Manga

Manga (Japanese: 漫画) are comics or graphic novels that come from Japan. Most manga follow a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. In Japan, the word manga refers to both comics and cartooning. Outside Japan, it usually means comics that were first published in Japan. Chinese comics are called manhua, and Korean comics are called manhwa. For other uses, see Manga (disambiguation).

In Japan, manga is widely read by people of all ages and backgrounds. It covers many genres, including action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, sports and games, and thriller, among others. Many manga are translated into other languages. Manga is usually printed in black-and-white, and in Japan it is often serialized in large manga magazines before the chapters are republished in tankōbon volumes.

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 ¥586.4 billion (US$6–7 billion). The market rapidly expanded in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to more time spent at home, and it reached a record high of ¥704.3 billion in 2024. 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, and by the late 2010s, manga started significantly outselling American comics.

As of 2021, the top four comics publishers in the world are manga publishers Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and Shogakukan. 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 digital reading apps, book retailers such as Barnes & Noble, online retailers such as Amazon, and the massive popularity of anime. Manga-influenced comics also exist in other parts of the world, such as French ("manfra"), English ("OEL manga"), and in Algeria ("DZ-manga").

Manga has long been a field in which women have had a substantial presence. According to Machiko Satonaka, women made up approximately half of all manga artists at least between 1975 and 2005. As of 2026, Machiko Hasegawa, best known as the creator of Sazae-san, remains the only manga artist to have been awarded the People's Honour Award.

Etymology

The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word 漫画 (katakana: マンガ; hiragana: まんが). It is made of two kanji: 漫 (man), meaning 'whimsical or impromptu', and 画 (ga), meaning 'pictures'. The same word is the root of the Korean word for comics, manhwa, and the Chinese word manhua.

The word became common in the late 1700s with books such as Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai (1798). In the early 1800s, more books used it, including the well-known Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834), which contained drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used "manga" in its modern sense. In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, it means "Japanese comics", like how "anime" is used. The term "ani-manga" describes comics made from animation cels.

History and characteristics

See also: Kibyōshi and Kamishibai

Manga grew out of older Japanese art, such as emakimono (scrolls) and Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, which date back to the 12th century. During the Edo period (1603–1867), a book of drawings called Toba Ehon helped shape what would later be called manga. The word became common in 1798 with Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai, and in the early 1800s with works such as Aikawa Minwa's Manga hyakujo and the Hokusai Manga books. Adam L. Kern has suggested that kibyōshi, picture books from the late 1700s, may have been the world's first comic books. Some were printed in series using woodblock printing. Eastern comics are usually seen as separate from the development of Western comics, which probably began in 17th century Italy.

Writers describe two main influences on modern manga. One view, held by Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stresses continuity with Japanese traditions from pre-Meiji culture and art. The other view stresses U.S. influences after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), including U.S. comics brought by the GIs and images from Disney. After this, a burst of creativity led by Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa (Sazae-san) followed, and both made new styles. Tezuka's film-like panels inspired later artists, and Hasegawa's focus on daily life and women's experiences shaped later shōjo manga. Manga was then divided into two main types: shōnen manga for boys and shōjo manga for girls. In 1969, a group of women artists known as the Year 24 Group, including Moto Hagio, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Ōshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi, made their shōjo debut. Later shōjo manga often explores self-realization, and superheroine stories such as Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon became popular. Manga for young men is called seinen, and popular topics in boys' manga include science fiction, sports, and heroic action, while solitary superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man did not become as popular.

Publications and exhibition

In Japan, manga was a publishing industry worth 40.6 billion yen (about US$395 million) in 2007. In 2006, manga books made up about 27% of total book sales, and manga magazines made up 20% of total magazine sales. Manga has also spread around the world, where companies license and reprint it in other languages. Publishers mostly sort manga by the age and gender of its readers. Books for boys (shōnen) and girls (shōjo) have different cover art and are often shelved separately, but readers do not always stick to these groups. Japan also has manga cafés, or manga kissa (short for kissaten), where people drink coffee, read manga, and sometimes stay overnight. The Kyoto International Manga Museum runs a large website that lists manga published in Japanese.

