Manga

This article is about the comics published in East Asian countries. For other uses, see Manga (disambiguation).

Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics (sometimes also called komikku コミック). In their modern form, manga date from shortly after World War II but have a long, complex history in earlier Japanese art. In Japan, manga are widely read by children, adolescent boys and girls, and adult men and women. 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. Since the 1950s, manga have steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry, representing a 481 billion yen market in Japan in 2006 (approximately 4.4 billion dollars). Manga have also become increasingly popular in the US and worldwide. In 2006, the United States manga market was $175-200 million.

Manga are typically printed in black-and-white, although some full-color manga exist (e.g. Colorful). 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. If the series is sucessful, collected chapters may be republished in paperback books called tankōbon. 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, If a manga series is popular enough, it may be animated after publication. although sometimes manga are drawn centering on previously existing live-action or animated films (e.g. Star Wars).

Manga and manga-like comics exist in Korea ("manhwa") and in the People's Republic of China plus Hong Kong ("manhua"). In France, "la nouvelle manga" is a form of bande dessinée drawn in styles influenced by Japanese manga. In the United States, manga-like comics are called Amerimanga, world manga, or original English-language manga (OEL) manga.

History and Characteristics of Manga

Main article: History of manga

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 American television, film, and animated cartoons (especially Disney). 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.

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. 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.

For Murakami and Tatsumi, transnationalism (or globalization) refers specifically to the flow of cultural and subcultural material from one nation to another. 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. 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. Another example is the transfer of hip-hop culture from the United States to Japan. Wong also sees a major role for transnationalism in the recent history of manga.

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

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. 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 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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Similarly, Inoue sees manga as being a mixture of image- and word-centered elements, each pre-dating the American 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.

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.

Osamu Tezuka

Main article: Osamu Tezuka

File:Tezukamanga.jpg

Osamu Tezuka's manga show influence of American comics

Manga art first originated in Tokyo, Japan. Manga spread by the Showa Modan culture in around 1930. Manga in this era was made from low-priced paper and ink. It was sold not in bookstores, but in toy shops for children. The Imperial Japanese Army came to influence Manga strongly when the militarism of Japan strengthened in around 1940. (For instance, Norakuro is a popular poetic justice manga written by Suihō Tagawa in 1931.) When World War II ended, the United States culture was introduced into Japan again. Osamu Tezuka was influenced by Fleischer Studios and Walt Disney's styles, and developed the cartoon to Manga. The story and the tragedy were introduced by Tezuka Osamu. He had a strong influence on a lot of Mangaka. In around 1950, many young Mangaka came to the apartment Tokiwa-sō where Tezuka lived. The residents included Ishinomori Shōtarō, Akatsuka Fujio, and Fujiko Fujio.

Tezuka introduced film-like storytelling and characters in comic format New Treasure Island, in which each short film-like episode is part of a larger story arc. The only text in Tezuka's comics was the characters' dialogue and this lent the comics a cinematic quality. Tezuka also adopted Disney-like facial features where a character's eyes, mouth, eyebrows and nose are drawn in a very exaggerated manner to add more distinct characterization with fewer lines, which made his work popular. This somewhat revived the old ukiyo-e-like tradition where the picture is a projection of an idea rather than actual physical reality. Initially, his comic was published in a children's magazine. Soon, it became a specialized weekly or monthly comic magazine of its own, which is now the foundation of the Japanese comic industry. Tezuka adapted his comic to almost all film genres of the time; his manga series range from action adventure (e.g. Kimba the White Lion, also known as Jungle Emperor Leo) to serious drama (e.g. Black Jack) to science fiction (e.g. Astro Boy, Ambassador Magma), horror (e.g. Dororo, The Three-eyed One.) Though he is known in the West as a creator of the children's animation Astro Boy, Many of his comics had some very mature and sometimes dark undertones. Most of his comics' central characters had a tragic background. Some criticize Tezuka's extensive use of tragic dramatization in his stories. As the manga generation of children grew up, the market for comics expanded accordingly and manga soon became a major cultural force of Japan. Tezuka also contributed to the social acceptance of manga. His qualification as a medical doctor as well as the holder of Ph.D in medical science and his serious storylines were used to deflect criticism that manga was vulgar and undesirable for children.

Gekiga

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.

Cultural importance

File:OL Shinkaron strip.jpg

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 American comic book,, manga holds more importance in Japanese culture than comics do in American culture. In economic terms, weekly sales of comics in Japan exceed the entire annual output of the American comic industry . Additionally, manga and comics in general are more widely consumed among the adult population of Japan than in America. 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). By comparison, the estimated overall US market size in 2003 for comics was $340-380 million. 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 American 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.

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 American 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 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 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.

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"). Another example includes the character Miroku from InuYasha, who has a black hole in his right hand: in the flipped and translated version, dialogue shows him having it in his right palm, but the drawings show it in his left hand. 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, or more astute readers may notice that all characters in manga may seem to be left-handed. It should be noted, however, that oddities and disparities between art and dialogue can usually be rectified by editing and proof-reading. The most obvious example of this in manga reproduced for a western audience is to be found in Dark Horse's reproductions of Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal, where the original sound effects, written text and page layouts are retained from the source material, with individual panels flipped horizontally. It is likely this was done to prevent offense to western readers - as the main character in the book sports a large manji (buddhist swastika, 卍), and simply flipping the book's pages would have resulted in him seeming to sport the nazi emblem.

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.

Classification of Manga

File:Tohru from Fruits Basket manga.png

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", 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

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.

Types of manga

File:Akira Hojo.png

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).

Genres

• Kodomo children
• Shōjo young and teenage girls
• Shōnen young and teenage boys
  • Battling companion (not an official name)
• Josei (or redikomi), mainly women, 18-30, but men too
• Redisu, women
• Seinen young men
• Alternative (See also: Garo)
  • Gekiga (dramatic pictures)
  • La nouvelle manga (Franco-Belgian/Japanese artistic movement)
  • Semi-alternative (popular publication individualistic style)
  • OEL manga (original English language manga)
• Dōjinshi Fan-art or self-published manga
• Magical girl (mahō shōjo)
• Gag, humour
• Jidaimono, historical
• Robot/Mecha (giant robots)
• Suiri, crime and murder
• Moé, fetishism or love for characters as main subject
• Shōjo-ai or Yuri, lesbian romance
• Shōnen-ai or Yaoi, gay romance
• Ecchi, erotic
• Hentai/doujin, pornography

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

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

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. 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 Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (Kodansha) profiled creators and detailed manga's background and history for American readers. Ben Dunn's Ninja High School and Scott McCloud's Zot! were two 1980s comics series featuring elements of manga influence and pastiche.

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

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.

Influence

American artist and writer Frank Miller has been heavily influenced by manga and in particular by Koike's Lone Wolf and Cub. Miller was one of the first American comic artists to make use of decompression, a style prevalent in manga.

Other American artists such as Becky Cloonan (Demo, East Coast Rising), Ben Dunn (Ninja High School), Corey Lewis (Sharknife, PENG), 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.

American 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 U.S. 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. 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.

Language notes

• 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) Literally "Manga professional" is a Japanese term for a manga author/artist.

See also

• Anime
• Bilingual manga
• Dōjinshi
• Japanese popular culture
• La nouvelle manga
• Lianhuanhua
• List of films based on manga
• List of manga
• List of manga by Japanese title
• List of manga distributors
• List of manga magazines
• List of mangaka
• Manga iconography
• Manga outside Japan
• Manhua (Chinese comics)
• Manhwa (Korean comics)
• Original English-language manga
• Scanlation (fan scanned and translated manga)

External links

• Manga at Curlie