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. [1] 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".
Manga! Manga! was enthusiastically reviewed in the mainstream and comics press and received a prominent endorsement from Stan Lee.
In 1996, Stone Bridge Press published Schodt's "sequel" to Manga! Manga!, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga . In the introduction to this book, Schodt states that a Japanese bistro in Berkeley, California took its name from Manga! Manga!
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 Japan.
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 as 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 his adventures.
A manga artist, also known as a mangaka, is a comic artist who writes and/or illustrates manga. As of 2013, about 4,000 professional manga artists were working in Japan, plus thousands of part timers and wannabes.
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.
Scanlation is the fan-made scanning, translation, and editing of comics from a language into another language. Scanlation is done as an amateur work performed by groups and is nearly always done without express permission from the copyright holder. The word "scanlation" is a portmanteau of the words scan and translation. The term is mainly used for Japanese manga, although it also exists for other languages, such as Korean manhwa and Chinese manhua. Scanlations may be viewed at websites or as sets of image files downloaded via the Internet.
Gekiga 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.
Machiko Hasegawa was a Japanese manga artist and one of the first female manga artists. She started her own comic strip, Sazae-san, in 1946. It reached national circulation via the Asahi Shimbun in 1949, and ran daily until Hasegawa decided to retire in February 1974. All of her comics were printed in Japan in digest comics; by the mid-1990s, Hasegawa's estate had sold over 60 million copies in Japan alone.
Phoenix is an unfinished manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka considered Phoenix his "life's work"; it consists of 12 parts, each of which tells a separate, self-contained story and takes place in a different era. The plots go back and forth from the remote future to prehistoric times. The story was never completed, having been cut short by Tezuka's death in 1989.
Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter, and writer.
COM was a monthly manga magazine started in December 1966 by Osamu Tezuka and published by his company Mushi Production. It was started in response to the success of Garo, and as a way for Tezuka and other artists to showcase more avant-garde and experimental works in manga. Seven arcs of Tezuka's famous series Phoenix were published in the magazine. COM was particularly influential in amateur manga circles and was a platform for many aspiring manga artists to publish their first professional work. The magazine eventually went bankrupt and its last issue was published in December 1971.
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, even if they were not published in Garo.
An original English-language manga or OEL manga is a comic book or graphic novel drawn in the style of manga and originally published in English. The term "international manga", as used by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, encompasses all foreign comics which draw inspiration from the "form of presentation and expression" found in Japanese manga. This may also apply to manga-inspired comics made in other languages.
Manga, or comics, have appeared in translation in many different languages in different countries. France represents about 40% of the European comic market and in 2011, manga represented 40% of the comics being published in the country. In 2007, 70% of the comics sold in Germany were manga. In the United States, manga comprises a small industry, especially when compared to the inroads that Japanese animation or Japanese video games have made in the USA. One example of a manga publisher in the United States, VIZ Media, functions as the American affiliate of the Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. Though the United Kingdom has fewer manga publishers than the U.S., most manga sold in the United Kingdom are published by U.S. publishing companies like Viz Media and Kodansha Comics which are in turn owned by their Japanese counterparts. Alongside the United Kingdom, the U.S. manga publishers also sell their English translated manga in other English speaking nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand with manga being quite popular in Australia compared to other English speaking countries.
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; several early examples of such manga read left-to-right, with the longest-running pre-1945 manga being the Japanese translation of the American comic strip Bringing Up Father. The term 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.
Crime and Punishment is a manga by Osamu Tezuka, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's book Crime and Punishment that was published in 1953. In 1990 The Japan Times published a bilingual edition featuring an English translation by Frederik Schodt in Student Times. In Russia it was licensed by Comics Factory and was published in March 2011.
Dreamland Japan is a 1996 book by Frederik L. Schodt published by Stone Bridge Press that was intended as a "sequel" to Schodt's 1983 book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. It includes information on several major manga magazines and manga writers and artists, including many who are little-known outside Japan. The book also includes an extensive chapter on manga "god" Osamu Tezuka and information on developments in manga that took place since the publication of Manga! Manga!, such as the use of manga as propaganda by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the evolution of "otaku" culture, and the role of computers in manga creation.
Hideko Mizuno is one of the first successful female Japanese shōjo manga artists. She was an assistant of Osamu Tezuka staying in Tokiwa-sō. She made her professional debut in 1955 with Akakke Kōma Pony, a Western story with a tomboy heroine. She became a prominent shōjo artist in the 1960s and 1970s, starting with White Troika, which serialized in Margaret in 1963.
Big Comic is a semimonthly seinen manga magazine published since 18 February 1968 by Shogakukan in Japan. It was originally launched as a monthly magazine, but switched to twice monthly on the 10th and 25th beginning in April 1968. It is paired with sister magazine Big Comic Original, going on sale in the weeks Big Comic Original does not. Circulation in 2008 was reported at slightly over a half-million copies. but by mid-2015 had declined to 315,000, as part of an industry-wide trend in manga magazine sales.
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.