Forum - View topicGenre trends
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bnewhall
 Posts: 110 Location: USA |
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In America, what genres of manga are becoming more popular than they were before? What sorts of manga do you see on the shelves more now than, say, a few years ago? What are the overall trends in manga genres in America?
(No, this isn't a homework question; I'm 28 and no longer in school. I just see that you'ree smart, well-read people and would like your perspectives on the overall shifts in the American market.) |
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Powerr9girl
Posts: 3 |
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Hi i am 13. i am not sure how to answer that question but i will tell u this. At my school Fantasy rules all.
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xjadedragon750x
Posts: 263 Location: Chinatown |
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Genre...
Definitely shounen, although I can't really remember. Now that Shonen Jump has been running for a while, more companies have anthologies. Although...Animerica seems like a shoujo anthology, and that was around "back then." ....... I can't help but jump around and confuse myself. |
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cboudreau
 Posts: 69 Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada |
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At my local comic shop, the two big sellers are Shonen Jump titles and shoujo manga. It's not surprising that shonen is big because boys are more likely to read comics anyway. It is good to see more girls walking in the doors and to see them spending a good period of time browsing the shojo titles on display. The mainstream industry really has nothing to offer female readers, so its nice that they can find shojo stories that speak to them.
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firegirl22
 Posts: 143 Location: South Dakota |
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This may not be a genre, but there's been a large increase in manwha over the past few years. The first one, I think, was INVU wich was released in 2001. Selling pretty well, other titles were brought over. Other than that, I think shojo titles have become more popular, and a lot more are being brought over.
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aoie_emesai
 Posts: 52 Location: Necessary? |
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Well there now lots and lots of Harem , aka comedy/romance/ecchi magna out there now and anime too. And those pretty girl manga and anime right?
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Animefreak08
 Posts: 882 Location: Michigan ftw. |
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Mostly Shonen. At my local borders, they have a whole Shonen rack.
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Kagemusha
 Posts: 2783 Location: Boston |
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The manga industry has changed quite a bit over the past few years. Obviously shojo is the major genre now, with shonen selling very well also. It's difficult to say what genres were the most popular before the big manga boom (that is, before manga developed a signifigantly large fanbase apart from comicbook fans who also read it). There were certainy many seinen titles, as those were often easier to sell to mainstream comicbook fans. But there were also alot of shonen, and even some shojo. Back in the late eighties and early ninties, the biggest mangas were things like Akira, Outlanders, Ranma 1/2, and Lone Wolf and Cub. Each of these works is very diffrent from one another, but what they probobly all had was a strong appeal to mainstream comicbook fans. So maybe that could describe alot of the manga of that period (Toren Smith said that's what he looked for when licencing series). As time when on manga diversified in the US. More shojo series were brought over, more mature works were also (like most of the stuff in PULP); even underground manga got published. While today there is more diversity in shojo and shonen publications, fewer seinen things are licenced, and very few unconventional works are brought over (like those in PULP and Secret Comics of Japan). This isn't nessisarily a terrible things, as manga has grown because of it and we get alot of good shojo now, but it's also unfortunate that there are alot of works that will never be sold on American shores, despite that a few years ago they could have been.
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cboudreau
Posts: 69 Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada |
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I would agree. A lot of publishers are turning to Korea to find new series. I've started checking out manhwa and I've been impressed so far: Priest, Nambul: War Stories and Hard Boiled Angel are the most recent ones I've looked at. |
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Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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Well, I've noticed two recent trends.
1 - Capitilization on Licensed Anime It's licensed, it's stateside, it's remotely popular, we have to bring over the manga. It's a prevailing trend (like Yogurt said, MERCHANDISING!) and while it's great for series where the original manga is superior to the anime derived from it (Yu-Gi-Oh, Ai Yori Aoshi, Love Hina) it really seems to bring over a glut of "seen it before" titles that sit on shelves for a while if they don't hit when the series is big or if the series' anime release is less than stellar, (I've noticed that the Steel Angel Kurumi manga tends to sit on the shelves, and Initial D is hit or miss depending on the location). 2 - Shoujo and Yaoi It's coming by the boatload and it's getting hard to keep track of the landslide of new releases in these heavily female oriented genres. What started with a few token titles at Tokyopop (Paradise Kiss and Mars come to mind) and Viz's Yu Watase releases has now exploded into a mad frenzy to translate every wispily drawn tragic angsty love story comic in Japan and put it onto your local bookstore's shelves. And while this has been building for years, the explosion of the yaoi phenomeonon has proven even more stupefying - going from one or two moderately mentioned titles in the vast Tokyopop line to entire lines of yaoi-only releases. The questions here are where's the saturation point, are all the quality titles already here or are there more waiting to be had, and what does it take to have a hit in the crowded marketplace with titles beginning to blur together? |
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echocharlie
Posts: 55 |
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I have to say that Sports Manga is becoming more popular in the US too. There are several Basketball Manga currently being released, and interestingly 2 of the 3 are drawn by women (Girl got Game & Harlem Beat/Rebound being published by Tokyopop). Interestingly, Slam Dunk, the only one drawn by a man is currently on hold due to Raijin's current status.
Then you have Prince of Tennis, Whistle, Hikaru no Go, and other titles that could be considered sports titles being published, and I'm sure more is on the way. In previous years, companies would shy away from sports titles because they felt they wouldn't sell due to the lack of crossover between manga fandom and sports fandom. This particular trend is interesting to say the least. |
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linlinchan
Posts: 286 |
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I'd say what I've begun to notice at the major manga-selling stores around here is that... though Shoujo and Shounen are both selling like hotcakes, it's mostly girls buying them.
Not that this is necessarily always the case, but I se a definate polarity, with female fans concentrating on manga collecting, and male fans buying more DVDs or downloading more anime. I just thought this was kind of interesting. |
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