Manga Yokai Stories

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 and cartooning. Outside of Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in Japan.

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 ( and ), sports and games, and suspense, among others. Many manga are translated into other languages.

Since the 1950s, manga has become an increasingly major part of the Japanese publishing industry. By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at (), with annual sales of 1.9billion manga books and manga magazines (also known as manga anthologies) in Japan (equivalent to 15issues per person). The domestic manga market in Japan remained in the ¥400 billion range annually from 2014 to 2019. In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased time spent at home, the market rapidly expanded to ¥612.6 billion. Growth continued even after the end of lockdowns, reaching a record high of ¥704.3 billion in 2024. Alongside this rapid expansion, the print manga market has continued to shrink; as of 2024, digital manga accounts for approximately ¥500 billion, while print manga makes up about ¥200 billion. Manga have also gained a significant worldwide readership., Beginning with the late 2010s manga started massively outselling American comics.

As of 2021, the top four comics publishers in the world are manga publishers Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and Shogakukan. In 2020 the North American manga market was valued at almost $250 million. According to NPD BookScan manga made up 76% of overall comics and graphic novel sales in the US in 2021. The fast growth of the North American manga market is attributed to manga's wide availability on digital reading apps, book retailer chains such as Barnes & Noble and online retailers such as Amazon as well as the increased streaming of anime. Manga represented 38% of the French comics market in 2005. This is equivalent to approximately three times that of the United States and was valued at about ($million). In Europe and the Middle East, the market was valued at $250 million in 2012.

Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white—due to time constraints, artistic reasons (as coloring could lessen the impact of the artwork) and to keep printing costs low—although some full-color manga exist (e.g., ''Colorful''). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in large manga magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue. A single manga story is almost always longer than a single issue from a Western comic. Collected chapters are usually republished in volumes, frequently but not exclusively paperback books., 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 or during its run. Sometimes, manga are based on previous live-action or animated films.

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").

Etymology

The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word (katakana: ; hiragana: ), composed of the two kanji meaning 'whimsical or impromptu' and meaning 'pictures'. The same term is the root of the Korean word for comics, ''manhwa'', and the Chinese word ''manhua''.

The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century, with the publication of such works as Santō Kyōden'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'' books (1814–1834) containing assorted drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used the word "manga" in the modern sense.

In Japanese, "" 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.

History and characteristics

Manga originated from (scrolls), ''Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga'', dating back to the 12th century. During the Edo period (1603–1867), a book of drawings titled ''Toba Ehon'' further developed what would later be called manga. The word itself first came into common usage in 1798, with the publication of works such as Santō Kyōden's picturebook ''Shiji no yukikai'' (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's ''Manga hyakujo'' (1814) and the '' Hokusai Manga'' books (1814–1834). Adam L. Kern has suggested that , picture books from the late 18th century, may have been the world's first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes. Some works were mass-produced as serials using woodblock printing. However, Eastern comics are generally held separate from the evolution of Western comics; Western comic art probably originated in 17th century Italy.

Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. One view represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art. The other view, emphasizes events occurring during and after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan by the GIs) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney).

Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity occurred in the post-war period, 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, and the anime adaptation of ''Sazae-san'' drew more viewers than any other anime on Japanese television in 2011. 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. Hasegawa's focus on daily life and women's experience also came to characterize later manga. Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, manga aimed at boys and manga aimed at girls.

In 1969, a group of female manga artists (later called the ''Year 24 Group'', also known as ''Magnificent 24s'') made their manga debut ("year 24" comes from the Japanese name for the year 1949, the birth-year of many of these artists). The group included Moto Hagio, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Ōshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi. Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw for a readership of girls and young women. In the following decades (1975–present), manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres. Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, , , and ).

Modern manga romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization. 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. Groups (or ) 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.

Manga for male readers sub-divides according to the age of its intended readership: boys up to 18 years old ( manga) and young men 18 to 30 years old ( manga); as well as by content, including action-adventure often involving male heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit sex. The Japanese use different kanji for two closely allied meanings of ""— for "youth, young man" and for "adult, majority"—the second referring to pornographic manga aimed at grown men and also called manga. , , and manga share a number of features in common.

Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after World War II. From the 1950s on, manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots, space-travel, and heroic action-adventure. 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.

The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty girls () 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 ()

By the turn of the 21st century, manga "achieved worldwide popularity".

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. In 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government considered a bill to restrict minors' access to such content.

The style of storytelling—thematically somber, adult-oriented, and sometimes deeply violent—focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, often drawn in a gritty and unvarnished fashion. such as Sampei Shirato's 1959–1962 ''Chronicles of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments'' (''Ninja Bugeichō'') arose in the late 1950s and 1960s, partly from left-wing student and working-class political activism,, , and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.

