comparison, the estimated overall US market size in 2003 for comics was $340-380 million.[102] Several major manga magazines which contain about a dozen episodes from different authors sell several million copies each per week. Manga is well respected both as an art form and as a form of popular literature, though it has not reached the acceptance level of historically higher art genres such as film or music. However, approval of Hayao Miyazaki's anime and other works of manga are gradually changing the perception of anime and manga, placing them closer to the status of "higher" arts (The film with the all-time highest box office gross in Japan is Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, with 30.4 billion yen).

Like its US counterpart, some manga has been criticized for being violent or sexual. For example, a number of film adaptations of manga such as Fist of the North Star were rated Restricted or Mature in the United States. However, there have been no official inquiries or laws trying to limit what can be drawn in manga, except for vague decency laws applying to all published materials, stating that "overly indecent materials should not be sold." This freedom has allowed artists to draw manga for every age group and a wide selection of topics.

[edit] Manga format

Manga magazines usually have many series running concurrently with approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. These manga magazines, or "anthology magazines", as they are also known (colloquially "phone books"), are usually printed on low-quality newsprint and can be anywhere from 200 to more than 850 pages long. Manga magazines also contain one-shot comics and various four-panel yonkoma (equivalent to comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are successful. Manga artists sometimes start out with a few "one-shot" manga projects just to try to get their name out. If these are successful and receive good reviews, they are continued.

When a series has been running for a while, the stories are usually collected together and printed in dedicated book-sized volumes, called tankōbon. These are the equivalent of US comic's trade paperbacks. These volumes use higher-quality paper, and are useful to those who want to "catch up" with a series so they can follow it in the magazines or if they find the cost of the weeklies or monthlies to be prohibitive. Recently, "deluxe" versions have also been printed as readers have got older and the need for something special grew. Old manga have also been reprinted using somewhat lesser quality paper and sold for 100 yen (about one US dollar) each to compete with the used book market.

Manga are primarily classified by the age and gender of the target audience. In particular, books and magazines sold to boys (shōnen) and girls (shōjo) have distinctive cover art and are placed on different shelves in most bookstores.

Japan also has manga cafés, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation of kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink coffee and read manga, and sometimes stay there overnight.

The reading direction in a traditional manga.
The reading direction in a traditional manga.

Traditionally, manga are written from top to bottom and right to left, as this is the traditional reading pattern of the Japanese written language. Some publishers of translated manga keep this format, but other publishers flip the pages horizontally, changing the reading direction to left to right, so as not to confuse foreign audiences or traditional comics consumers. This practice is known as "flipping". For the most part, the criticisms suggest that flipping goes against the original intentions of the creator (for example, if a person wears a shirt that reads "MAY" on it, and gets flipped, then the word is altered to "YAM"). Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right.

[edit] Dōjinshi

Some manga artists will produce extra, sometimes unrelated material, which are known as omake (lit. "bonus" or "extra"). They might also publish their unfinished drawings or sketches, known as oekaki (lit. "sketches").

Dōjinshi is produced by small amateur publishers outside of the mainstream commercial market in a similar fashion to small-press independently published comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world with over 400,000 gathering in 3 days, is devoted to dōjinshi.

Unofficial fan-made comics are also called dōjinshi. Some dōjinshi continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction.

[edit] Classification of manga

Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket, is an example of the stereotypical moe style of manga characterized by such features as large, expressive eyes and a small, simple nose.
Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket, is an example of the stereotypical moe style of manga characterized by such features as large, expressive eyes and a small, simple nose.

While 'manga' is defined as "a Japanese comic book or graphic novel",[20] some people contend that manga defines a style rather than a country of origin. This viewpoint can most predominantly be seen by the manga publisher Tokyopop, which markets original English-language manga.

"Manga is like hip-hop. It's a lifestyle. To say that you can't draw it because you don't have the DNA is just silly."
—Stu Levy, Tokyopop CEO[103]

However, like any artistic medium, there is no true set style for manga. Manga can range from the realistic to super deformed. Therefore, when manga is referenced as a style, it generally is specifically referring to the moe style of manga common to the fantasy genre and the most familiar style of manga to foreign readers.

[edit] Types of manga

Not all manga are drawn in the large-eyed moe style. Shown here is Akira Hojo from the realistically drawn seinen manga Sanctuary.
Not all manga are drawn in the large-eyed moe style. Shown here is Akira Hojo from the realistically drawn seinen manga Sanctuary.

With an immense market in Japan, manga encompasses a very diverse range of subjects and themes, satisfying many readers of different interests. Popular manga aimed at mainstream readers frequently involves sci-fi, action, fantasy and comedy. Notable manga series are based on corporate businessman (the Shima Kousaku and Salaryman Kintaro series), Chinese cuisine (Iron Wok Jan), criminal thriller (Monster) and military politics (The Silent Service). As a result, many genres apply equally well to anime (which very often includes adaptations of manga) and Japanese computer games (some of which are also adaptations of manga).

