“Certain genres of manga, such as sport, have long been considered cursed in France,” explains the passionate Valentin Paquot. The use of the past tense is important since this spell seems to be gradually disappearing. The basketball manga anime movie premiere slam dunk for example, ignited the Grand Rex at the end of June. With each successful basket, dribble or defense by the Shohoku team, applause and encouragement rang out in what had become sports stands for a moment. The film, directed by Takehiko Inoue, will be released on July 27 in France, seven months after the start of its broadcast in Japan. There, the work was such a success that it is difficult to imagine the same in France.
Like Slam Dunk, Golgo 13, Doraemon, blackjack, Kochi Kame or Pencil Shin-chan are manga with niche success in France but ultra-popular in Japan. France is however the world’s second largest market for Japanese comics. While the Japan Expo is being held until July 16, 20 minutes wondered why certain blockbuster manga in Japan do not enjoy the same popularity in France.
Between France and Japan, there are strong cultural differences
“There are strong cultural differences between France and Japan. Audiences will not look for the same things when reading a manga,” says manga journalist Valentin Paquot. As such, the manga Kochikame by Osamu Akimoto is a good example. Never published in France whereas it has been all the rage since 1976 in Japan, this work recounts the misadventures of a policeman in his small district police station. Far from being honest, this man in his forties takes care of everyday annoyances like petty theft. And this is where the shoe pinches for Julien Bouvard, lecturer in language and civilization of contemporary Japan at Lyon-3: “The level of insecurity in France is so different from Japan that the cases that are dealt with in this manga appear to us as trifles”. This discrepancy is also found in certain types of humor. “comic manga Doctor Toilet is based on wee-poo gags or on the unveiling of young girls’ panties. This is not a problem in a Japanese repository, but in 2023, in the West, it becomes problematic”. Distributed in Japan between 1970 and 1977 and comprising thirty volumes, this comic book appreciated by Japanese schoolchildren saw only fourteen stories from its collection translated into French in 2019.
If the scatological references are surprising in France, it is due to a lack of knowledge of Japanese culture, where excrement is humorous tools. In another register, Timothée Guédon, editor at the Kana house, considers that the failure of the manga Doraemon in France is partly explained by the evocation of Japan in the 1960s as a backdrop. “French children and parents find it difficult to find their way around”. Nevertheless ” Doraemon is surely the most popular license in Japan because all generations know it,” emphasizes Valentin Paquot. This series features a blue robot-cat whose mission is to help a little boy. Released in 1969, this manga has been adapted into cartoons, films, goodies, video games and the feline has even been named special ambassador for Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Olympic Games. However in France, this funny kitty does not do the weight against Tom, Sylvester, Garfield or Oggy. The fault can be with the techniques of diffusion of the cartoon on the small screen. Indeed, M6 tried in 2003 to program Doraemon in its youth programs. But this is a failure, because the channel broadcasts episodes with graphics dated 1979. Since then, apart from the Boing channel in 2014, no one has tried the experience again.
France and Japan have dissimilar readerships
“The readership of manga in France is concentrated on an adolescent and male audience”, details Julien Bouvard. This therefore explains, according to him, why “manga for children, like Doraemon And Anpanman, are less popular in France”. Conversely, this fringe of the population prefers “heroic fantasy or adventure stories to gastronomic tales. Because the latter do not correspond to their stereotypes of what Japanese comics should be, ”he confides by videoconference from Japan. It is in this perspective that we can understand the success of the manga Fairy Tail. “It’s a series that works much better in France than in Japan, because the public expects an adventure story with endearing characters” analyzes the professor at the university. He also points out that “the female audience is much less present in France than in Japan” and this prevents the great popularity of certain titles. “A good part of the readership of slam dunk or of Kuroko’s Basket is female in Japan. The latter appropriate the series and the beautiful characters to make Doujinshi, that is to say amateur manga parodying or paying homage to their favorite works”. And this is confirmed if we look at the figures. While 170 million copies of slam dunk would have been sold in the world, only one million were in France according to information from Valentin Paquot.
This lack of female readership on certain licenses, Julien Bouvard, sheds light on it with a target failure. “In France, certain series are presented for boys without understanding the subtexts. While these are also series for girls. For example, Tokyo Revenge (manga mixing gang story, romance and science fiction) works in France but not as much as in Japan. And I see the same reason, even if the protagonists are boys and the story is published in a magazine for guys, the main audience is Japanese female readers”. Getting the wrong recipient when promoting a manga is an observation shared by Valentin Paquot and ” Pencil Shin-chan is the best example”. Because even if the series follows the adventures of a five-year-old boy and his family, a bit like The simpsons, it “is absolutely not a children’s manga. It’s a double reading manga, which works very well among adults in Japan. However, it was released by the publisher J’ai Lu in 2005 and it was presented as intended for children”. From then on, its publication was stopped after fifteen titles in France, while in Japan there were fifty.
“The bottom line is that we still have this class contempt for manga in France”
The structure of the manga market in France can also explain the differences in popularity between France and Japan. “Today the competition between French manga publishers is such that we have to position ourselves as soon as the first volume of a series is published in Japan. So we don’t have much perspective on its success,” notes Timothée Guédon, publisher at Kana. And this can lead to some errors because “our publishing house is so close to Japanese culture that we can lack distance and get stuck on the expectations of the French public”. Finally, French publishers do not have many means of evaluating the expectations of the French public and this is also what Valentin Paquot observes: “They make a splash when they buy a license in Japan. While over there there are still preprint magazines. This allows us to test the market”. These magazines publish new chapters of several series at regular intervals, “exactly like the soap operas in France”, all before the release of the bound works. A device that does not exist in France despite a few attempts such as “the magazine Kaméa de Glénat at the time, but with the kiosks crisis it died out” continues Valentin Paquot with a bit of regret.
Finally, it is important to consider that the manga is a pillar of Japanese culture and that in France its explosion remains recent, and still frowned upon. “The bottom line is that we still have this class contempt for manga in France,” says Valentin Paquot. Even if he is more optimistic, Timothée Guédon shares this observation: “It has changed but the fight is far from over and we must continue to preach the good word. But the fact that the comic book festival in Angoulême has opened up to manga is a good sign”. Finally, a new explosion of Japanese comics will pass through the crack of “two glass ceilings” according to Valentin Paquot. First “that people who only read one type of manga open others because there is good in all styles” and second “that people who have never read manga take their first manga in hands “.