Welcome to the official Manga International website - Comics and cartoons!
Manga has expanded into the international market beyond Japan. Manga has been translated into many different languages as it spread to many countries across the world including Brazil, Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, France, Germany, Mexico, Italy, and many more. In the United States, manga is a relatively small industry, but it has experienced growth over the years.
A popular manga publisher in the United States is VIZ Media, the American affiliate of Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. These companies have many popular manga titles such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach and some works of Rumiko Takahashi. The United Kingdom has fewer manga publishers than the United States.
The international growth of manga with the language translation and publishing in the United States has been a slow progression over several decades. The earliest manga-derived series scheduled for release in the United States was a redrawn American adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy published by Gold Key Comics in 1965. The first manga planned to be published in the US with its original artwork intact was a ten-page story by Shinobu Kaze, "Violence Becomes Tranquility", which appeared in the March 1980 issue of the American science fiction magazine Heavy Metal. In late 1982 the San Francisco-based publisher Educomics released a colorized and translated version of Keiji Nakazawa's I Saw It. In the early 1980s New Society Publishers released four translated volumes of Nakazawa's major work Barefoot Gen . Short works by several Garo-affiliated artists including Yoshiharu Tsuge and Terry Yumura appeared in May 1985 issue of comic magazine RAW's number 7 "Tokyo Raw" special.
In 1987, Viz Comics, an American subsidiary of the Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, started to publish three translated manga series - Area 88, Mai the Psychic Girl, and The Legend of Kamui - in the U.S. in association with the American publisher Eclipse Comics. Viz Comics went on to bring English translations of popular series such as Ranma ½ and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some other American publishers released popular translations of Japanese comics in this period, such as First Comics' serialization of Lone Wolf and Cub which began circulating in May 1987. However, the first manga to make captivate American audiences was Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, which was imported to the United States in colorized form in 1988 by Epic Comics, a division of the American comic company Marvel.
The 1990’s was a new era for international manga, as it slowly gained popularity as more of it was released specifically for the US Market. Viz Media, Dark Horse and Mixx (now Tokyopop) were all key players to the expansion of translated manga. Both Mixx and Viz published manga anthologies: MixxZine (1997 - 1999) ran serialized manga such as Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth and Ice Blade, while Viz's Animerica Extra (1998 - 2004) featured series including Fushigi Yugi, Banana Fish and Utena: Revolutionary Girl. In 2002 Viz started publishing a monthly American edition of the famous Japanese "phone book"-style manga anthology Shonen Jump featuring some of the most popular manga titles from Japan, including Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach and One Piece. Its circulation reached record numbers, far above than thise of previous American manga anthologies, reaching 180,000 in 2005. Also in 2005, Viz launched Shojo Beat, a successful counterpart to Shonen Jump aimed at female audience.
In 2002, Tokyopop introduced it's "100% Authentic Manga" line, which featured unflipped pages and were smaller in size than most other translated graphic novels. This style allowed them be sold at a price lower than that of comparable publications by Viz and others. The manga line was also made widely available in mainstream bookstores across the United States such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, which greatly increased manga's visibility among the book-buying consumers.After Tokyopop's success, most of the other manga companies changed their format to the smaller unflipped style and offered their titles at similar lower prices.
Today in the United States there are a large number of small companies publishing manga Several large publishers have also released, or showed interest in releasing manga. Del Rey translated and published several Japanese series including xxxHolic, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and, Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, while Harlequin has brought its Ginger Blossom line of manga, originally released only in Japan, to the United States as well.