Manga are often broken up into demographics such as kodomo (children), shōjo (young girls), shōnen (young boys), and josei (women).

[edit] International influence

Main article: Manga outside Japan
Demo by Brian Wood (story) and Becky Cloonan (art) is an example of an American comic that is influenced by manga
Demo by Brian Wood (story) and Becky Cloonan (art) is an example of an American comic that is influenced by manga

Manga has had an influence on international comics and animation the world over.

[edit] North America

The first Westerner to introduce the visual approach and concepts of manga into English language comics was Vernon Grant, who drew comics in 1969-1972 while he was living in Japan[citation needed]. At the time, he was absorbing numerous Japanese comics, including Kazuo Koike's 28-volume samurai epic Lone Wolf and Cub, which he wrote about in the Mainichi Daily News in 1972. From 1977 to 1988, Grant published his series, The Love Rangers about a racially mixed space crew spreading love thoughout the universe. In 1983, Frederik L. Schodt's book Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics (Kodansha) detailed manga's background and history for US readers. The 1980s explosion of black-and-white comics in the US included a number of series that were conspicuous pastiches of manga, such as Ben Dunn's Ninja High School, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, and Scott McCloud's Zot!, as well as translated Japanese manga.

Following increasing interest during the 1990s, manga eventually grew into a large industry in the US, tripling during 2002-05 to become a $180 million market by 2005. [103] By 2006 total US manga sales reached $200 million [104] At least 40 syndicated newspaper have added manga-style strips (mostly US-made) to their funny pages.[103] Manga has also been noted for making female readers interested in comics. In a nation where the US comic book readership is largely dominated by males, females make up 60% of all manga readership,[103] often attracted by more in-depth story lines and romance subplots.

[edit] Europe

In France there is a "Nouvelle Manga" movement started by Frédéric Boilet which seeks to combine mature sophisticated daily life manga with the artistic style of traditional Franco-Belgian comics. While the movement also involves Japanese artists, a handful of French cartoonists other than Boilet have decided to embrace its ideal. France is the biggest country after Japan where Manga are most sold, with 10 million books in 2005.

The manga style has influenced not only writers and artists, but musicians as well. Turkish rock band maNga [sic] has not only its name derived from the style; their videos and album cover feature manga-style animation and the members of the band have their own manga characters, drawn by award-winning artist Kaan Demirçelik. English metal band Versus Akira derives its name and certain stylistic qualities in the music and artwork from the famous Japanese anime film/manga Akira.

[edit] Influence

US artist and writer Frank Miller has been heavily influenced by manga and in particular by Koike's Lone Wolf and Cub.[dubious – discuss] Miller was one of the first US comic artists to make use of decompression, a style prevalent in manga.[citation needed]

Other US artists such as Becky Cloonan (Demo, East Coast Rising), Ben Dunn (Ninja High School), Corey Lewis (Sharknife, Adam Warren (Dirty Pair, Empowered), Joe Madureira (Battle Chasers) and Canadian Bryan Lee O'Malley (Lost At Sea, Scott Pilgrim) are also influenced by the mainstream manga style and have received acclaim for their work outside of anime/manga fan circles. These artists have their roots in the anime/manga subculture of their particular regions (as well as the Internet and webcomics), but incorporate many other influences that make their work more palatable to non-manga readers.

US artist Paul Pope worked in Japan for Kodansha on the manga anthology Afternoon. Before he was fired (due to an editorial change at Kodansha) he was developing many ideas for the anthology that he would later publish in the US as Heavy Liquid. As a result his work features a strong influence from manga without influences from international otaku culture.

In addition, there are many amateur artists who are influenced exclusively by the manga style.[citation needed] Many of these have their own small publishing houses, and some webcomics in this style have become very popular (see Megatokyo and "Sequence (manga)"). For the most part, these artists are not yet recognized outside of the anime and manga fan community.

[edit] Manga magazines

Manga magazines are weekly or monthly publications of about 200 to 900 pages. Each of them will have a series of chapters from different manga, each chapter from 20 to 40 pages long. Most of the pages are black and white except for the cover and usually a few pages at the beginning. They also usually have some small, four-frame comics. Some of the manga chapters in these magazines, if they attract a lot of attention, will reappear in the magazine for years.

Some relatively well-known publications are:

[edit] Language notes

  • Before the word anime (アニメ anime?) came from overseas, manga (漫画 manga?) was used as a catch-all term for what US citizens refer to as manga and anime.[citation needed]
  • Because nouns in Japanese do not have a plural form, manga is the form for both plural and singular. It is also commonly called コミック (komikku, from comic) in Japanese.
  • Mangaka (漫画家)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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  62. ^ MARS Volume 1. Tokyo Pop. Retrieved on 2007-09-26.
  63. ^ Happy Mania Volume 1. Tokyo Pop. Retrieved on 2007-09-26.
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[edit] External links

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