Why the Japanese manga seduces the whole planet
Audio 04:18
"One Piece" first appeared as a manga (comic) in Japan in 1997, with an anime version (animated television series) two years later Behrouz MEHRI AFP / File
By: Dominique Baillard Follow
4 min
Close-up on the Japanese manga industry.
On the occasion of the release in France of volume 100 of the
One Piece
series
.
In the world of French publishing, this event is as important as the release of a Gongourt Prize.
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Because the album benefits from the same print run as a novel awarded the prestigious literary prize, ie 250,000 for the first edition.
The French are fans of manga.
France is the second largest market in the world.
After that of Japan, where the genre saw the light of day after the Second World War.
In France the number of albums sold now exceeds that of classic comics.
It is the most popular reading medium among young people, attracted by its format, its price, 7 euros while it is double for a comic book or a novel, the very powerful graphic style, and the script according to Cédric Biscaye , one of the carriers of Japanese culture in France.
But, he specifies, it is without comparison with the audience of the manga in Japan where the albums are sold in millions of copies.
Despite the Covid, sales exploded last year in Japan
With supply problems, especially in paper, publishers feared the worst.
Sales have however soared, thanks to multiple confinements: + 20% in one year.
Paper and digital editions combined.
In 2020 the Japanese market exceeded the 600 billion yen mark, a record, or 4.8 billion euros.
This jackpot enriches the creators, Eiichiro Oda, the author of
One Piece
is extremely rich, and above all, the three main Japanese publishers specializing in manga.
They are organized on the line so that their authors become cash machines.
They captured the public by publishing the serial albums in weekly magazines.
"
Making the consumption of manga addictive,
explains Sahé Cibot, another pop culture carrier between Paris and Tokyo;
one of the most important, Shueisha, the one who publishes One Piece in Japan, has taken to adding questionnaires to magazines where readers give their opinions ”.
A manga is therefore a cultural product which must be profitable.
An author is supervised by a manager who assists him with assistants as needed to release new episodes at a rapid pace.
The Japanese market is both abundant and concentrated on blockbusters, a dozen albums which provide the bulk of sales.
How to explain the craze of the French for manga?
Ségolène Royal would be the involuntary godmother according to Sahé Cibot.
At the end of the 1980s, the Socialist who was then a member of parliament denounced the violence of the Japanese cartoons broadcast by French television.
Their gradual disappearance from French screens which will follow these invectives has frustrated viewers, explains Sahé Cibot: they then flock to the manga which are starting to be available in France, thanks in particular to Glénat, which publishes Dragon Ball.
Fans rediscover stories, graphic codes that they adored in an animated version.
Does manga have a future outside of Japan and the French market?
The trend is for the worldwide development of this industry and its crossbreeding.
The manga is fueled by the success of cartoon covers of paper albums.
So there is a new audience coming to manga via television, platforms like Netflix or digital.
Second trend: the irruption of foreign mangakas managing to seduce the Japanese public.
This is the case of Toulouse-based Tony Valente: his
Radiant
series
has been adapted as a cartoon in Japan.
Cédric Biscaye is another French prophet of the tricolor manga: his
Blitz
series
on the world of chess has several hundred thousand Japanese readers;
he wrote the screenplay, but as a purist of this popular art, he continued to entrust the drawing to Japanese authors.
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In short
Weibo, the Chinese twitter, abused on the Hong Kong stock exchange for its first day of trading
The stock lost 7% at the start of the session.
The company is listed on Nasdaq, the US technology market, but under pressure from Beijing it was forced to return to domestic markets.
This recovery is pushing back investors, hence the poor start this morning in Hong Kong.
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