Publications and exhibition

In Japan, manga constituted an annual 40.6 billion yen (approximately US$395 million) publication-industry by 2007. 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.
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. In particular, books and magazines sold to boys () and girls () 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 cafés, or ( is an abbreviation of ). At a , people drink coffee, read manga and sometimes stay overnight.

The Kyoto International Manga Museum maintains a very large website listing manga published in Japanese.

Magazines

''E-shimbun Nippon-chi'' (1874), published by Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyosai, is credited as the first manga magazine ever made.

usually have many series running concurrently with approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. Other magazines such as the anime fandom magazine ''Newtype'' featured single chapters within their monthly periodicals. Other magazines like ''Nakayoshi'' feature many stories written by many different artists; these 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 thick. Manga magazines also contain one-shot comics and various four-panel (equivalent to comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are successful. Popular shonen magazines include ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' and ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' - Popular manga include ''Ciao'', ''Nakayoshi'' and ''Ribon''. 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. Magazines often have a short life.

Collected volumes

After a series has run for a while, publishers often collect the chapters and print them in dedicated book-sized volumes, called . 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.

History

Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyōsai created the first manga magazine in 1874: ''Eshinbun Nipponchi''. The magazine was heavily influenced by ''Japan Punch'', founded in 1862 by Charles Wirgman, a British cartoonist. ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'' had a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many people. ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'' ended after three issues. The magazine ''Kisho Shimbun'' in 1875 was inspired by ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'', which was followed by ''Marumaru Chinbun'' in 1877, and then ''Garakuta Chinpo'' in 1879. '' Shōnen Sekai'' was the first '' shōnen'' magazine created in 1895 by Iwaya Sazanami, a famous writer of Japanese children's literature back then. ''Shōnen Sekai'' had a strong focus on the First Sino-Japanese War.

In 1905, the manga-magazine publishing boom started with the Russo-Japanese War, Poten '' Tokyo Pakku'' was created and became a huge hit. Shonen Pakku After ''Tokyo Pakku'' in 1905, a female version of ''Shōnen Sekai'' was created and named ''Shōjo Sekai'', considered the first magazine. ''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''. During the boom, ''Poten'' (derived from the French "") 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. ''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.

Published from May 1935 to January 1941, ''Manga no Kuni'' coincided with the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). ''Manga no Kuni'' featured information on becoming a mangaka and on other comics industries around the world. ''Manga no Kuni'' handed its title to ''Sashie Manga Kenkyū'' in August 1940. Manga no Kuni

, 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 . While they most often contain original stories, many are parodies of or include characters from popular manga and anime series. Some continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction. In 2007, sales amounted to 27.73 billion yen (US$245 million). In 2006 they represented about a tenth of manga books and magazines sales.

Digital manga

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.

Web manga

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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

The rise web manga has also been credited to smartphones and computers as more and more readers read manga on their phones rather than from a print publication. While paper manga has seen a decrease over time, digital manga have been growing in sales each year. The Research Institute for Publications reports that sales of digital manga books excluding magazines jumped 27.1 percent to ¥146 billion in 2016 from the year before while sales of paper manga saw a record year-on-year decline of 7.4 percent to ¥194.7 billion. They have also said that if the digital and paper keep the same growth and drop rates, web manga would exceed their paper counterparts. In 2020 manga sales topped the ¥600 billion mark for the first time in history, beating the 1995 peak due to a fast growth of the digital manga market which rose by ¥82.7 billion from a previous year, surpassing print manga sales which have also increased.

Of the total ¥704.3 billion domestic manga market in Japan in 2024, the digital segment accounted for ¥512.2 billion, excluding print editions.

Webtoons

While webtoons have caught on in popularity as a new medium for comics in Asia, Japan has been slow to adopt webtoons as the traditional format and print publication still dominate the way manga is created and consumed (although this is rapidly changing). Despite this, one of the biggest webtoon publishers in the world, Comico, has had success in the traditional Japanese manga market. Comico was launched by NHN Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of Korean company, NHN Entertainment. As of now, there are only two webtoon publishers that publish Japanese webtoons: Comico and Naver Webtoon (under the name XOY in Japan). Kakao has also had success by offering licensed manga and translated Korean webtoons with their service Piccoma. All three companies credit their success to the webtoon pay model where users can purchase each chapter individually instead of having to buy the whole book while also offering some chapters for free for a period of time allowing anyone to read a whole series for free if they wait long enough. The added benefit of having all of their titles in color and some with special animations and effects have also helped them succeed. Some popular Japanese webtoons have also gotten anime adaptations and print releases, the most notable being ''ReLIFE'' and ''Recovery of an MMO Junkie''.

