Sabtu, 25 Juli 2015
Manga are comics created in Japan, or by Japanese creators in the Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century. They have a long and complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art.
In Japan, people of all ages read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, suspense, detective, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce, among others. Although this form of entertainment originated in Japan, many manga are translated into other languages, mainly English. Since the 1950s, manga has steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry, representing a ¥406 billion market in Japan in 2007 (approximately$3.6 billion) and ¥420 billion ($5.5 billion) in 2009. Manga have also gained a significant worldwide audience. In Europe and the Middle East the market is worth $250 million. In 2008, in the U.S. and Canada, the manga market was valued at $175 million. The markets in France and the United States are about the same size. Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white, although some full-color manga exist (e.g. Colorful). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in large manga magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue. If the series is successful, collected chapters may be republished in tankōbon volumes, frequently but not exclusively, paperback books. A manga artist (mangaka in Japanese) typically works with a few assistants in a small studio and is associated with a creative editor from a commercial publishing company. If a manga series is popular enough, it may be animated after or even during its run. Sometimes manga are drawn centering on previously existing live-action or animated films.
The term manga is a Japanese word referring both to comics and cartooning. "Manga" as a term used outside Japan refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan.
Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan ("manhua"), and South Korea ("manhwa"). In France, "manfra" and "la nouvelle manga" have developed as forms of bande dessinée comics drawn in styles influenced by manga. The term OEL manga is often used to refer to comics or graphic novels created for a Western market in the English language which draw inspiration from the "form of presentation and expression" found in manga.
Modern manga originated in the Occupation (1945–1952) and post-Occupation years (1952–early 1960s), while a previously militaristic and ultra-nationalist Japan rebuilt its political and economic infrastructure.
Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. One view emphasizes events occurring during and after the U.S. Occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan by the GIs) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney). The other view, represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art.
Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity certainly occurred in the post-war period, involving manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa (Sazae-san). Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere, and the anime adaptation of Sazae-san drawing more viewers than any other anime on Japanese television in 2011 . Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic innovations. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists. Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga. Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.
In 1969 a group of female manga artists (later called the Year 24 Group, also known as Magnificent 24s) made their shōjomanga debut ("year 24" comes from the Japanese name for the year 1949, the birth-year of many of these artists). The group included Moto Hagio, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Oshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi. Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw shōjo for a readership of girls and young women. In the following decades (1975–present), shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres. Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, redisu レディース,redikomi レディコミ, and josei 女性).
Modern shōjo manga romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization. With the superheroines, shōjo manga saw releases such as Pink Hanamori's Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Reiko Yoshida's Tokyo Mew Mew, And, Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, which became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats. Groups (or sentais) of girls working together have also been popular within this genre. Like Lucia, Hanon, and Rina singing together, and Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus working together.
Manga for male readers sub-divides according to the age of its intended readership: boys up to 18 years old (shōnenmanga) and young men 18- to 30-years old (seinen manga); as well as by content, including action-adventure often involving male heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit sexuality. The Japanese use different kanji for two closely allied meanings of "seinen"—青年 for "youth, young man" and 成年 for "adult, majority"—the second referring to sexually overt manga aimed at grown men and also called seijin ("adult" 成人) manga. Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga share many features in common.
Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after World War II. From the 1950s on, shōnen manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots, space-travel, and heroic action-adventure. Popular themes include science fiction, technology, sports, and supernatural settings. Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man generally did not become as popular.
The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty girls (bishōjo) such as Belldandy from Oh My Goddess!, stories where such girls and women surround the hero, as in Negima and Hanaukyo Maid Team, or groups of heavily armed female warriors (sentō bishōjo)
With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, a wide variety of explicit sexual themes appeared in manga intended for male readers, and correspondingly occur in English translations. However, in 2010 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government passed a bill to restrict harmful content.
The gekiga style of drawing—emotionally dark, often starkly realistic, sometimes very violent—focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, often drawn in gritty and unpretty fashions. Gekiga such as Sampei Shirato's 1959–1962 Chronicles of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments (Ninja Bugeichō) arose in the late 1950s and 1960s partly from left-wing student and working-class political activism and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.
Dōjinshi, produced by small publishers outside of the mainstream commercial market, resemble in their publishing small-press independently published comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world with around 500,000 visitors gathering over three days, is devoted todōjinshi. While they most often contain original stories, many are parodies of or include characters from popular manga and anime series. Some dōjinshicontinue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction. In 2007, dōjinshi sold for 27.73 billion yen (245 million USD). In 2006 they represented about a tenth of manga books and magazines sales.
