Alternative manga or underground manga is a Western term for Japanese

comics a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...

that are published outside the more commercial

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

market, or which have different art styles, themes, and narratives to those found in the more popular manga magazines. The term was taken from the similar

alternative comics Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comic book, American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alterna ...

. The artistic center of alternative manga production was from the 1960s until the 1990s the manga magazine ''Garo'', which is why in Japan, alternative manga are often called , even if they were not published in ''Garo''.

History

Alternative manga originated in the lending libraries of post-war Japan, which charged a small fee for borrowing books. This market was essentially its own marketplace with many manga being printed exclusively for it. The market was notorious amongst parental groups for containing more lewd content than the normal mainstream manga publishers would allow. Consequently, the market tended to appeal to a slightly older adolescent audience, rather than the child-dominated audience of the mainstream magazine anthologies of the time. In 1958 an author named Yoshihiro Tatsumi decided to create comics that had a darker and more realistic tone. Rejecting the title of manga, which in Japanese means "frivolous pictures", Tatsumi instead called these comics ''

gekiga is a style of Japanese comics aimed at adult audiences and marked by a more cinematic art style and more mature themes. ''Gekiga'' was the predominant style of adult comics in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It is aesthetically defined by sharp ...

'', meaning "dramatic pictures". This was similar to the way in which the term "

graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...

" was advocated by American alternative cartoonists, over the term "comics". As ''gekiga'' gained popularity, the lending libraries gradually collapsed due to the growing economy of Japan during the 1960s. As a result, many ''gekiga'' artists left the lending libraries and began to set up their own magazine anthologies. One of these anthologies, '' Garo'', was designed to showcase the newest talents in the manga business. ''Garo'' started out as being a ''gekiga'' magazine but would eventually grow to a new style with the work of Yoshiharu Tsuge. Tsuge is widely credited with bringing a more personal stance to manga, allowing for manga to be an abstract reflection of his own experiences. Some critics have gone as far as to call his work the comics equivalent to an I novel. As ''Garo'' gained popularity particularly with the youth movements of the 1960s, many other magazines followed in its footsteps. At around the same time ''gekiga'' elements began appearing in mainstream manga magazines, with

Osamu Tezuka Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu'', – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator. Considered to be among the greatest and most influential cartoonists of all time, his prolific output, pioneering techniques an ...

fully embracing the style and doing more work aimed at older audiences. Eventually Tezuka would start up a magazine called '' COM'', as his answer to ''Garo''. With ''gekiga'' being integrated into mainstream manga, and manga being accepted as an art form by the masses around this time period. In the 1980s and 1990s, alternative manga influenced mainstream publishers of ''seinen'' manga. Magazines like ''Morning'' and ''Afternoon'' published artists who had styles reminiscent of the then-considered "retro" alternative manga from the 1960s and 1970s. Sharon Kinsella writes: "These artists used unusual and 'artistic' styles not previously published in high-circulation commercial magazines". Manga critic Tomofuse Kure called this phenomenon ''Garo-kei'' ("Garo-tique").

Alternative magazines

* '' Garo'', 1964–2002 * '' COM'', 1967–1972 * '' Comic Baku'', 1984–1987 * '' Comic Are'', 1993 * '' AX'', since 1998 * ''Bentō'', since 1998 * '' Monthly Ikki'', 2000–2014 * '' Manga Erotics F'', 2001–2014

Movements

* Manga Lending Libraries (1950s–1970s) * ''

Gekiga is a style of Japanese comics aimed at adult audiences and marked by a more cinematic art style and more mature themes. ''Gekiga'' was the predominant style of adult comics in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It is aesthetically defined by sharp ...

'' (late 1950s–1980s) * '' Garo'' (1960s–1990s) * '' Heta-uma'' (1970s-1990s) * New Wave (1970s–1980s) *

La nouvelle manga Nouvelle Manga () is an artistic movement which gathers French and Japanese comic creators together. The expression was first used by Kiyoshi Kusumi, editor of the Japanese manga magazine ''Comickers'', in referring to the work of French expatri ...

(late 1990s–present)

History

Alternative magazines

Movements

See also

References

Further reading