International markets

By 2007, the influence of manga on international comics had grown considerably over the past two decades. "Influence" is used here to refer to effects on the comics markets outside Japan and to aesthetic effects on comics artists internationally.

Traditionally, manga stories flow from top to bottom and from right to left. Some publishers of translated manga keep to this original format. Other publishers mirror the pages horizontally before printing the translation, changing the reading direction to a more "Western" left to right, so as not to confuse foreign readers or traditional comics-consumers. This practice is known as "flipping". For the most part, criticism suggests 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"), who may be ignorant of how awkward it is to read comics when the eyes must flow through the pages and text in opposite directions, resulting in an experience that's quite distinct from reading something that flows homogeneously. If the translation is not adapted to the flipped artwork carefully enough it is also possible for the text to go against the picture, such as a person referring to something on their left in the text while pointing to their right in the graphic. Characters shown writing with their right hands, the majority of them, would become left-handed when a series is flipped. Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with the gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right, or a shirt with the buttons on the wrong side, however these issues are minor when compared to the unnatural reading flow, and some of them could be solved with an adaptation work that goes beyond just translation and blind flipping.

In April 2023, the Japan Business Federation laid out a proposal aiming to spur the economic growth of Japan by further promoting the contents industry abroad, primarily anime, manga and video games, for measures to invite industry experts from abroad to come to Japan to work, and to link with the tourism sector to help foreign fans of manga and anime visit sites across the country associated with particular manga stories. The federation seeks to quadruple the sales of Japanese content in overseas markets within the upcoming 10 years. The increasing globalization of the manga industry has led to Japanese publishers inviting artists from other countries.

Asia

Manga has highly influenced the art styles of manhwa and manhua. Manga in Indonesia is published by Elex Media Komputindo, Level Comic, M&C and Gramedia. Manga has influenced Indonesia's original comic industry. Manga in the Philippines were imported from the US and were sold only in specialty stores and in limited copies. The first manga in Filipino language is Doraemon which was published by J-Line Comics and was then followed by Case Closed. In 2015, Boys' Love manga became popular through the introduction of BL manga by printing company BLACKink. Among the first BL titles to be printed were Poster Boy, Tagila, and Sprinters, all were written in Filipino. BL manga have become bestsellers in the top three bookstore companies in the Philippines since their introduction in 2015. During the same year, Boys' Love manga have become a popular mainstream with Thai consumers, leading to television series adapted from BL manga stories since 2016. Manga piracy is an increasing problem in Asia which effects many publishers. This has led to the Japanese government taking legal action against multiple operators of pirate websites. Manga has become increasingly popular in Southeast Asia being one the main assets of Japan's soft power in the region. Since the start of the 2020s the sales of manga have also significantly increased in India.

Europe

Manga has influenced European cartooning in a way that is somewhat different from in the U.S. Broadcast anime in France and Italy opened the European market to manga during the 1970s. French art has borrowed from Japan since the 19th century (Japonism) and has its own highly developed tradition of bande dessinée cartooning. Manga was introduced to France in the late 1990s, where Japanese pop culture became massively popular: in 2021, 55% of comics sold in the country were manga and France is the biggest manga importer.

By mid-2021, 75 percent of the €300 value of accounts given to French 18 year-olds was spent on manga. According to the Japan External Trade Organization, sales of manga reached $212.6 million within France and Germany alone in 2006. France represents about 50% of the European market and is the second worldwide market, behind Japan. In 2013, there were 41 publishers of manga in France and, together with other Asian comics, manga represented around 40% of new comics releases in the country, surpassing Franco-Belgian comics for the first time. European publishers marketing manga translated into French include Asuka, Casterman, Glénat, Kana, and Pika Édition, among others. European publishers also translate manga into Dutch, German, Italian, and other languages. In 2007, about 70% of all comics sold in Germany were manga. Since 2010 the country celebrates Manga Day on every 27 August. In 2021 manga sales in Germany rose by 75% from its original record of 70 million in 2005. As of 2022 Germany is the third largest manga market in Europe after Italy and France.

In 2021, the Spanish manga market hit a record of 1033 new title publications. In 2022 the 28th edition of the Barcelona Manga Festival opened its doors to more than 163,000 fans, compared to a pre-pandemic 120,000 in 2019.