See also: List of manga magazines and List of Japanese manga magazines by circulation

The first manga magazine is credited to Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyosai, who published E-shimbun Nippon-chi in 1874. Today, manga magazines often carry many series at once, with about 20 to 40 pages for each series in every issue. Successful series can run for many years, while magazines often have short lives. After a series has run for a while, publishers collect its chapters into book-sized volumes called tankōbon, which are similar to graphic novels. Dōjinshi are made by small publishers outside the main commercial market and are similar to small-press comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world, is devoted to them.

Main article: Tankōbon

Main article: Dōjinshi

Digital manga

Thanks to the internet, aspiring mangaka can now upload and sell their manga online. Before this, a mangaka's work was usually published by taking it to a publisher or by entering contests run by magazines. Web manga, as it is known in Japan, has grown in recent years, partly because image hosting websites let anyone upload pages for free. Almost all web manga keeps the traditional black-and-white style. Pixiv is the most popular site for amateur and professional work, and it has become the most visited artwork site in Japan. Twitter is also popular with web manga artists, who often post pages weekly in the hope of being picked up professionally. One-Punch Man is one of the best examples of an amateur work becoming professional, since it was first released online and later received a professional digital remake and an anime. Many big print publishers now also run digital-only sites. Shogakukan runs two of the top web manga sites in Japan, and Weekly Shōnen Jump released an app that teaches users how to make manga. Kodansha Comics has used web manga's popularity to launch more series. Digital manga sales have grown each year, while paper manga sales have declined.

Webtoons have become popular as a new kind of comic in Asia, but print still dominates in Japan, although this is changing quickly. Even so, Comico, one of the biggest webtoon publishers in the world, has succeeded in the Japanese manga market. Comico was launched by NHN Japan, the Japanese arm of the Korean company NHN Entertainment. Only Comico and Naver Webtoon currently publish Japanese webtoons, while Kakao has succeeded with its Piccoma service. These companies credit their success to a pay model where readers buy single chapters, along with full-color pages and special effects. Some popular Japanese webtoons, such as ReLIFE and Recovery of an MMO Junkie, have also become anime and print releases.

International markets

By 2007, manga had a much bigger effect on comics around the world than it had two decades earlier. This influence reached both comic markets outside Japan and the aesthetic styles of comic artists in other countries.

Traditionally, manga stories are read from top to bottom and from right to left. Most publishers of translated manga keep this original format, but a few flip the pages sideways so the reading goes left to right, like Western comics. This is called "flipping." Many critics say flipping goes against what the creator intended, and it can make reading feel very different because the eyes must move through the pages and text in opposite directions. Flipping can also make the text and pictures disagree, and characters who write with their right hands may become left-handed. In April 2023, the Japan Business Federation proposed ways to grow Japan's economy by promoting its content industry abroad, mainly anime, manga and video games. The ideas included inviting foreign experts to work in Japan and linking with the tourism sector so that foreign fans could visit places connected to manga stories. The federation wants to quadruple overseas sales of Japanese content within the next 10 years. In Asia, manga has highly influenced the art styles of manhwa and manhua. In Indonesia, manga is published by Elex Media Komputindo, Level Comic, M&C and Gramedia, and it has influenced the country's own comic industry. The first manga translated into Filipino was Doraemon, followed by Case Closed. In 2015, yaoi (boys' love) manga became popular in the Philippines and Thailand. Manga has grown in Southeast Asia and is one of the main parts of Japan's soft power in the region. Since the start of the 2020s, manga sales have also increased significantly in India.

In Europe, manga influenced cartooning in a different way than in the U.S. Broadcast anime in France and Italy opened the European market to manga in the 1970s. French art has borrowed from Japan since the 19th century (Japonism) and has its own strong tradition of bande dessinée cartooning. Manga reached France in the late 1990s, and in 2021, 55% of comics sold there were manga. France is the biggest manga importer and the second largest manga market after Japan. Publishers marketing manga in French include Asuka, Casterman, Glénat, Kana, and Pika Édition. In 2007, about 70% of all comics sold in Germany were manga, and Germany has celebrated Manga Day on 27 August since 2010. In Spain, the 28th Barcelona Manga Festival welcomed more than 163,000 fans in 2022. Manga publishers in the United Kingdom include Gollancz and Titan Books, and in 2019, The British Museum held a mass exhibition dedicated to manga.

