First up: The Australian has a nice article about Queenie Chan and The Dreaming.
The big story at ComiPress is that manga sales are down 4.2% in Japan, dropping below 500 million yen for the first time in recent memory.
The reasons behind the decline of the manga market could be attributed to the decline in the young adult/teen population Japan, and the movement away from the printed-book culture. Especially with the declining sales of manga magazines, which indicates a change in social trend where the younger generation’s time is occupied by their cell phones.
Kids these days!
Over at the Lincoln Heights Literary Society, Ginger Mayerson interviews Digital Manga CEO Hikaru Sasahara. (Via Journalista.) Also via Journalista: a look at the Japanese cult classic The World Is Mine.
And thanks to Dirk for putting me on to this: an English version of the French comics site du9, which is currently featuring Xavier Guibert’s review of Non Non Ba, the manga that just took the Best Album prize at Angouleme.
At MangaCast, Ed links to previews of Category: Freaks, Times of Botchan, and MAIL. He also has news of new titles from Broccoli, along with an interview with Editor/Producer Dietrich Seto, and the latest new title announcements from DMP.
Reviews: At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna enjoys the “quiet charm” of vol. 2 of Emma. Julie is reading vol. 3 of Chibi Vampire at the Mangamaniaccafe. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie is reading vol. 4 of Loveless, vols. 6 and 7 of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, vols. 1 and 2 of Baoh, and vol. 17 of Bleach. Over at Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood reviews Solfege, vols. 1-4 of Embracing Love, vol. 11 of Shaman King, and vol. 19 of Yu-Gi-Oh Duelist. The Comic Book Bin’s Leroy Douresseaux checks out vol. 1 of Naruto. Jog reads vol. 1 of To Terra.
I’m always sad to hear when manga sales drop in Japan…it shatters my visions of an ideal world where comcis are mainstream and pervasive.
Oh, thanks for finding that article online! :D I didn’t know it was available on the web.
And I’m afraid that “Manga” was never all that mainstream in Japan. There’s a huge market of it, but the majority of Japanese don’t read it much. They may follow one or two series and buy a few takoubon, but that’s about the extent of it. Ordinary Japanese are just as likely to have stereotypical ideas about manga as anybody else, except that they don’t think it’s for kids only.
As for the manga sales drop, that saddens me too. :( Especially when manga anthologies get cancelled because of lower sales.
I don’t really see the decline as any sort of tipping point in the manga market; more like, you’re looking at a consumer population set to cut itself by 1/3 in the coming years. It’s natural to see declines- particularly given the thinning ranks of young adults/teens/kids, the #1 target demographic of these companies.
Japanese use their cell phones differently than we do in U.S. It’s evident from the publishers offering samples of manga on their websites that they often access internet with them.
Howdy. As I commented on the article linked above, “Sales of all commercial publications have been declining steadily in Japan over the past decade or so. The chunk of the whole pie that manga occupy (about 33% in terms of unit sales, 25% in terms of money paid) remains pretty much unchanged from what it was in 1990.” So, I wouldn’t take these numbers to indicate a drop in interest in manga in Japan. Rather, they are an early sign of the inevitable shift from print to electronic media in general, IMHO.
Hi, Queenie! Fancy meeting you here. I read the article about you. Now I can say I knew you back when. (^o^) I thought it was funny that the panel used in the article was one of the very panels I gave you comments on a year or two ago.
Info on how mainstream the manga market is in Japan is always conflicting. Sometimes it’s described as not being mainstream, other places I’ve read that it comprises over 40-50% of all printed material in Japan.
Even going by Matt’s figure of 33%, that’s still larger by far than the share of the North American market that comics account for. It would also seem to indicate that it reaches a sizable portion of the population (unless a minority is responsible for a disporportinate amount of consumption.)
Anyone clear this up for me?
Oh, it’s absolutely mainstream. Just go into any corner bookstore in Japan and it’s obvious. Occasionally you find a big bookstore that doesn’t carry manga…but then you discover that the same chain has a manga-only sister store right around the corner. The first “manga generation” (which I define as the generation born after about 1950) is now in their late 50s, and a majority of that age bracket reads some manga on a more or less regular basis. And the younger the age bracket, the higher the percentage of regular readers. College students who don’t read manga are a rarity—sort of like the occasional young American who refuses to listen to anything other than classical music. Although in my experience (and I surveyed about a thousand Japanese on the subject), people who don’t read manga don’t read much of anything, whereas the most passionate readers of manga tend to be voracious readers of just about everything. By the way, the figures I gave (which are really rough, but which have remained remarkably stable for more than a decade) come from the same source as the one used in the original article. (That organization releases stats every year.) Oh, but I should clarify by saying that the pie I mentioned (“all commercial publications”) actually doesn’t include newspapers. I’ve never known the reason, but I’m guessing it’s because the distribution is completely different and the organization simply doesn’t have access to the data about newspapers.
Pardon my wonkishness. Occupational hazard.
But the wonkishness is good stuff, Matt! Thanks for taking the time to to post such a thorough response.
Hey, hi Matt! :D Nice to see you here!! I’m so glad you still remember me!!
And I don’t believe you ever gave me any comments about that particular panel two years ago, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. However, you DID give me very helpful general comments about my art, that I really thing were incredibly helpful. I didn’t understand your comments back then, but after having been exposed to more manga since I started drawing “The Dreaming”, I understand them now. Basically you said I needed to work on anatomy (I am), and on faces, especially mentioning that my faces look too “anime-ish” (true as well). Personally, I feel that there’s a very long way to go, and luckily with the end of “The Dreaming”, I can stop drawing in that one style (for consistency’s sake), and draw in a different one.
You wanted to say some other stuff, but apparently your post got deleted while you were posting it up. So if you’ve got more comments, please bring it on!! :D