"Manga," as you may or may not know, is Japanese comics. They are originally published in Japan in magazines (such as
Shonen Jump (link leads to the English version of the Japanese magazine) or Ribbon) which are published weekly or bi-weekly, and will feature many different titles in a single issue at the rate of a single chapter per issue. They are also published in volumes of 10 chapters per book after the original publication in the magazines. There are many different genres to manga, ranging from action and adventure (
Dragonball Z, Naruto), to romance (
Love Hina, Ai Yori Aoshi) to historical dramas (
Rurouni Kenshin), to comedy (
Great Teacher Onizuka) to pornography (I don't know any titles, so don't ask), to horror (
Pet Shop of Horrors, The Ring), to the downright bizzar (
Iron Wok Jam, a title about cooking of all things). Many titles contain more than one, or even all of the above listed. As such, there is something for everybody. In fact, Manga is the number one source of entertainment for people in Japan. Men and women of all ages read manga.
As of late, the genre has had a major boom in popularity in North America. It used to be that there were only two or three companies that would translate and publish manga fr the English speaking audience (such as
Viz and
Dark Horse), and these books were 'Americanized" by flipping the images (since Japanese comics are read right to left rather than left to right), and translating all the sound effects (sometimes covering up more of the picture than the original SFX did). These books were expensive too, usually costing about $15 USD or more per volume. In 1997, a company called
Tokyopop was started. They listened to the fans, and began publishing their comics in the original right-to-left format (so it could be read "as the author intended"), and left the SFX untranslated. They also reduced the price to below $10. It was then that manga's popularity started to grow in North America. Since then, most companies publish their manga in the original right-to-left format, and leave the SFX alone,
and at the lower price. Viz even started publishing the Shonen Jump magazine in North America, and publishes the stories within in volume form at an even lower price (less than $8). Other companies have also come into the fold, including the major anime publishing company
ADV, and the major publsishing company
Del Rey (a subsidary of Random House Publications Inc.)
Of course, there were problems in the beginning. For instance, Tokyopop had poor editors. There are numerous occasions in the manga
Love Hina where there are blank bubbles, or the bubbles need to be read left to right, or even grammatical errors. There are also still instances of Americanization in some of the titles.
Initial D is about a tofu delivery guy who races in his car, but in the TP edition, he delivers pizza. They have been getting better though, and have even introduced a new idea to the translations: name honourifics (-chan, -san, -dono etc. Used extensively in Japanese culture.) Viz has even been known to list the names in the Japanese convention, family name first, followed by personal name (they do this in
Rurouni Kenshin).
So my question to you is this: Is this boom all just the latest fad? Or will it become a part of the American and Canadian culture? Will it eventually become just as popular here as it is in Japan? And how do you feel the publishing compaies are handleing the translations? Should they be slightly Americanzed to make for ease in comprehension, or should they be published with the best possible translation (since Japanese cannot be exactly translated to English) with footnotes for any cultural ambiguities?