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.
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.
Clamp is an all-female Japanese manga artist group, consisting of leader and writer Nanase Ohkawa, and three artists whose roles shift for each series: Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi.
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.
Tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or monthly manga magazine anthology with other works before being published as tankōbon volumes containing several chapters each.
Arina Tanemura is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and character designer. She made her professional manga debut in 1996 with the one-shot The Style of the Second Love in the shōjo manga magazine Ribon Original and later published her first series, I.O.N, in 1997, in the main Ribon magazine. She gained mainstream popularity from the late 1990s to mid-2000s with her series Phantom Thief Jeanne, Full Moon o Sagashite, and The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross.
Hana to Yume, also known as HanaYume (花ゆめ), is a semi-monthly Japanese shōjo manga magazine published by Hakusensha on the 5th and 20th of every month. The magazine is B5-size, and always comes with furoku or free supplements, such as drama CDs, pencil boards (shitajiki), manga anthologies, stationery, and calendars. Hana to Yume was ranked 4th by Japanese girls as their favourite manga anthology in a survey conducted by Oricon in 2006.
Shojo Beat is a shōjo manga magazine formerly published in North America by Viz Media. Launched in June 2005 as a sister magazine for Shonen Jump, it featured serialized chapters from six manga series, as well as articles on Japanese culture, manga, anime, fashion and beauty. After its initial launch, Shojo Beat underwent two redesigns, becoming the first English anthology to use the cyan and magenta ink tones common to Japanese manga anthologies. Viz launched a related imprint of the same name for female-oriented manga, light novels and anime.
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.
eigoMANGA is a comic book publishing company that produces original Japanese-influenced comics and digital media. eigoMANGA has been underway since its conception in 2000. The company is based in San Francisco, California.
Girlamatic was a webcomic subscription service launched by Joey Manley and Lea Hernandez in March 2003. It was the third online magazine Manley established as part of his Modern Tales family of websites. Girlamatic was created as a place where both female artists and readers could feel comfortable and featured a diverse mix of genres. When the site launched, the most recent webcomic pages and strips were free, and the website's archives were available by subscription. The editorial role was held by Hernandez from 2003 until 2006, when it was taken over by Arcana Jayne-creator Lisa Jonté, one of the site's original artists. In 2009, Girlamatic was relaunched as a free digital magazine, this time edited by Spades-creator Diana McQueen. The archives of the webcomics that ran on Girlamatic remained freely available until the website was discontinued in 2013.
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 comic 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.
Austin Osueke is an American comic book artist, publisher, and founder of the companies eigoMANGA and Comic Distro. He is best known for contributing to Amerimanga and web comics through his publications Sakura Pakk and Rumble Pak.
Rumble Pak is an Original English-language manga anthology series published by eigoMANGA. Rumble Pak showcases original comics created by artists from around the world including a line-up of original stories written and produced by predominantly independent American comics artists. Rumble Pak is eigoMANGA's first commercial comic book publication and is considered its flagship product. After its release, Rumble Pak rapidly became a recognized Amerimanga publication within the comic book industry.
Shonen Jump Comics, Ltd., officially stylized SHONEN JUMP and abbreviated SJ, was a shōnen manga anthology published in North America by Viz Media. It debuted in November 2002 with the first issue having a January 2003 cover date. Based on Shueisha's popular Japanese magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump, Shonen Jump is retooled for English readers and the American audience, including changing it from a weekly publication to a monthly one. It features serialized chapters from four manga series, and articles on Japanese language and culture, as well as manga, anime, video games, and figurines. Prior to the magazine's launch, Viz launched an extensive marketing campaign to promote it and help it succeed where previous manga anthologies published in North America had failed. Shueisha purchased an equity interest in Viz to help fund the venture, and Cartoon Network, Suncoast, and Diamond Distributors became promotional partners in the magazine.
Jump, sometimes stylized JUMP and also known as Jump Comics, is a line of manga anthologies created by Shueisha. It began with Shōnen Jump manga anthology in 1968, later renamed Weekly Shōnen Jump. The origin of the name is unknown. The Jump anthologies are primarily intended for teen male audiences, although the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine has also been popular with the female demographic. Along with the line of manga anthologies, Shōnen Jump also includes a crossover media franchise, where there have been various Shōnen Jump themed crossover anime and video games which bring together various Shōnen Jump manga characters.
God Drug is a science fiction graphic novel by Stephen Antczak that has been reviewed as being "1 part Apocalypse Now, 1 part Salvador Dali, 2 parts The Trip, 1 pinch each of The Terminator, Mary Poppins, and Silence of the Lambs...marinade in equal parts alcohol and your favorite loud music." The novel was adapted into a comic and released in 2009. The novel is modern science fiction that was published in 2004 as Antczak’s first novel.
Shueisha Inc. is a Japanese company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The following year, Shueisha became a separate, independent company.
Shōjo manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent girls and young adult women. It is, along with shōnen manga, seinen manga, and josei manga, one of the primary editorial categories of manga. Shōjo manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines, which often specialize in a particular readership age range or narrative genre.
UDON Entertainment Corporation is a publisher and Canadian studio of Asian-influenced comic book creators. The company publishes original and translated comic books, graphic novels, manga and art books. Erik Ko is its founder and chief of operations. UDON was named after a kind of Japanese noodle.
eigoMANGA