Manga publishers based in the United Kingdom include Gollancz and Titan Books. Manga publishers from the United States have a strong marketing presence in the United Kingdom: for example, the Tanoshimi line from Random House. In 2019 The British Museum held a mass exhibition dedicated to manga.

The Europe manga market size was estimated at USD 676.1 million in 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19.6% from 2024 to 2030.

United States

Manga made their way only gradually into U.S. markets, first in association with anime and then independently. Some U.S. fans became aware of manga in the 1970s and early 1980s.In 1987, "...Japanese comics were more legendary than accessible to American readers", However, anime was initially more accessible than manga to U.S. fans, many of whom were college-age young people who found it easier to obtain, subtitle, and exhibit video tapes of anime than translate, reproduce, and distribute -style manga books. One of the first manga translated into English and marketed in the U.S. was Keiji Nakazawa's ''Barefoot Gen'', an autobiographical story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima issued by Leonard Rifas and Educomics (1980–1982). More manga were translated between the mid-1980s and 1990s, including ''Golgo 13'' in 1986, ''Lone Wolf and Cub'' from First Comics in 1987, and '' Kamui'', ''Area 88'', and '' Mai the Psychic Girl'', also in 1987 and all from Viz Media-Eclipse Comics. Others soon followed, including '' Akira'' from Marvel Comics' Epic Comics imprint, '' Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind'' from Viz Media, and '' Appleseed'' from Eclipse Comics in 1988, and later ''Iczer-1'' (Antarctic Press, 1994) and Ippongi Bang's ''F-111 Bandit'' (Antarctic Press, 1995).

During the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese animation, such as '' Akira'', ''Dragon Ball'', ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'', and ''Pokémon'', made a larger impact on the fan experience and in the market than manga. Matters changed when translator-entrepreneur Toren Smith founded Studio Proteus in 1986. Smith and Studio Proteus acted as an agent and translator of many Japanese manga, including Masamune Shirow's ''Appleseed'' and Kōsuke Fujishima's ''Oh My Goddess!'', for Dark Horse and Eros Comix, eliminating the need for these publishers to seek their own contacts in Japan.
Simultaneously, the Japanese publisher Shogakukan opened a U.S. market initiative with their U.S. subsidiary Viz, enabling Viz to draw directly on Shogakukan's catalogue and translation skills.

Japanese publishers began pursuing a U.S. market in the mid-1990s, due to a stagnation in the domestic market for manga. The U.S. manga market took an upturn with mid-1990s anime and manga versions of Masamune Shirow's ''Ghost in the Shell'' (translated by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith) becoming very popular among fans. An extremely successful manga and anime translated and dubbed in English in the mid-1990s was ''Sailor Moon''. By 1995–1998, the ''Sailor Moon'' manga had been exported to over 23 countries, including China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, North America and most of Europe. In 1997, Mixx Entertainment began publishing ''Sailor Moon'', along with CLAMP's ''Magic Knight Rayearth'', Hitoshi Iwaaki's ''Parasyte'' and Tsutomu Takahashi's ''Ice Blade'' in the monthly manga magazine '' MixxZine''. Mixx Entertainment, later renamed Tokyopop, also published manga in trade paperbacks and, like Viz, began aggressive marketing of manga to both young male and young female demographics.

During this period, Dark Horse Manga was a major publisher of translated manga. In addition to ''Oh My Goddess!'', the company published '' Akira'', ''Astro Boy'', ''Berserk'', ''Blade of the Immortal'', ''Ghost in the Shell'', ''Lone Wolf and Cub'', Yasuhiro Nightow's ''Trigun'' and ''Blood Blockade Battlefront'', ''Gantz'', Kouta Hirano's ''Hellsing'' and '' Drifters'', ''Blood+'', ''Multiple Personality Detective Psycho'', ''FLCL'', ''Mob Psycho 100'', and ''Oreimo''. The company received 13 Eisner Award nominations for its manga titles, and three of the four manga creators admitted to The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame — Osamu Tezuka, Kazuo Koike, and Goseki Kojima — were published in Dark Horse translations.

