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 prehistory 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.
Astro Boy, known in Japan by its original name Mighty Atom, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's Shōnen from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 tankōbon volumes by Akita Shoten. Dark Horse Comics published an English translation in 2002. The story follows Astro Boy, an android young boy with human emotions who is created by Umataro Tenma after the recent death of his son Tobio. Eventually, Astro is sold to a robot circus run by Hamegg, but is saved from his servitude by Professor Ochanomizu. Astro becomes a surrogate son to Ochanomizu who creates a robotic family for Astro and helps him to live a normal life like an average human boy, while accompanying him on adventures.
Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as "the Father of Manga", "the Godfather of Manga" and "the God of Manga". Additionally, he is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during Tezuka's formative years. Though this phrase praises the quality of his early manga works for children and animations, it also blurs the significant influence of his later, more literary, gekiga works.
Gekiga (劇画), literally "dramatic pictures", 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 angles, dark hatching, and gritty lines, and thematically by realism, social engagement, maturity, and masculinity.
Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter and writer.
Nakayoshi is a monthly shōjo manga magazine published by Kodansha in Japan. First issued in December 1954, it is a long-running magazine with over 60 years of manga publication history. Notable titles serialized in Nakayoshi include Princess Knight, Candy Candy, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. The target demographic for Nakayoshi is teenage girls. Roughly the size of a phone book, the magazine generally comes with furoku, or small gifts, such as pop-out figures, games, small bags, posters, stickers, and so on. The furoku is an attempt to encourage girls to buy their own copies of the magazine rather than just share with a friend.
Alternative manga or underground manga is a Western term for Japanese comics that are published outside the more commercial manga 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. 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 Garo-kei (ガロ系), even if they were not published in Garo.
Manga, in the sense of narrative multi-panel cartoons made in Japan, originated from Euro-American-style cartoons featured in late 19th-century Japanese publications. The form of manga as speech-balloon-based comics more specifically originated from translations of American comic strips in the 1920s, with several early such manga read left-to-right and the longest-running pre-1945 manga being the Japanese translation of the American comic strip Bringing Up Father. The word manga first came into usage in the late 18th century, though it only came to refer to various forms of cartooning in the 1890s and did not become a common word until around 1920.
Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics is a 1983 book by Frederik L. Schodt. Published by the Japanese publisher Kodansha, it was the first substantial English-language work on Japanese comics, or manga, as an artistic, literary, commercial and sociological phenomenon. Part of Schodt's motivation for writing it was to introduce manga to English speakers. The book is copiously illustrated and features a foreword by Osamu Tezuka. It also includes translated excerpts from Tezuka's Phoenix, Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, and Riyoko Ikeda's The Rose of Versailles, and the Reiji Matsumoto short story "Ghost Warrior".
Big Comic Superior is a semimonthly seinen manga magazine published since July 1, 1987 by Shogakukan in Japan. Its target audience is somewhere between the audience for Big Comic Original and Big Comic Spirits. The magazine has published works by a number of well-known manga artists, including Ryoichi Ikegami, Mochiru Hoshisato, Yū Koyama, Yūji Aoki, Fumi Saimon, Norifusa Mita, George Akiyama, and Buronson.
Milk Morizono is the pen name of Hiroko Mizoguchi, a Japanese manga artist and photographer. Noted for her works in the ladies' manga genre that feature ecchi themes and subject material, Morizono has been called the "Queen of Ladies' Manga" and noted by Rachel Matt Thorn as "the most popular and respected creator of erotic manga for women".
Stone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt. Stone Bridge publishes books related to Japan, having published some 90 books on a wide variety of subjects: anime and manga, calligraphy, and origami; guides on Japanese customs, culture, and aesthetics; Japanese language books, Japan-related fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Recently, Stone Bridge has broadened its subjects to more of Asia, and have published books on Korea and China, as well.
The Four Immigrants Manga (1931), also known as The Four Students Manga, is a Japanese-language manga written and illustrated by Henry Kiyama. It is an early example of autobiographical comics.
Ikenai Luna Sensei! is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kamimura Sumiko. It was serialized in Kodansha's Monthly Shōnen Magazine from 1986 to 1988. Because of the sexual content the series was one of the manga placed on "Harmful manga" lists by local and national governmental agencies. The negative publicity resulted in Kodansha discontinuing the series.
Heta-uma is a Japanese underground manga movement started in the 1970s with the magazine Garo. Heta-uma can be translated as "bad but good", designating a work which looks poorly drawn, but with an aesthetically conscious quality, opposed to the polished look of mainstream manga.
The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime is a biographical manga based on Osamu Tezuka's life, created by Tezuka Productions and Tezuka's assistant Toshio Ban. It was serialized by Asahi Shimbun's Asahi Graph from 1989 to 1992 and collected into two volumes in 1992. It was published in North America by Stone Bridge Press, with a translation by Frederik L. Schodt, on July 12, 2016. The North American edition was nominated for the 2017 Eisner Award in the "Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia" category.
Kindai Mahjong is a mahjong-focused magazine line created by Takeshobo. The first title published under the line was the text magazine Monthly Kindai Mahjong (1972–1987). It has since then spawned four manga magazines: Kindai Mahjong Original (1980–2013), Bessatsu Kindai Mahjong (1981–present), Kindai Mahjong Gold (1985–2006), and Kindai Mahjong Gamble Com (2006).
Sports manga is a genre of Japanese manga and anime that focuses on stories involving sports and other athletic and competitive pursuits. Though Japanese animated works depicting sports were released as early as the 1920s, sports manga did not emerge as a discrete category until the early 1950s. The genre achieved prominence in the context of the post-war occupation of Japan, and gained significant visibility during and subsequent to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Noted as among the most popular genres of manga and anime, sports manga is credited with introducing new sports to Japan, and popularizing existing sports.
Tomoi is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Wakuni Akisato. It was originally serialized in two parts, respectively titled Nemureru Mori no Binan and Tomoi, in the manga magazine Petit Flower from 1985 to 1986. Set in the early 1980s in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City, the series follows the life of Hisatsugu Tomoi, a gay Japanese doctor living in New York. The series is the first Japanese literary work in any medium to depict HIV/AIDS, and is noted by critics for its influence on the yaoi genre of manga.
