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 manga 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 the country.
Shōnen manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent boys. It is, along with shōjo manga, seinen manga, and josei manga, one of the primary editorial categories of manga. Shōnen manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines that exclusively target the shōnen demographic group.
Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.
Yuri, also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love, is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbianism is a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and literature.
Josei manga, also known as ladies' comics (レディースコミック) and its abbreviation redikomi , is an editorial category of Japanese comics that emerged in the 1980s. In a strict sense, josei refers to manga marketed to an audience of adult women, contrasting shōjo manga, which is marketed to an audience of girls and young adult women. In practice, the distinction between shōjo and josei is often tenuous; while the two were initially divergent categories, many manga works exhibit narrative and stylistic traits associated with both shōjo and josei manga. This distinction is further complicated by a third manga editorial category, young ladies (ヤングレディース), which emerged in the late 1980s as an intermediate category between shōjo and josei.
Weekly Shōnen Jump is a weekly shōnen manga anthology published in Japan by Shueisha under the Jump line of magazines. The manga series within the magazine consist of many action scenes and a fair amount of comedy. Chapters of the series that run in Weekly Shōnen Jump are collected and published in tankōbon volumes under the Jump Comics imprint every two to three months. It is one of the longest-running manga magazines, with the first issue being released with a cover date of August 1, 1968.
.hack//Legend of the Twilight is a science fiction manga series written by Tatsuya Hamazaki and drawn by Rei Izumi. The twenty-two chapters of .hack//Legend of the Twilight appeared as a serial in the Japanese magazine Comptiq and published in three tankōbon by Kadokawa Shoten from July 2002 to April 2004. Set in a fictional MMORPG, The World, the series focuses on twins Rena and Shugo, who receive chibi avatars in the design of the legendary .hackers known as Kite and BlackRose. After Shugo is given the Twilight Bracelet by a mysterious girl, the two embark on a quest to find Aura and unravel the mystery of the Twilight Bracelet.
Animerica Extra was a monthly manga magazine published in by Viz Media. Established as a companion to the anime news and review magazine Animerica, Animerica Extra primarily published English-language translations of Japanese manga. The magazine shifted towards publishing shōjo manga in 2003, before ceasing publication in 2004.
Carlsen Verlag is a subsidiary of the homonymous Danish publishing house which in turn belongs to the Swedish media company Bonnier. The branch was founded on 25 April 1953 in Hamburg.
Earl Cain, also known as Count Cain, is a gothic shōjo manga series written and illustrated by Kaori Yuki. Earl Cain consists of five parts or "Series": Forgotten Juliet, The Sound of a Boy Hatching, Kafka, The Seal of the Red Ram, and the sequel series Godchild.
Yoshihiro Tatsumi was a Japanese manga artist whose work was first published in his teens, and continued through the rest of his life. He is widely credited with starting the gekiga style of alternative manga in Japan, having allegedly coined the term in 1957. His work frequently illustrated the darker elements of life.
Blood Hound, also known as Vampire Host, is a manga by Kaori Yuki. Appearing as a serial in the Japanese manga magazines Hana to Yume and Bessatsu Hana to Yume, the chapters of Blood Hound were compiled into a bound volume and published by Hakusensha in June 2004. Two more chapters followed in the January 2005 and August 2010 issues of Bessatsu Hana to Yume, as did a re-release in August 2010.
Kitchen Princess is a shōjo cooking, romance manga series written by Miyuki Kobayashi and illustrated by Natsumi Andō. Appearing as a serial in the manga magazine Nakayoshi from the September 2004 issue to the October 2008 issue, the forty-seven chapters were compiled into ten bound volumes by Kodansha, and published from February 2005 to November 2008. It also includes recipes for each featured dish at the end of each chapter. The series marked the first time that Ando illustrated a manga that was not also written by her. Set in modern-day Japan, Kitchen Princess follows Najika Kazami, a cheerful thirteen-year-old who searches for her "flan prince," a boy who rescued her from drowning as a young girl and brought a little happiness to her life after her parents' death. In March 2008, Kodansha published a related light novel, Kitchen Princess: Search for the Angel Cake, written by Kobayashi and illustrated by Ando.
Banzai!, officially stylized BANZAI!, is a discontinued shōnen manga anthology that was published in Germany by Carlsen Verlag, from November 2001 to December 2005. It debuted in November 2001 as a German language adaptation of the popular Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump, published by Shueisha. In addition to various series from Weekly Shōnen Jump, the magazine serialized some original German manga-influenced comics, including Crewman 3. Issues also included educational articles to teach readers Japanese and columns with news updates on anime and manga series. Series published in the magazine were also published in tankōbon volumes under the Banzai! präsentiert and the highly popular series under the Best of Banzai! label. The name Banzai! came from the transliteration of 10,000 years, a traditional Japanese exclamation.
Bara is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga (ゲイ漫画) or gei komi. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience. Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to bear or bodybuilding culture. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan.
Be Love is a Japanese monthly manga magazine targeting women published by Kodansha. It debuted in September 1980. It is one of the leading manga magazines for adult women, the second of its kind, and was instrumental in the rising popularity of josei manga in the 1980s, which led to the creation of other magazines targeted at women such as You and Big Comic for Lady. As of 2003, Be Love, like You and Jour, published stories focusing on "the reality of everyday life" experienced by its readers.
Opus is a Japanese seinen manga series written and illustrated by Satoshi Kon. The story is about a manga artist who is pulled into the world of the manga he is concluding and forced to confront his characters. The manga was serialized in the manga magazine Comic Guys from October 1995 until the magazine's cancellation in June 1996. It was collected into two volumes by Tokuma Shoten on December 13, 2010 and included a missing ending found after Kon's death. Dark Horse Comics licensed the manga in North America and released it in an omnibus edition on December 9, 2014. The French edition of the manga won the 2013 Asia Critics Prize from the Association des Critiques et des journalistes de Bande Dessinée and was nominated for the Sélection Officiele at the 2014 Angoulême International Comics Festival. Opus was Kon's final manga before he debuted in the anime industry with Perfect Blue.
