Q on Manga

[summonedskull75]

Hi. I'm trying to do a paper on comics and I'm trying to gather some
general info on Japanse Manga. Does anyone have any good FAQ's or
websites you could suggest.

My main questions involve:

1. The shape of the Manga industry: Is Manga primarily published in
serialized thick b/w magazines and then compiled into the books? How
many publishers and magazines are we talking about? Is everything in
the strips done by one creator? What are the numbers on the sales and
who's in the audience?

2. The translation of Manga from comic form to other forms,
especially anime. How does it work and how does it happen?

Thanks for any help.

[Undrave]

I don't know any FAQs but I know some infos... vague tough.

1- We're talking a VERY BIG industry here with various publishing houses, the biggest ones being the Shuesha and the Kodansha, millions of copies of weekly and monthly magazines. Mangas are mainly prepublished in magazines like the Shonen Jump, Shonen Sunday, Ribbon Comics, etc etc, then later gathered in 'tankouban' form (or graphic novels if you wish). Manga series are mostly created by 1 person, sometime there will be a writer and a drawer. The artist often work with a handful of assistants who do stuff like background, inking, filling the large zones of black and work on certain special projects (for exemple, a scene could need a large shot of an historically accurate train). It is unusual, but not unheard of, that someone will continue a serie for anoother author, also, manga story are by nature self-conclusive and not open like the typical american super-hero comic books, so when it's over, it's over and the author moves on. The audiance for manga is EVERYONE! There is not one market without a manga, on the train you can find salaryman and high schooler reading mangas. There is mangas for the young kids all the way to the most perverted adult. For sales figure I don't know.

2- How the transfer works... I'm not sure... it's like most successful entertainement product, big buisness are attracted to it.

For better info try 'Ask John' at Animenation.com, even if he can't tell you much, he might be able to guide you to better ressources.

[BondiBorg]

I would just like to note that the five manga series I've become attached to (Flame of Recca, Chronicles of the Cursed Sword, Love Hina, Naruto, and Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School) are all publshed by either TokyoPop (http://www.tokyopop.com) or Viz (http://www.viz.com) so you may want to check those sites.

One interesting fact you can note in your paper is that some of the series have the entire layouts flipped to make it flow like an English book (left-to-right), as opposed to Japanese (right-to-left). Personally, I prefer the Japanese style...I think it's truer to the intent of the author.

Good Luck!