Super Manga

By C.J. Yu
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]

  Tokyopop

Onizuka Eikichi, the main character of the “GTO (Great
Teacher Onizuka)” manga, can be seen as soon as
“GTO” hits the shelves everywhere in English.

A new imported breed of graphic novels from Japan is influencing
the reading habits of Americans of all ages.

These graphic novels, also known as manga in Japanese, have
quietly made their way into American comic book stores and are
expected to have an even greater presence in the market in the
coming year.

Japanese animated cartoon series, referred to as anime, have
helped pave the way for manga distributors, such as Tokyopop, to
release more series into the American market. Due to the more
recent success of anime based on manga titles like “Sailor
Moon” and “Pokemon,” manga publishers are more
willing than ever to introduce new titles from Japan.

According to an April 24 edition of Variety magazine, consumers
purchased over 2.3 billion of these Japanese comics within a single
year, and executives from the comic industry expect these numbers
to continually increase.

“It’s remarkable that there are a lot of fans out
there that already know about the product, and really all
we’re doing is we’re taking it, and we’re
marketing the product better and getting it out in front of more
consumers,” said John Parker, president and corporate
operating officer of Tokyopop, a company founded in 1997 by UCLA
alumnus Stuart Levy.

According to Parker, what sets manga apart from American comics
such as “X-Men” or “Spider-Man” is that it
aims for a much broader audience, rather than just targeting
pre-adolescent boys. Much of the mass appeal of manga is that
different types of it are targeted for different age groups with
something for everyone.

“They have a lot more of an option now, because we have
everything from comedy to dramas, to the soaps to a little
romance,” said UCLA alumnus, Kristien Brada-Thompson,
marketing and communications manager of Tokyopop. “The
demographic is so broad because we have everything from titles for
kids that are nine to 12, to titles that are oriented to 16 and up.
I would say the bulk of it would probably be teenagers and
Generation Y, but all the way up to the 20s and older. It runs the
gamut.”

First-year student and member of the UCLA anime club, Shirong
Gao, also noticed the wide-ranging age difference of manga readers
during a foreign exchange trip to Japan over the summer.

“When I went to the manga shops and stores, there would
often be adults shopping for comic books. The comics have an
attraction for all ages. The adults often like to read them while
taking the subway or bus,” Gao said.

With the sudden rise in popularity of manga within the United
States, fifth-year student and president of the UCLA anime club,
Rosemary Cho, also commented on the change in demographics of
readers especially on the UCLA campus.

“Now that anime’s getting a lot more exposure, I
think the stereotypes are being chipped away,” said Cho.

Now that manga demand has been growing at such a steady rate, it
has actually become hard for many publishing companies to keep up
with the demand of the readers.

Tokyopop, however, has found a solution to the problem. Starting
this spring, manga distributor Tokyopop has launched an aggressive
campaign to speed up the translation process from Japan by keeping
the manga in its original right-to-left format.

Due to the tedious mirroring process that manga comics had to go
through in the past to “flip” the comics into the
English format, it often took months before the titles reached
readers on this side of the Pacific, along with a loss in the
artistic value after pages were mirrored.

Many impatient manga patrons, however, have resorted to
downloading pirated anime versions of their favorite series,
subtitled in English, rather than wait for the authentic copies to
be sold in stores.

While many may look at this as being highly unethical, members
of the UCLA anime club are quick to point out that those same
individuals who download the pirated comics usually go out and buy
the manga and anime when they are finally released in the United
States.

“Even though some people think that downloading anime is
like freeloading, when those DVDs come out, the fans end up buying
them anyway because they want to own the nice boxed sets and
special features,” said third-year student Bo-mee Kim, head
librarian of the anime club on campus.

The executives at Tokyopop agree.

“What the fans are doing is they’re saying,
“˜Hey we really like this stuff, and we want you to get it to
us’ “¦ the fact is, the pirates had better distribution
than the entertainment business did,” Parker said.
“They’re forcing better performance and better
coordination across all of these different time zones and
continents. They’re doing a great deal of marketing for and
introducing the products.”

“Although a lot of people think “˜Hey, if
there’s a fan-subbed version of a title like “˜Initial
D’ out there, then it takes away from the sale of our
product,’ but we haven’t found that to be true. What
we’ve found is that if you’re a fan of “˜Initial
D,’ then you want the legitimate professionally produced
version, but you’ll go for the fan subbed version because you
want to get your hands on it anyway you can,” he added.

Eventually, manga publishing companies like Tokyopop hope to
release titles across the globe simultaneously, so there will not
be a need for die-hard fans to search for bootleg copies of their
titles online.

“I guess to make a long story short, fans are really the
ones that are driving improvements in distribution of the product,
but our long term goal is to release things at the same time from
Japan to here,” Parker said.