C Manga
Zita Lifland
In Japan, people of all ages and walks of life read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, erotica (hentai and ecchi), sports and games, and suspense, among others.[4][5] Many manga are translated into other languages.[6][7]
Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in those places that speak Chinese ("manhua"), Korean ("manhwa"), English ("OEL manga"), and French ("manfra"), as well as in the nation of Algeria ("DZ-manga").[38][39]
The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word 漫画[40] (katakana: マンガ; hiragana: まんが), composed of the two kanji 漫 (man) meaning "whimsical or impromptu" and 画 (ga) meaning "pictures".[41][42] The same term is the root of the Korean word for comics, manhwa, and the Chinese word manhua.[43]
In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, "manga" has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics", in parallel to the usage of "anime" in and outside Japan. The term "ani-manga" is used to describe comics produced from animation cels.[49]
Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity occurred in the post-war period,[57] involving manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa (Sazae-san). Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere,[58] and the anime adaptation of Sazae-san drew more viewers than any other anime on Japanese television in 2011.[50] Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic innovations. 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. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.[59] Hasegawa's focus on daily life and women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga.[60] Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.[61]
Modern shōjo manga romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization.[66] With the superheroines, shōjo manga saw releases such as Pink Hanamori's Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Reiko Yoshida's Tokyo Mew Mew, and Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, which became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats.[67] Groups (or sentais) of girls working together have also been popular within this genre. Like Lucia, Hanon, and Rina singing together, and Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus working together.[68]
Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after World War II. From the 1950s on, shōnen manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots, space-travel, and heroic action-adventure.[72] Popular themes include science fiction, technology, sports, and supernatural settings. Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man generally did not become as popular.[73]
The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty girls (bishōjo)[74] such as Belldandy from Oh My Goddess!, stories where such girls and women surround the hero, as in Negima and Hanaukyo Maid Team, or groups of heavily armed female warriors (sentō bishōjo)[75]
With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, an assortment of explicit sexual material appeared in manga intended for male readers, and correspondingly continued into the English translations.[76] In 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government considered a bill to restrict minors' access to such content.[77][needs update]
In Japan, manga constituted an annual 40.6 billion yen (approximately US$395 million) publication-industry by 2007.[83] In 2006 sales of manga books made up for about 27% of total book-sales, and sale of manga magazines, for 20% of total magazine-sales.[84] The manga industry has expanded worldwide, where distribution companies license and reprint manga into their native languages.
Marketeers primarily classify manga by the age and gender of the target readership.[85] In particular, books and magazines sold to boys (shōnen) and girls (shōjo) have distinctive cover-art, and most bookstores place them on different shelves. Due to cross-readership, consumer response is not limited by demographics. For example, male readers may subscribe to a series intended for female readers, and so on. Japan has manga cafs, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation of kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink coffee, read manga and sometimes stay overnight.
After a series has run for a while, publishers often collect the chapters and print them in dedicated book-sized volumes, called tankōbon. These can be hardcover, or more usually softcover books, and are the equivalent of U.S. trade paperbacks or graphic novels. These volumes often 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. "Deluxe" versions have also been printed as readers have gotten 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 $1 U.S. dollar) each to compete with the used book market.
In 1905, the manga-magazine publishing boom started with the Russo-Japanese War,[91] Tokyo Pakku was created and became a huge hit.[92] After Tokyo Pakku in 1905, a female version of Shōnen Sekai was created and named Shōjo Sekai, considered the first shōjo magazine.[93] Shōnen Pakku was made and is considered the first children's manga magazine. The children's demographic was in an early stage of development in the Meiji period. Shōnen Pakku was influenced from foreign children's magazines such as Puck which an employee of Jitsugyō no Nihon (publisher of the magazine) saw and decided to emulate. In 1924, Kodomo Pakku was launched as another children's manga magazine after Shōnen Pakku.[92] During the boom, Poten (derived from the French "potin") was published in 1908. All the pages were in full color with influences from Tokyo Pakku and Osaka Puck. It is unknown if there were any more issues besides the first one.[91] Kodomo Pakku was launched May 1924 by Tokyosha and featured high-quality art by many members of the manga artistry like Takei Takeo, Takehisa Yumeji and Aso Yutaka. Some of the manga featured speech balloons, where other manga from the previous eras did not use speech balloons and were silent.[92]
Dōjinshi, produced by small publishers outside of the mainstream commercial market, resemble in their publishing small-press independently published comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world with around 500,000 visitors gathering over three days, is devoted to dōjinshi. While they most often contain original stories, many are parodies of or include characters from popular manga and anime series. Some dōjinshi continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction. In 2007, dōjinshi sales amounted to 27.73 billion yen (US$245 million).[83] In 2006 they represented about a tenth of manga books and magazines sales.[84]
Thanks to the advent of the internet, there have been new ways for aspiring mangaka to upload and sell their manga online. Before, there were two main ways in which a mangaka's work could be published: taking their manga drawn on paper to a publisher themselves, or submitting their work to competitions run by magazines.[95]
In recent years, there has been a rise in manga released digitally. Web manga, as it is known in Japan, has seen an increase thanks in part to image hosting websites where anyone can upload pages from their works for free. Although released digitally, almost all web manga sticks to the conventional black-and-white format despite some never getting physical publication. Pixiv is the most popular site where amateur and professional work gets published on the site. It has grown to be the most visited site for artwork in Japan.[96] Twitter has also become a popular place for web manga with many artists releasing pages weekly on their accounts in the hope of their work getting picked up or published professionally. One of the best examples of an amateur work becoming professional is One-Punch Man which was released online and later received a professional remake released digitally and an anime adaptation soon thereafter.[97]
Many of the big print publishers have also released digital only magazines and websites where web manga get published alongside their serialized magazines. Shogakukan for instance has two websites, Sunday Webry and Ura Sunday, that release weekly chapters for web manga and even offer contests for mangaka to submit their work. Both Sunday Webry and Ura Sunday have become one of the top web manga sites in Japan.[98][99] Some have even released apps that teach how to draw professional manga and learn how to create them. Weekly Shōnen Jump released Jump Paint, an app that guides users on how to make their own manga from making storyboards to digitally inking lines. It also offers more than 120 types of pen tips and more than 1,000 screentones for artists to practice.[95] Kodansha has also used the popularity of web manga to launch more series and also offer better distribution of their officially translated works under Kodansha Comics thanks in part to the titles being released digitally first before being published physically.[100]
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