Two out of three comics sold in Germany are now manga. They primarily appeal to a younger audience and have enormous growth rates. The book trade has long since discovered the trend.
Author Aljoscha Jelinek and illustrator Mareike Noske aka Blackii are looking forward to this year’s Manga Day with great excitement – a publishers’ campaign that is taking place today in hundreds of comic and book stores. The two are mangaka, i.e. creators of manga. Their joint comic “Children of Grimm” is celebrating its premiere. “We let the story boil down like a sauce and reduced it to its core elements,” says copywriter Jelinek. “Let’s see if people like it.”
Although the book isn’t finished yet, the publisher is putting a sample on the market – as part of the “Manga Day” publications. Interested readers can choose from 27 titles that will be given away in 1,200 stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For the young manga creators Jelinek and Noske, it is an honor to be included with their book, which is about a little orphan boy who dreams of being a legendary fairytale hero.
What makes the manga a manga
Manga is the name given to comics in a specific drawing style that originated in Japan. Typical examples include particularly strong facial expressions or large eyes. It is common for the stories to be told with lots of pictures and little text. Manga are often drawn in black and white. Traditionally they are read in the Japanese direction – i.e. from top right to bottom left.
For illustrator Blackii, manga have their own fascination: “On the one hand, I love the humor and the visual level of comics. On the other hand, I appreciate the more complex stories and the emotional depth of novels. For me, manga brings these two aspects together. Let them to share the excitement with the heroes, laugh out loud with them and even shed a tear or two.” Aspects that are likely to apply to many manga readers and perhaps explain their great demand.
Sales grew by almost 40 percent
The chances of sales success are not bad for the two German mangaka either. Two out of three comics sold in Germany now belong to the manga category. According to Media Control, within the main fiction product group, manga accounted for 7.6 percent in the period from January to August of this year. A sales increase of almost 40 percent was recently recorded. In the past five years, the number of manga published rose from 945 titles in 2017 to 1,390 in 2022, according to the directory of available books. For e-books, the number grew from 324 to 1,003 titles over the same period. A boom that was hardly imaginable just years ago.
One person who contributed to this boom is publisher Joachim Kaps. He has been campaigning for manga at various publishers for years. Now he is publishing the comic by the two manga makers Jelinek and Noske through his publishing house altraverse. “Despite all the hype, we are still at the beginning in Germany,” says Kaps. “We are only just getting to the point where some topics are scratching the so-called mainstream. That was the case in Japan several decades ago.” In the book trade, prejudices against manga have now been reduced. “Because everyone is happy that manga is bringing young readers into stores.”
Most readers are between 13 and 40 years old
This is also confirmed by Kai-Steffen Schwarz, program manager at Carlsen Manga!, the market leader. “In the last two to three years, a lot of new, mostly younger readers have arrived who have discovered classics like ‘Naruto’, ‘Dragon Ball’ and ‘Vampire Knight’ for the first time.” Carlsen manga! had six releases in the top ten best-selling releases in August 2023. These include titles like “One Piece”, “Naruto” and “My Hero Academia”.
“In the past three years, sales at Carlsen Manga! have actually more than doubled,” says Schwarz. “The core of the readership is between 13 and 40 years old. The generation that grew up with ‘Dragon Ball’ and ‘Sailor Moon’ is largely still interested in manga, still collects long-sellers like ‘One Piece’, but is interested also for beautiful new editions. At the same time, the children of this generation are reaching reading and buying age themselves.”
More German Own productions
Publisher Kaps from altraverse therefore believes that sustained growth of 15 to 20 percent per year is possible. “If manga manages to continue to make offers for young readers and grows older with yesterday’s readers, a lot can still develop,” says Kaps. Publisher Schwarz from Carlsen Manga also believes that there will likely be more German manga in the future! “In terms of quality, the German works are in no way inferior to the Japanese ones. However, the production conditions are different than in Japan, where the mangaka work with assistants and can therefore deliver many more pages in a short time.”
Other production conditions that also apply to the two mangaka Jelinek and Noske. “Despite all the cold commercial interests behind it, manga feels more innocent and fresh to me,” says Jelinek, who has been honing their manga skills together with his artist for five years. “So we hope to surprise people with our level.”