Maikeru

On Valentine’s Day, AMC Cherry Hill 24 movie theater in New Jersey showed the movie Kaguya-sama: Love Is War — The First Kiss That Never Ends. This movie is part of a popular comedy and romance franchise with both an anime tv show and manga, and it’s showing is part of a growing trend.

 

According to Milton Griepp, in an article for VIZ Media, Vice President Kevin Hamric notes that there has been “an increase of nearly 43%” of the market in “the manga category in 2020” and VIZ Media saw a “70% increase” in the same period. In February of 2023, the New York Times lists manga in the top 15 best sellers in graphic books.  

The growing popularity of manga and anime are fueled in part by “Otaku” (a person who is obsessed with manga, anime, and other forms of Japanese or East Asian popular culture). A Google Trends search for the word “Manga” scored over 50 IOT (interest over time) in the US in March 2020, and is maintaining above 50 IOT at the time this article was written.

Reading manga can be a way to escape the moment. Manga is generally readable in thirty minutes, so it’s a quick way of reading things on the go–maybe on a train on the way to work or school.  As opposed to traditional Western novels, which are read from left to right, manga is read from right to left.

Manga is sold in either hard copy or digital copy, which comes out either weekly or monthly. The publication of manga is a chapter in Japanese in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. They post a translation in the language you prefer as a .pdf online. The hard copies are usually published after the digital ones due to copyright and printing issues. They are generally publicly available after five to six chapters can combined into one volume.

Target and Walmart online shopping are now selling manga in the book section. They usually carry a good selection of manga, mainly Shonen. However, if one of your series is not carried there, you may have to look for alternative outlets. Some people may go online, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Right Stuf Anime for rarer manga.