The manga phenomenon
Dragon-slaying sorcerers, transvestite princesses, flying robots and pocket monsters - manga is full of bizarre characters who populate the Japanese imagination as much as the streets of Tokyo. Monkey D. Luffy, the rubber pirate, and his band of friends with strange powers whose river adventures fascinate teenagers the world over, have taken over Tokyo Tower, Pokémon have their own stores, and Sailor Moon, the costumed moon warrior, puts on a show in Azabu Jūban. Manga have gone far beyond the cheap magazines in which they were originally sold. They converge with cartoons and video games to form a truly ubiquitous popular culture in the Japanese space. Although often associated with the younger generation, this is not a recent phenomenon. It stems from a long tradition of graphics in the archipelago.
The origins of manga
Long before Astro Boy, the little post-war vigilante robot who has become the emblem of contemporary manga, Buddhist monks were already drawing illustrated stories on e-maki scrolls in the 11th century. Scenes from daily or religious life, as well as satirical and humorous stories, are depicted in short sketches with commentary that appear as the scroll unfolds.
The variety of themes and dynamic imagery of e-maki make them the distant ancestors of manga, but the term "manga" only dates from the 18th century. Sometimes wrongly attributed to Hokusai, whose Hokusai Manga were published from 1814 onwards, the word refers to sketches printed using the woodcut technique.
When the country opened up to Western influences after the Meiji revolution, manga came closer to its contemporary meaning of comic strip. A synthesis was achieved between local graphic forms and American-style comics . The current manga production system began to emerge. Large publishing houses published serialized stories at regular intervals in low-cost magazines, mangaka (manga artists) organized themselves into associations, and comics also took their first steps into advertising and the marketing of derivative products.
Manga took off on these foundations in the post-war years. Evolutions, both graphic and thematic, followed those of Japanese society and the growth of the baby-boomer generation, who then became comics' primary audience. Warlike during the Second World War, when young children had to be prepared to sacrifice themselves for the nation, manga adopted a more humanist tone in the post-war period. The trauma of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 gave rise to genres that still shape manga today. For example, young people live in apocalyptic worlds and use technology to save the planet. Akira, the first manga to enter the French market in 1990, is a typical example of this kind of narrative. Drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo, it tells the story of a group of young people who try to prevent the awakening of Akira, a being with mysterious powers who destroyed the city of Tokyo years before. Astro Boy, another seminal manga, adopts a much more optimistic tone. The flying robot travels the world to restore justice. Imagined by Osamu Tezuka, the "father" of contemporary manga, Astro Boy is now part of Japanese heritage.
As baby boomers grew up, manga adapted to their needs as children, teenagers and, in the 1980s, workers. It integrated gekiga, darker, more realistic stories aimed at an adult audience, and eventually moved beyond its paper format. From the 1970s onwards, comic books were linked to cartoons, thanks to rapid animation techniques that enabled numerous episodes to be produced very quickly. Japan took its place at the forefront of world animation with "anime" films aimed at young and old alike. The boundaries between genres were fluid, and manga artists could work in both animation and video games. For example, Akira Toriyama, author of the Dragon Ball series, which has sold over 250 million copies worldwide, worked on the graphics for Dragon Quest, a video game that has been an unqualified success since 1986. The popularity of director Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli also demonstrates the importance of animation in the manga world. A manga that is popular as a comic strip can be turned into an anime or video game before the series is even finished.
The cultural success of manga, video games and anime abroad has not escaped the attention of the Japanese government either, which is playing up Cool Japan - influence through cultural power on the international stage. At the closing ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics, it was the Japanese Prime Minister himself who arrived on stage dressed as Mario, the famous video game character!
Do you speak "manga"?
Manga differs from comics not only in its graphic design, but also in the way it is produced and consumed. Western readers of the 9th art form sometimes look askance at these "all look alike" drawings, especially as manga published in black and white are a far cry from the colorful, polished volumes of French-language comics. But in Japan, stories are first published in thick magazines such as Shônen Jump, which can be found on every bookseller's shelf, and only successful stories are then published in volumes(tankôbon). It's not considered a work of art, but a popular product for mass consumption. This is reflected in the figures: manga accounted for 441.4 billion yen (around 3.6 billion euros) in sales in Japan in 2018, and around a quarter of all publications in the country.
