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Manga
Manga (man, frivolous, ga, drawings) is a term that refers to the collective comics traditions of Japan. Although manga is similar in many ways to American and European comics—and the similarities have increased as manga has increased in global popularity—it is distinctive in its content, creative style, and published format. Like much of Japanese pop culture, manga represents a synthesis of traditional, indigenous art styles with Western influences, resulting in a uniquely Japanese end product.
One of the traditional forms that influenced manga were the Ukiyo-e, woodblock prints of daily life, landscapes, and legendary episodes. Other influences include the Emakimono, a traditional narrative art painted on scrolls. From the Meiji Period (1868–1912) until World War II, Japan became culturally and economically accessible to the West. Early Japanese cartoonists were inspired by published cartoons in American and French humor magazines and newspapers. Magazines were created explicitly to imitate these influential Western magazines, which provided a popular forum for creators to share their work with an increasingly affluent and educated public. A few popular and enduring characters were created in this period, including Ryuichi Yokoyama's Fuku-chan (1938).

Before World War II, manga barely resembled the popular mass medium it would eventually become and was published in newspapers, humor magazines, and books. The outbreak of war limited the resources available to publishers, and after the war widespread economic turmoil and the political upheaval of the occupation changed much about the business and the art of manga. Manga remained popular through these troubled times, largely through appealing to the reliable children's market. Manga magazines for children would continue, and eventually proliferate, while new methods of delivering entertainment to children and young adults would appear.

Arguably the most influential publication format for manga at the time was the akabon, or "red book," referring to the use of red ink as a half-tone color for interior black-and-white line art. Akabon titles were cheaply published on inexpensive paper, at roughly the size of contemporary manga volumes, or tankobon. Akabon titles introduced work from such new, highly original and influential creators as Osamu Tezuka. Such other important artists as Yoshihiro Tatsumi presented their work in kamishibai, or paper theaters. A kamishibai artist would travel with his display, a series of images drawn on paper or cardboard, and narrate a story while selling cheap candies or trinkets to the accumulated children. Meanwhile, as a cheap alternative to the cost of buying books, rental libraries or kashibonya sprang up, offering manga volumes to readers at such rates as 10 yen for two days.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the manga publishing business shifted into its current paradigm: new work would be serialized in magazines, released quarterly, monthly, or even weekly. These magazines, including those issued weekly, would extend to the hundreds of pages and would be sold at affordable prices. Serialized manga stories would be compiled into tankobon volumes, containing roughly 150–200 pages. Such tankobon would become the permanent print edition of a given manga storyline. The original magazines containing the same content would become superfluous: the American predilection for collectability in comic books largely does not translate to Japanese manga magazines and volumes. After 1970 and through today, manga became stratified into a variety of well-defined genres designed to appeal to commercial audiences.

Manga is marketed in several basic genres, which are determined by the intended audience of a given work. Within each genre are several formulas, which can target very specific reader interests, although a work might contain elements of multiple formulas or genres. An example of this is the recent series Hikaru no Go (1998), which focuses on the subject of competitive hobbies and pursuits, specifically the traditional Japanese board game, Go. Manga about such personal pursuits are very popular—there are series about most popular sports and hobbies, all featuring the same basic plot elements, such as the impetuous, youthful beginner, the seemingly invincible opponents, and so forth. This formula is part of a genre called shonenmanga, which is manga geared toward a young, male readership, primarily focused on readers under the age of 18 years old. Tezuka dominated early shonenmanga: his early trilogy Lost World (1948), Metropolis (1949), and Next World (1951), along with his later series Astro Boy (1952), set the tone for shonenmanga and had innumerable imitators throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Shonen is arguably the dominant genre of manga both in Japan and worldwide, and includes such series as Dragon Ball (1984).

Shojo is another major genre of manga in Japan, focusing on stories for young girls, though as in the case of shonen manga, the stories have appeal to a diversity of readers. Shojomanga does include romance themed stories, although the diversity of stories available to female readers is a distinct characteristic of manga. Tezuka is again recognized for creating one of the first shojo series, Ribon no Kishi (1954, translated as Princess Knight). Tezuka's shojo series introduced an important trope in shojomanga: sexual ambiguity and androgynous characters. In the 1970s, shojo had a wave of popularity, coming from such series as The Rose of Versailles (1972), a historical drama centered around the French Revolutionary period. By the 1970s, female creators were becoming more heavily involved in the creation of shojomanga, and current shojomanga titles are almost exclusively created by women. One noteworthy formula in shojomanga, called magic girl, features main characters that are almost the equivalent of Japanese superheroes. Magic girl characters dress up in elaborate costumes and fight evil foes, yet with fantasy elements instead of a focus on crime, common to superhero comics. Magic girl titles include Sailor Moon (1992).

