Manga - History

The term was created by the famous woodblock print artist Houksai. Man- lax, loose ga- picture

Manga-like medium produced for popular consumption first appeared in late 18th centureury called kibyoushi ("yellow covers").

Its story books with dialogue and narration placed around ink-brush illustrations, and is dealt with variety of subjects.

Manga- History

Kibyoushi was replaced by a hybrid of native and western cartooning form in the late 19th century.

Japanese manga was the same as American Manga both in style and popularity in the first half of 20th century.

Japanese manga was popularized by Tezuka Osamu.

Manga - History

His most popular creation is the Mighty Atom or Astro Boy.

His first comic book is New Tresury Island which is published in a cheap form of comic books called akahon (Red book).

It selled over 400,000 copies.

Manga - History

The publishers saw the potential of manga from Tezuka’s work and thus broadened the manga market.

The children who were raised by his manga didn’t stop reading it when they got to middle school.

Shounen Manga

In 1956, Japan’s first weekly magazine appears and Weekly Shounen Magazine and Weekly Shounen Sunday became children’s first weekly magazine in 1959.

The magazine was initially for general information and entertainment with 40% of manga.

Shounen Manga

In order to increase the sell of magazines, the publisher begin to phase out the educational items in the magazine and it became a weekly featuring different manga series.

Shounen mangas are more adventure and sci-fi in terms of content.

As their audience grew older, they turn to the gekiga manga (theatrical pictures)

Those manga emphasized realism in drawing style and conent and were often grim, pensive, or violent.

Shounen Manga

In the late sixties a new category of seinen magazines appear for those readers.

Shogakukan’s Sunday and Kodansha’s Magazines start to change their manga style to retain their seinen audiences but inevitably lose the primary-school boys.

As their circulations dropped significantly, Shueisha’s Shounen Jump, founded in 1968 still remain in the shounen style.

Shounen Manga

Shounen Jump became the best-selling manga weekly magazines.

Jump claimed a circulation of 6,200,000 in 1994 while Shounen Magazine and Sounen Sunday caliemd the circulation of 3,750,000 and 1,270,000 respectively.

Shounen Manga

Some of the famous series featured in Jump are Akira Toriyama’s Dragonball and Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk.

Shoujo Manga

Shoujo Manga are girls’ comics. They are created primarily by women artists explicitly for audiences of girls and young women.

Shoujo Manga first took root in the decade following the end of the Pacific War.

The first shoujo manga is Ribon no kishi (Knight of the Riobbon, 1954) by Tezuka osamu.

Most of the Shoujo Manga artists are male in the 1950’s and the early 1960’s. Professional women artists starts to appear in 1960’s.

Shoujo Manga

Shoujo Manga mostly features primary school girls and generally fell into the three categories of humor, horror, or tear-jerker.

Between 1967 and 1969, a group of new female artists enter the manga market.

They experiment with new themes, stories and styles and played with notions of gender and sexuality. They explored some of the weightiest issues of human existence.

Shoujo Manga

Shoujo Manga magazines adapted a biweekly format instead of weekly format so the artists could draw longer installments to develop the subtleties of character relationships, mood, and setting that are shoujo manga’s strongest features.

At the end of the 70’s, Shoujo manga created a number of subgenres such as fantasy, sci-fi, or homosexual romance between boys.

Shoujo Manga

An example of sci-fi shoujo manga would be Sailor Moon.

In the early 80’s there was an increasing demand of manga for adult women who just enter the office worlds after their education career.

Shoujo Manga

These new type of manga are like American Soap opoeras, long and a lot of sleaze.

It changed its styles after bad consumption from its target audiences.

It begun to create a variety of subgenera at a specific “types” of adult Japanese women in the 90’s.

As diverse as these Shoujo Manga might be, they are more similar when compared with the Shounen and Seinen manga.