Manga is a term used for a wide variety of Japanese comic books and graphic novels.
They are famous among all age groups.
Manga is formed by two Japanese words man meaning whimsical/amusing and ga meaning picture, basically meaning amusing pictures.
In Japan, almost all age groups read the manga. Manga readers are not just limited to Japan, over time manga also became popular outside Japan.
In India, manga readers are not in big number but during the pandemic number of readers has increased.
Manga has been part of Japanese culture for a long time, it is believed that manga was originated during 12th century as a series of drawings drawn on scrolls.
The 1st manga magazine Eshinbun Mipponchi was published in 18th century by kanagaki robun and kawanabe kyosai.
The 1st manga ever created was Tetsuwan Atom/ Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka (also known as the father of modern manga) and this manga was published in America in 1963 and it became very popular not only in Japan but also outside Japan.
Over time manga has been very popular in The United States, Germany, and France. The English translation of different manga are available but there are few manga which doesn’t have English translation.
Manga is different from other comic books in various aspects.
The major difference is comics are printed in color form whereas manga is printed in black and white, you’ll only find colored manga when there will be a special edition or collector edition.
The binding and printing styles are also different. T
The reading order of manga is also different, manga is read from right to left whereas other comics are read from left to right, comics are limited to a certain page limit but manga can have as many pages.
There are primely five demographics of manga
Shonen: Shonen manga targeted teen boys, mainly under the age of fifteen. Shonen manga mostly contains high action and features a strong male character, it includes material art, science, sports, horror-based stories.
Shonen manga is not just limited to teens but they are also famous among other age groups, shonen manga is one of the most popular manga types
my hero academia, one-piece, jujutsu kaisen are famous Shonen manga.
Shojo: Shojo manga mainly targeted teen girls. It converses mainly subject in various narrative styles, often follows on romantic relationships, emotions features coming-of-age story of the young protagonist.
Stroke edge, relief, beauty pop is a famous Shojo manga.
Seinen: seinen manga targeted to adult man. It features action and violence with more serious tone, it also contains adult content such as sexual situation, graphic violence or abusive language.
Berserk, monster, Tokyo ghoul are popular seinen manga.
Josei: josei manga are targeted to adult women. It often contains content based on realistic romance; it contains more natural storytelling than shojo manga.
Nodame cantabile, house of the sun, perfect world are josei manga.
Kodomomuke: kodomomuke manga targeted to young children. They tend to be simple imaginative stories that teaches morals and other core values to young readers.
Naruto, dragon ball, doraemon are kodomomuke manga.
Nowadays manga is not just limited to print media it also available in digital media, the availability of electronic manga also helped in growth of popularity of manga.
As in country like India getting hardcopy of manga is big deal, as most of the manga readers in India are teenage children and in India there are no manga library and buying manga is quite expensive in India, so most of the Indian manga readers are dependent on manga sites for reading manga.
Reading manga not just keep you entertain but it also helps to learn Japanese culture, many of the foreign manga reader even decides to learn Japanese so that then they don’t have to wait for the English translates of next volume of their favourite manga series.
Manga culture also helped Japan to improve its GDP and to spread Japanese culture outside Japan .
After reading manga if you ever want to create your own manga You can even create it for free on several sites such as webtoon.
Mangaka is a Japanese word for manga artist.
After reading their favourite manga many want to be a mangaka but being a mangaka is not easy job, you have to work really hard to be a manga artist, many people think that just having good drawing skill is enough for being a manga artist, no it is not true, having drawing skill is just one part of creating manga, for being a manga artist you also need be creative and have good imagination.
Most of the weekly manga artist work for whole week with one day off, a mangaka works for 14-15 hours every day in drawing, even sometimes they have to work for 18 hours to finish deadline, but being a mangaka is not bad job if you love to draw and have good imagination as the popularity of manga is increasing so is the demand of mangaka.
If you good drawing skill but don’t have creative skills or imagination then don’t lose hope because you still can be mangaka assistant.
Creating a proper manga is not easy job, first the artist and editor sit together to finalize the story and then artist draws a rough storyboard, at this stage simple sketches are drawn with dialog, once the editor says yes to the storyboard, then the artist starts the real thing, character developing, drawing proper sketches and filling every single details properly.
While this process editor keeps proper eye on the work of the artist and also helps him by giving advices and suggestion, editor plays important role in the publication of manga. promotion is one the important steps to make manga popular.
There are many animes created based on manga and most of the popular anime adaption are already successful manga, Naruto, dragon ball z are great examples of such manga.
Many manga fans even create fan-based manga of their favourite manga, and these fan-based manga are also very popular among manga readers community.