Kodomo manga is manga aimed at children but not toward a specific gender orientation. Although some kodomo manga resemble shojo or shonenmanga, kodomo stories tend to avoid the masculine action of shonenmanga or the youthful romance of shojomanga, and to focus instead on whimsical stories and cute characters. One of the most influential kodomo series is Doraemon (1969), which follows the adventures of a robotic time-traveling cat and a young boy named Nobita. Other kodomomanga include popular, cute franchise characters such as Pokemon (1996).

Seinen and joseimanga refer to manga created for adult male and female readers, respectively. Seinenmanga has been particularly popular in the West. Popular seinen titles include Akira (1982) and Ghost in the Shell (1989). Seinenmanga largely avoids the popular art and storytelling styles prevalent in shonen and shojomanga, and features stories with adult themes, as well as, in some cases, increased violence and nudity. Relatively less popular, joseimanga often adopts the style found in shojomanga, with a focus on more mature storylines and sexuality.

Alternative comics are frequently, though not universally, referred to in Japan as gekiga. This term, which translates as "dramatic pictures," was coined by Yoshihiro Tatsumi as a preferred term for the style of comics he began publishing in 1957. While seinen and joseimanga are in many ways adult-oriented versions of shonen and shojomanga, gekiga is not targeted toward readers of a specific age or gender. Gekiga and other alternative manga have been rare in the United States, although in recent years with the boom in manga publishing more gekiga have begun to appear there.

The diversity of stories available in Japanese manga, accessible from very young to very old readers, and including children's humor, fantasy, science fiction, Westerns, romance, action stories, comedy, horror, and even pornography have led comics fans and creators in the United States to question the narrow focus of American comics on superhero stories.

The most commonly perceived artistic conventions in manga, particularly for Western readers, are the conventions manga utilizes for character design. Often characters will have disproportionately large eyes combined with small, delicately drawn noses and mouths. Characters may often be indistinguishable save for costuming and elaborate, and at times outlandishly colored, hairstyles. In some types of manga there is a preference for illustrating both male and female characters with thin, feminine qualities. This style largely originates with Tezuka, who was distinctly influenced in his artistic style by Walt Disney cartoons that were being shown in Japan during the post-war occupation. By the 1970s, other artists had expanded the parameters of manga style. The style that became popular with shojo comics featured the now-stereotypical androgynous characters with large eyes and unique hairstyles, and in the 1970s this style became popular as the preferred mainstream style of manga. The basic conventions of this style are predominant in all but the more experimental and adult-oriented manga, and Japanese artists have built around this cartooning style a unique vocabulary of manga cartooning.

Differences between Japanese manga and Western comic book styles abound, some of which are superficial, others which demonstrate the differences between how Japanese and non-Japanese readers perceive comics. Minor differences include the symbolic elements in manga, such as the use of a large, single sweat drop to symbolize worry or frustration. Additionally, in America the preference for illustrating motion is to clearly illustrate a fixed scene with the moving element, such as a person, illustrated as moving within the scene. In Japan, illustrators show motion in a scene by having the moving element, such as a person, fixed within the center of the panel, surrounded by a background of motion lines.

As in Western comics, manga uses rendered sound effects—words drawn within the visual space of the story—to demonstrate sounds. In manga, however, sound effects are almost universally embraced regardless of the content of the story or its' targeted audience. While Western comics often use sound effects to clearly denote loud sounds, such as explosions or crashes, manga often utilizes sound effects to indicate subtle actions, such as a character grabbing an item or making an expression. In some situations in manga there is a sound effect used to indicate silence itself. In addition, the pages of manga volumes are published in the reverse order of an English-language book.

A given manga title typically bears the name of a single creator, or at times a creative team whose members are largely responsible for the creation of the story and artwork. Manga creators are referred to as manga-ka, and are also referred to by the respectful title sensei, much like doctors, teachers, or politicians. Manga-ka are responsible to an editor, who represents the financial interests of the publisher as well as coordinating the production aspects of the finished manga. In the United States, the control an editor has over the creative aspects of the work that is produced depends on a variety of factors. In Japan, however, an editor generally holds a great deal of creative power, regardless of the manga-ka involved.

