The Culture and Industry of Manga!
Hello guys,I am going to talk about the industry, Culture and History of manga in Japan for my manga research and for you people to understand and study more about manga since it may be something new to you. You can see in the picture below a place called 'Akihabara' which is a location in Tokyo, Japan where you can find all the merchandise, anime, video-games and manga comics. To add to that, there are anime cafes and arcade shops everywhere! It is a dream for every fan to go there since it has everything you need as a GEEK.
The Manga Industry Now
Manga has always been popular in Japan and read by all generations, sexes and ages since it has genres for every body from action and science fiction to romance and true life stories. There is a study in Japan that more paper is printed for publishing manga than producing toilet papers. Now Manga accounts 3rd of the book market in Japan which translates to around 1 billion dollars of annual sales. The manga industry employs around 40,000 artists, editors, writers publishers and marketing people. Moreover, the companies that are responsible for printing and selling are: Kodansha comics, Yen press, Shueisha, and Group publishing co. Around 2 billion manga are sold every year. Successful Manga are often made into an anime “a T.V animated series” which are very popular internationally and are still developing both in popularity and technologically. Some Manga are also generated into live action box office movies, video games, toy figures, collection cards and character goods. The Character goods market alone is worth for around 3.5 billion dollars.
Manga Culture In Japan
Manga is considered and is still part of the Japanese culture since 1600’s. Moreover, the Japanese consider it to be
the heart of the pop culture in Japan as Manga became
popular with millions of fans worldwide. Nowadays
manga respects every age because there are different
kinds of genres in manga to respect all opinions; for example: shonen manga is aimed for boys
especially young teens while seinin manga is aimed for
grown men from the age of 18 till 40 where it has
mature content and complex stories unlike shonen
manga whose main focus is action and comedy.For you guys to know what are Shouen, Seinin, Shojo, Josei and Kodomo; I researched more about the kinds of manga as you can see below:
Kinds of manga:
1) Shojo:
Aimed towards young female audience. (Drama, Romance, some Comedy)Manga: A Silent Voice
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2) Shonen:
Aimed for young male audience. (Action packed, Comedy, Drama and sports)
Manga: One Punch Man
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3) Seinin:
Aimed for men from 18-40. (a alot of gore, blood and mature scenes).Manga: Vagabond
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4) Josei:
Aimed for Woman (Like Shojo but for older woman with a slow paced story line).Manga: Unknown
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5) Kodomo:
Aimed for Young children. (Comedy, some Action)Manga: Doraemon
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As you can see that every single style differs from the other since different mangas are aimed for different audiences.
How do you read manga?
Manga has always been read from right to left in Japan because it is considered part of the culture. Moreover, even the translated English versions of the American and British publishers made the translated manga read from right to left so that we can get the same feeling of the Japanese manga and to keep the original concept and culture.
Manga: Naruto
The Type of Manga and My Target Market
My type of manga is going to be Shonen Manga since it is aimed for boys from the age of 12-17 although, many men still read Shonen Manga although they are older than 17. It is going to be action packed with some comedic scenes although it is only 4 pages with a cover page. As you can see the panels in both the One Punch Manga and the Naruto Manga are square shaped and simple but the Manga artist may change it depending on the scene and what is happening in it.
For Example look at this Naruto page:
The panels on the right side show different characters with different emotions but it is cut in unusual shapes instead of only simple squares. My target market will of course be boys between the age of 12 and 17 since I am doing my manga shonen style which is aimed for them especially.
This is very good research, remember to contextualise it to your project as well. So which of these do you think you may use for your own major project? Which target market are you thinking of aiming your project at?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback again!! it is really helpful
DeleteThe links are very long, maybe u can just put link and use hyper link to link in the website instead of just posting the whole link in the post
ReplyDeleteThanks Jason! I fixed the links!
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