The major publishing houses, such as Kôdansha, which oversee the creation of magazines, target all audiences in order to maximize their profits. Manga thus reaches groups less represented in Western comics, such as teenagers and women. Romantic heroines and sappy love stories were the order of the day, as were women with strong characters. In 1972, Riyoko Ikeda imagined Lady Oscar, the Rose of Versailles, a young aristocrat disguised as a man who fights for justice in the midst of the French Revolution. Some twenty years later, Sailor Moon, a young high-school girl who transforms herself into a "warrior in uniform" to fight the world's invaders, became one of the world's best-selling mangas for young women. These women's mangas are called shojo. They are written by women for girls, as opposed to shonen manga, whose target audience is young boys. Then there are sub-categories that correspond to different types of story and follow precise narrative patterns. In recent years, shojo has given pride of place to yaoi, tales of homosexual love that delight young girls.
The shonen nekketsu genre, stories in which young heroes set off on adventures to become stronger and fight evil, first made manga popular abroad, giving it a reputation for violence. More than violence, however, manga's particularity lies in the expressionism of its drawing. Every emotion, every gesture and every action passes through the image and is exaggerated beyond all realism. Emotions are portrayed in the form of blood spurting from the nose, eyes crying like fountains or shining like stars, and noises accompanied by onomatopoeia of unparalleled richness. Even silence expresses itself. Shiiin. The boxes do not represent a chronological sequence as in Western comics, but different angles of view on the same scene. The excessive dimension of manga makes it possible to expose all possible fantasies, even the most shocking or taboo.
Today, critics sometimes point to the fact that the "manga" machine is running out of steam, due, depending on the explanation, to demographic decline, the publishing crisis, or a lack of originality on the part of artists who, forced into hyperproductivity and commercial success, no longer innovate as easily. The fact remains, however, that manga is a solid cultural product around which an entire universe has developed. You only have to visit the International Manga Museum in Kyoto, which houses a collection of over 300,000 works, or lose yourself in the Nakano Broadway shopping mall in Tokyo to get an idea.
Live the manga
Manga is read, lived and consumed in Japan. You read it in a manga kissa, a manga café where you can eat or drink while you read for a small fee. Or grab a magazine from the kiosks on station platforms, and read on the train as the Japanese do. Cosplay is another way of living it up. People dress up as their favorite heroes for a stroll around town and a photo shoot. The phenomenon has become so widespread that cosplayers now have their own gatherings, such as the Tokyo Festa or the Tokyo cosplay international summit. Traditionally, cosplayers used to sew their own costumes, but nowadays they're available for hire or sale.
Last but not least, manga is consumed in certain districts where fans of manga, video games and anime gather in a friendly atmosphere. Such is the case in Akihabara, Tokyo, the Mecca of these " otaku " as they are sometimes maliciously called. In addition to the many shopping malls selling manga products to the point of dizziness, it's the ideal place to visit a maid café . Themed cafés and restaurants are legion in Japan, but what makes the maid café so special is that the waitresses are dressed as sexy maids. Their frilly frills and cute, colorful hairstyles are reminiscent of the soubrette figure omnipresent in hentai (erotic) manga. But there's nothing fishy about these cafés, where you're greeted with shouts of goshujinsama and ojosama, meaning "master" and "princess", and served like royalty. On the menu, curries or omelettes spread with cute characters and little hearts that please the eyes more than the palate, photos and magic sparks to make the dishes better (some of them really need it). In these kitschy cafés, the waitresses do all the talking and overplay all the reactions. Joy, surprise and enthusiasm are dramatized with the same exaggeration and mimicry as in manga. Customers, too, are called on to play along, for an experience that's as disconcerting as it is... cathartic, just like reading a manga.
