Manga a Cult Hit in Europe
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14 生活時尚 S T Y L E WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES Japanese Maple, by Utagawa Hiroshige. Hiroshige’s woodblock prints, which influenced Van Gogh, are considered precursors to manga. PHOTOS: AGENCIES Manga a cult hit in Europe Young Europeans are consuming Japanese comic books with the same enthusiasm an earlier generation showed for series like ‘The Adventures of Tin Tin’ and ‘The Adventures of Asterix’ BY Reed SteVensON REUTERS, AMSTERDAM understand Europe’s hyperbolized cartoon characters. this month to soak up the culture, eat in black and white on smaller pages well as its VIZ Media subsidiary to alongside perennial favorites such as growing fascination with Young adults are a growing market her favorite dish of yakisoba fried than European comics, which are usu- tap into demand. Dragon Ball and NARUTO. To the wide-eyed innocents in publishing: Walk into a bookstore noodles, and read manga. ally in full color. Disney-ABC Cable Networks and baroque demons of the Japanese in a European city on a Friday or It’s a scene replicated in In Europe manga is an estimated Group in September announced a deal comic books known as manga, it may Saturday afternoon and you can find Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Rome: 38 million euros (US$56.5 million) with VIZ to bring a NARUTO series to ANIME OPENED DOORS help to look back at the end of the teenagers crowded in front of a wall local bookshops have expanded their market, according to the Japan US TV audiences. 19th century. of the comic books — a sight nearly manga sections and feature hundreds External Trade Organization’s latest “It is 100 percent certain that As Van Gogh shows, manga’s “I envy the Japanese the extreme nonexistent a few years ago. of French, Dutch and Italian titles. data. This is but a fraction of Japan’s manga is [going to be] established for influence isn’t new in Europe: the clarity that everything in their Often without the credit cards to shop 480 billion yen (US$5.3 billion) a long, long time,” said Cedric Littardi, modern comics made their first work has. It’s never dull, and never online, these teenagers visit the stores manga market, but its potential president of Paris-based KAZE. major inroad with Katsuhiro Otomo’s appears to be done too hastily,” the HARAJUKU-AM-RHEIN as part of their social life. could be huge: Europe’s population “The readership of manga in dystopian science fiction classic artist Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his “It is something that is much of 500 million dwarfs that of Japan’s numbers of people is increasing Akira 20 years ago. brother Theo in 1888. On Duesseldorf’s Immermannstrasse, more than a fad,” said Paul Gravett, 126 million. every single year in every single “Akira was a turning point,” Van Gogh, whose boldly outlined, an avenue lined with shops catering a publisher and expert on comics in Recent trends suggest the manga European country.” said Paul Herman of French comics vivid painting is now instantly to the city’s Japanese population, Europe. market in Europe is expanding at a publisher Glenat. He, like many recognizable, copied some of the is a scene that could come straight “The term ‘manga’ is becoming a pace of 10 percent to 15 percent each manga fans, distinguished between Japanese woodblock prints by from Harajuku, where Tokyo’s youth global word.” year according to data from JETRO PSYCHOLOGY the cult of the manga comic and the Utagawa Hiroshige that are considered congregate — except the butcher and publishers. influence of manga-style art in anime, precursors to manga, which roughly around the corner sells sausages. In Japan, manga is ubiquitous, the poor-quality TV cartoons that translates as “freeform pictures.” German teenagers dressed as HUGE POTENTIAL read by young and old alike, with have spawned countless children’s “Their work is as simple as Japanese goth rock stars, with multi- MANGA M&A genres across the entire spectrum. TV programs. breathing, and they do a figure with a colored hair and heavy eyeliner, Sales of printed manga books have From fantasy and pornography to “Some bookshops told me few confident strokes with the same mingle with Japanese schoolchildren fallen in Japan in recent years but Where manga may once have felt archaeology, cooking, pre-school they would never sell manga. The ease as if it was as simple as buttoning in a bookstore on the street, giggling grown elsewhere, particularly among distinctly Japanese or weird, it is and business strategy, it leaves few perception of manga was clouded by your waistcoat,” he wrote. as they step into purikura photo European young people who are striding into the mainstream. As topics unexplored. anime on TV, where quality was bad,” With bold black lines and graphic booths that shoot instant snapshots consuming such titles as NARUTO, marketing executives in Asia explore While Tin Tin offers complex Herman said at the Belgian Comic coloring, Hiroshige’s prints were that people decorate themselves and Fruits Basket and Death Note with the its potential for product placement, mystery plots that can still Strip Center in Brussels. delicate — Van Gogh’s 1887 painting print as stickers. same appetite as an earlier generation the Japanese Embassy in London enrapture adults, Death Note by But the fact that such anime of a flowering plum tree, a copy of a “They have something special,” showed for The Adventures of Tin held a manga competition last year to writer Tsugumi Ohba and manga from Japan as Doraemon have been Hiroshige print, hangs in Amsterdam’s said Berenike Schmoldt, whose Tin and The Adventures of Asterix. recruit manga talent from beyond the artist Takeshi Obata is a fiendishly available since the 1970s helped Van Gogh museum. fascination with manga has turned Often featuring movement that country’s borders. complex psychological crime thriller manga find a market. Fast-forward through the the German teenager into a full-blown spills across an entire page, manga Earlier this year, two of Japan’s that spans an arc of 108 chapters. “France, Italy and Spain all have industrial and nuclear age, the Japanophile at 17, during a Friday artists like to push creative boundaries, top three publishers, Shogakukan “The challenge is to get the hottest long histories of anime broadcasting,” cultural might of the US and ensuing expedition with her friends. “I spend inventing entirely different worlds or Inc and Shueisha Inc, moved to gain series around,” said Peter Langedijk, said John Easum of KAZE. “For backlash against Mickey Mouse, hours every week reading them.” delving deep into human emotions. greater control over their manga and buyer of manga titles at Amsterdam’s this reason the current generation and there is a logic to the appeal for Already fluent in basic Japanese, The comics themselves are read anime networks in Europe, buying ABC bookstore. Currently at the of young parents is receptive to a generation of Europeans of the she is making her fourth visit to Japan from right to left and printed mainly out animation distributor KAZE as top of his list is Vampire Knight Japanese content.”.