Comment
Dario Prieto
Updated Friday, March 29, 2024-00:00
"In Spain, manga is more popular than ever
," says Marc Bernabé, renowned translator in the sector and editor of mangaland.es. "We are talking about almost 1,700 new developments during the year 2023, which is an absolute record," explains the expert. «We have many proposals of all types for all audiences, of all styles and all existing and future themes. Even works that seemed to have the feeling that due to volume, since they are very long series, or due to themes that are very customary or very specific, they were never going to leave Japan, are now being published here.
From being a phenomenon for insiders, comics of Japanese origin or inspiration have become a 'mainstream' phenomenon, as demonstrated by their presence at the top of the sales charts. Its spectacular expansion during the pandemic contributed to this, a situation that has been adjusting in the last two years, as
Ignasi Estapé, executive editor of the Planeta Cómic manga line
, points out : «It is a year of readjustment in the market after the There was a great post-pandemic boom, in which the production of both comics and manga increased by more than 50%. In our country, the number of new releases is somewhat oversized due to the increase in publishers and because there are also many more genres of manga, beyond those we knew in a sector that was more niche. The trend is going much faster than before. We have much more offer and that means that it is not that it is less faithful, but that it also has to deal with much more content more immediately and be much more up to date.
Catalina Mejia, literary director of Distrito Manga, a Penguin Random House imprint
, also refers to the pandemic years: "It started to get a lot of hype also because of the 'anime' [manga-based animation], because the big platforms began to put it on their programmings. Disney, for example, is also going to start programming 'anime'," she says. “They were years of exponential growth,” she adds. «It was due in part to the fact that manga connects with many different industries and with many ways of accessing its content. Thus, there is a triad between manga, video game and 'anime'.
«Now we have much more public, much more interest, much more normalization.
There are mangas for absolutely all types of audiences and all types of themes
," Bernabé highlights in relation to the previous situation: "Traditionally, the one that reached the West was the one intended for the youth audience."
Mejía elaborates on this topic:
«Before you said manga and people thought directly of porn or extreme violence
. But in Japan everything can be told through manga. In fact, there are mathematics manuals for children, on how to learn to add through manga.
Because, Bernabé emphasizes, "it is a mistake to assign a specific style to manga." Thus, we can find everything from romantic stories between girl and boy to others of the boy-boy or girl-girl type. Estapé reflects: "It implies many messages such as
self-improvement, friendship, integration
, a series of messages that today fit very well with
the type of society we want for our children
."
“It is a type of reading that you can start from a very young age,” adds the editor of Planeta Cómic.
"Many of the first readers, I would say a large majority, start reading through manga
and it is something that we greatly promote, because this gives us the opportunity to generate a much more mature market from the beginning."
Mejía agrees with him: «Younger parents have already grown up watching and reading manga and understand that it is not that stereotype of porn and violence. I believe that we have already made an important leap, which is something similar to what happened with comics, which was previously thought to be for people who did not like to read or literature. The editor of Distrito Manga says that,
"although it is not the final objective, it has managed to impact a younger audience, who are getting hooked on reading through manga
."
Bernabé remembers that, "when we say the word manga, the aesthetics we are talking about immediately come to mind, but there are many works, many, that distance themselves from it." Thus, he highlights "the great dynamism that his vignettes give off, the way in which they are distributed on the page and the way in which the information is distributed throughout each chapter." That way, "
you can still spend ten pages with the description in a single punch
," he emphasizes. "This dynamism and this spectacularity have ended up spreading to comics around the world in the last two decades."
A good example of this is the very veteran series '
One Piece
', which Planeta has been publishing for a couple of decades and which continues to be at the top of the best-selling books. "It forms, together with 'Dragon Ball', the great pillars of the history of manga in this country," says Estapé. But, unlike the second or other emblematic titles like 'Naruto', it remains open. "We make guides, picture books, novels...", explains the editor about all the content generated by this creation by Eiichir Oda, which is on its 107th issue, at a rate of 200 pages per issue. A volume of thousands of pages that gives an idea of the pull.
Because, as Estapé points out, more important than the content that is consumed is the collective experience that is generated around its reading. "There is a lot of fandom and that creates
a sense of community
," she says. «This marks a difference with other sectors. And it can be seen in the surroundings of schools, classes, specialized bookstores.... People who do not know each other, perhaps personally, but they share all this passion. That's why they are number one in sales.
In the case of Distrito Manga, titles like 'Leviathan' push the ship towards increasingly better ports. If we look at the figures from recent years, the prospects are promising: sales have almost quadrupled since 2021
and more than a third of the comics published in our country correspond to the sector.
There is even an increase in the number of young people who learn Japanese on their own, fascinated by this universe.