Manga came to U.S. markets slowly, first through anime and later on its own. Anime was easier for fans to get than manga in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the first manga translated into English was Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, a true story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, released by Leonard Rifas and Educomics from 1980 to 1982. More titles followed in the late 1980s and 1990s, including Golgo 13, Lone Wolf and Cub from First Comics, and Kamui, Area 88, and Mai the Psychic Girl from Viz Media-Eclipse Comics. Later, Akira came from Marvel Comics' Epic Comics imprint, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind came from Viz Media. In the 1980s and 1990s, anime such as Akira, Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Pokémon had a bigger impact on fans than manga did. This changed when translator and business leader Toren Smith founded Studio Proteus in 1986. Smith and Studio Proteus worked as agents and translators for many Japanese manga, including Masamune Shirow's Appleseed and Kōsuke Fujishima's Oh My Goddess!, for Dark Horse and Eros Comix. In the mid-1990s, Japanese publishers began looking to the U.S. market because the domestic market for manga had slowed. The U.S. manga market improved with Ghost in the Shell, which was translated by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith. Sailor Moon was also very successful, and by 1995–1998 the Sailor Moon manga had been exported to over 23 countries. In 1997, Mixx Entertainment began publishing Sailor Moon and other titles, including CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth, Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte, and Tsutomu Takahashi's Ice Blade, in the monthly magazine MixxZine. Mixx, later renamed Tokyopop, also published manga in trade paperbacks. In the same period, Dark Horse Manga was a major publisher of translated manga, releasing titles such as Astro Boy, Berserk, Blade of the Immortal, Yasuhiro Nightow's Trigun, Kouta Hirano's Hellsing, and Mob Psycho 100. Three of the four manga creators in the The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, Osamu Tezuka, Kazuo Koike, and Goseki Kojima, were published in Dark Horse translations. Manga kept growing in the following years. The Pokémon manga Electric Tale of Pikachu issue #1 sold over 1 million copies in the United States, the best-selling single comic book there since 1993. By 2008, the U.S. and Canadian manga market brought in $175 million in yearly sales, and mainstream newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired wrote about it. As of 2017, Viz Media was the largest publisher of graphic novels and comic books in the United States. Manga readers are younger and more diverse than other comic readers, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, some stores of Barnes & Noble saw sales of graphic novels and manga rise by up to 500%. In 2023, manga sales in the U.S. reached $381.16 million, and 57% of those sales came from Viz Media.

Localized manga

Main articles: Manfra and Original English-language manga

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

By the early 2000s, several U.S. manga publishers were making work by U.S. artists and marketing it as manga. In 2002, I.C. Entertainment (formerly Studio Ironcat, and now out of business) launched a series called Amerimanga. In 2004, eigoMANGA launched the Rumble Pak and Sakura Pakk anthology series, and Seven Seas Entertainment followed with World Manga. TokyoPop also introduced original English-language manga, later renamed Global Manga. French-speaking artists have developed their own style called manfra, such as Frédéric Boilet's la nouvelle manga.

Awards

Japanese manga companies give many awards, and most are sponsored by publishers. Winners usually have their stories published in magazines from the sponsoring publisher. Examples include the Akatsuka Award for comedy manga, the Dengeki Comic Grand Prix for one-shot manga, the Japan Cartoonists Association Award, the Kodansha Manga Award, the Seiun Award for the best science fiction comic of the year, the Shogakukan Manga Award, the Tezuka Award for the best new serial manga, and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. Several of these awards cover multiple genres.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has given the International Manga Award every year since May 2007. In 2024, LeftField Media, the creators of the yearly event Anime NYC, worked with Japan Society to start an awards program for manga creators whose work is available in English. It is called the American Manga Awards and covers multiple genres.

University education

Kyoto Seika University in Japan has offered a very competitive course in manga since 2000. After that, several established universities and vocational schools across the country set up manga training programs.

Shuho Sato, who wrote Umizaru and Say Hello to Black Jack, caused some debate on Twitter. He said that manga schools were "meaningless" because they have very low success rates. He believed he could teach beginners the needed skills on the job in three months, while students spend several million yen and four years at school. He also pointed to a comment by Keiko Takemiya, who was then a professor at Seika Univ.. She said that a complete beginner would learn where the "Tachikiri" (margin section) is over four years. Sato thought this could be learned at work in about thirty minutes.