In the following years, manga became increasingly popular, and new publishers entered the field while the established publishers greatly expanded their catalogues. The ''Pokémon'' manga '' Electric Tale of Pikachu'' issue #1 sold over 1million copies in the United States, making it the best-selling single comic book in the United States since 1993. By 2008, the U.S. and Canadian manga market generated $175 million in annual sales. Simultaneously, mainstream U.S. media began to discuss manga, with articles in ''The New York Times'', ''Time'' magazine, ''The Wall Street Journal'', and ''Wired'' magazine. As of 2017, manga distributor Viz Media is the largest publisher of graphic novels and comic books in the United States, with a 23% share of the market. BookScan sales show that manga is one of the fastest-growing areas of the comic book and narrative fiction markets. From January 2019 to May 2019, the manga market grew 16%, compared to the overall comic book market's 5% growth. The NPD Group noted that, compared to other comic book readers, manga readers are younger (76% under 30) and more diverse, including a higher female readership (16% higher than other comic books).
As of January 2020, manga is the second largest category in the US comic book and graphic novel market, accounting for 27% of the entire market share. During the COVID-19 pandemic some stores of the American bookseller Barnes & Noble saw up to a 500% increase in sales from graphic novel and manga sales due to the younger generations showing a high interest in the medium. Sales of print manga titles in the U.S. increased by 3.6 million units in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. In 2021, 24.4 million units of manga were sold in the United States. This is an increase of about 15 million (160%) more sales than in 2020. In 2022, most of the top-selling comic creators in the United States were mangaka. The same year manga sales saw an increase of 9%. In 2023 manga sales amounted a value of $381.16 million USD with 57% of all titles sold coming from Viz Media.

Localized manga

A number of artists in the United States have drawn comics and cartoons influenced by manga. As an early example, Vernon Grant drew manga-influenced comics while living in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others include Frank Miller's mid-1980s '' Ronin'', Adam Warren and Toren Smith's 1988 '' The Dirty Pair'', Ben Dunn's 1987 ''Ninja High School'' and ''Manga Shi 2000'' from Crusade Comics (1997).

By the beginning of the 21st century, several U.S. manga publishers had begun to produce work by U.S. artists under the broad marketing-label of manga. In 2002, I.C. Entertainment, formerly Studio Ironcat and now out of business, launched a series of manga by U.S. artists called '' Amerimanga''.
In 2004, eigoMANGA launched the ''Rumble Pak'' and '' Sakura Pakk'' anthology series. Seven Seas Entertainment followed suit with '' World Manga''.
Simultaneously, TokyoPop introduced original English-language manga (OEL manga) later renamed ''Global Manga''.

Francophone artists have also developed their own versions of manga (''manfra''), like Frédéric Boilet's ''la nouvelle manga''. Boilet has worked in France and in Japan, sometimes collaborating with Japanese artists.
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Awards

The Japanese manga industry grants a large number of awards, mostly sponsored by publishers, with the winning prize usually including publication of the winning stories in magazines released by the sponsoring publisher. Examples of these awards include:
* The Akatsuka Award for humorous manga
* The Dengeki Comic Grand Prix for one-shot manga
* The Japan Cartoonists Association Award various categories
* The Kodansha Manga Award (multiple genre awards)
* The Seiun Award for best science fiction comic of the year
* The Shogakukan Manga Award (multiple genres)
* The Tezuka Award for best new serial manga
* The Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (multiple genres)

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded the International Manga Award annually since May 2007.

In 2024, LeftField Media (creators of the annual event Anime NYC) in cooperation with Japan Society created an awards program to honor manga creators with work available in English.
* The American Manga Awards (multiple genres)

University education

Kyoto Seika University in Japan has offered a highly competitive course in manga since 2000. Then, several established universities and established a training curriculum.

Shuho Sato, who wrote ''Umizaru'' and ''Say Hello to Black Jack'', has created some controversy on Twitter. Sato says, "Manga school is meaningless because those schools have very low success rates. Then, I could teach novices required skills on the job in three months. Meanwhile, those school students spend several million yen, and four years, yet they are good for nothing." and that, "For instance, Keiko Takemiya, the then professor of Seika Univ., remarked in the Government Council that 'A complete novice will be able to understand where is "" (i.e., margin section) during four years.' On the other hand, I would imagine that, it takes about thirty minutes to completely understand that at work."

See also

* ACG (subculture)
* Alternative manga
* Anime and manga fandom
* Cinema of Japan
* Cool Japan
* (horizontal, illustrated narrative form)
* Japanese popular culture
* Light novel
* List of best-selling manga
* List of films based on manga
* List of licensed manga in English
* List of manga distributors
* Q-version (cartoonification)
* Soft power § Japan
* Truyện tranh
* Visual novel

Explanatory notes

References

Inline citations

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Further reading

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* Marcella Zaccagnino and Sebastiano Contrari.
Manga: il Giappone alla conquista del mondo

Archive
. '' Limes, rivista italiana di geopolitica''. 31 October 2007. .
* Exner, Eike (2025).  ''Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics''. Yale University Press.
ISBN 9780300280944

{{Authority control

Anime and manga terminology
Comics formats
Entertainment in Japan
Illustration
Culture of Japan