During the plotting stage of a manga work, the manga-ka will typically draft out the work in a notebook or on a series of folded sheets of paper referred to as a name (pronounced "nah-meh"). The manga-ka will then submit the name to their editor for approval. After the final storyline is agreed upon, the manga-ka coordinates the illustration of the story with their own personal art staff, which is often a group of several people, each in charge of specialized tasks in the creative process. The manga-ka or an assistant will lay out the page, and the manga-ka reserves the primary task of rendering the characters on the page. It may be the assistants' jobs to render background elements or figures, tones and lettering. This division of labor allows for the relatively speedy production time that manga is known for. Of course, not all manga creators utilize such a system. Experimental and alternative manga artists are rarely even paid for their work, much less are given a staff to assist in the creative process. Despite this, these manga-ka are not only given a forum for public exposure, but they are given almost total creative control over their own work, which is atypical in mainstream manga.

Outside of the mainstream, yet still influential, are the manga fanzines referred to as dojinshi. Dojinshi are produced and published by independent creative teams outside of the corporate system, often by artists who aspire to work in that system. Dojinshi are difficult to characterize, since they are produced independently of the commercial manga editorial system. Dojinshi are often printed in thin, black-and-white magazine-style pamphlets, and may contain stories using established manga characters in unlicensed fan stories that may focus on character relationships and other fan-oriented expectations.

Dojinshi, along with mainstream and other manga, are often sold in the context of large trade shows. The largest one is Comic Market, otherwise known as Comiket, held twice a year in Tokyo. Comiket is the largest public comic convention in the world, although it consists entirely of a sales floor for publishers and creators to sell their work. Comiket and similar Japanese manga conventions allow fans to socialize and explore different and difficult to obtain manga.

Manga was first brought to the United States by the artist Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, whose Four Immigrants Manga was privately published in 1931 and featured comic stories about his experience as a Japanese immigrant in San Francisco, between 1904 and 1924. Kiyama's work had relatively little impact outside of the San Francisco Japanese immigrant community, and was quickly forgotten, but has been rediscovered recently due to the book's translation by noted manga scholar Frederik Schodt. After World War II, manga made its American debut with work by Keiji Nakazawa, a survivor of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima in 1945. Nakazawa documented his experiences in I Saw It and the fictionalized series Barefoot Gen.

In the 1980s, following the popularity of such imported anime series as Astro Boy, and Speed Racer, American comic book fans and artists showed great interest in Japanese manga and anime. The artist Frank Miller, who would later be known for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and the Sin City series, wrote and illustrated the miniseries Ronin, published by DC Comics in 1983. The artwork is clearly inspired by such Japanese artists as Goseki Kojima, the artist of the legendary samurai manga Lone Wolf and Cub. At the same time, established independent publishers such as Eclipse Comics and First Comics began to publish such manga titles as Lone Wolf and Cub. Another new manga publisher in the early 1980s was Viz Comics. Marvel Comics's imprint Epic also published manga, including such ongoing series as Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo. At the end of the 1980s, manga was a modestly successful, if obscure publishing niche. As Eclipse and First folded by the early 1990s, the new publisher Dark Horse Comics gained attention by publishing manga in both the comic book periodical format and the graphic novel paperback format, including Ghost in the Shell and eventually reprints of Akira and Lone Wolf and Cub.

Anime releases in the mid-to-late 1990s, such as Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon, helped to raise the profile of manga to the level of a major publishing force. One new publishing upstart, Mixx Publications, began publishing shojo titles that were then rare in the United States, such as Sailor Moon. Mixx, which was later renamed Tokyopop, revolutionized how manga was published in America. While other publishers were printing manga in the format of comic books before compiling them into digest format paperback collections, Tokyopop bypassed the comic book format entirely, publishing titles in a significantly cheaper paperback format designed to mimic the original Japanese editions. Tokyopop promoted their manga titles to major bookstore chains rather than direct-market comic book stores. Eventually, all of the major American manga publishers would adopt a similar business model, selling hundreds of titles in high volume at all of the major bookstore chains as well as many of the major media retail outlets and online. Viz became a publishing subsidiary of the Japanese publishing conglomerates Shogakukan and Shueisha, and Tokyopop negotiated a business partnership with HarperCollins. DC Comics founded a manga publishing imprint, CMX.

Manga's explosive popularity in America has led some American and European artists and writers to explore the style. Such comic artists as Miller have been incorporating manga drawing techniques since the 1980s, often in comics that otherwise offered little resemblance to manga. After 2000, however, Western artists began to create artwork that revealed a sincere devotion to manga beyond simple emulation. This type of manga became known collectively as OEL—Original English Language—manga. Significant creators include Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim (2004). Manga has also inspired a number of popular web-comics, such as MegaTokyo and AppleGeeks, as well as video games, animation, and other media.

In addition to its influence on the American comics industry, manga is also leading a trend in what some are referring to as world comics, a style of comics that embraces international themes and styles. By embracing manga style, creators from Europe, Asia, and the Americas are able to craft work that crosses borders and interests.