The Rise Of Manga
John Blyth, Marketing and Communications Manager, Ricoh Europe Graphic Communications Group.
Our star attraction at this year’s FESPA was, shall we say, just a little out of the ordinary.
Rivalling the new technology offers on our stand was celebrated manga artist, Uchida.
She spent the four days transforming a three by two metre canvas with her powerful black and white imagery that brought Japanese culture to life for the Munich showgoers. More on FESPA is discussed by my colleague Axel Stuhlreiter here.
People were photographing the artwork in order to print and then colour in the picture.
Manga, which is nearly always produced in black and white, has proven to be one of the big publishing success stories in recent years as Europe remains fascinated with Japanese culture. While the distinctive Anime film style has become immensely popular far beyond Japan’s shores. Many of you will have noticed that Ricoh in Europe has also in fact been influenced by these highly distinctive art forms as it informs some of our marketing collateral such as the dragon and eagle avatars that represent some of our coolest presses.
Back to Manga where words like ‘explosive growth’ and ‘unprecedented’ are now commonly used to describe the manga marketplace in North America. According to NPD Bookscan first volumes of longtime manga bestselling series such as Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba sold more than 160,000 copies each in print in 2021, a year-on-year increase of over 25%.
Almost all North American publishers reported stronger than usual sales for their midlist and backlist titles too. Erik Ko, publisher at the Canadian manga studio and publishing house Udon Entertainment, said 200% more copies of the video game inspired Persona 3, Vol. 1 were sold in 2021 than the past seven years combined.
In Europe in 2021, the largest launch ever seen in manga comic production took place. Over 250,000 copies of the world's biggest Japanese strip - 'One Piece' - were printed ahead of the release of the 100th edition and sold in French bookstores.
Since the pandemic Spaniards have been reading more books - especially manga related material. The market is dominated by the big three publishers Planeta, Norma and Ivrea. In 2012 90% of new manga releases were in their hands. More recently the number of medium and small sized publishers in the country has been growing. In 2022 there were 29 publishers of manga.
However, challenges such as limited printing capacity, paper shortages, and other production and distribution problems are impacting manga publishing.
Unexpectedly strong sales of both front and backlist titles have resulted in publishers seeing inventories that would usually last several months or years being sold out quickly and before they can order reprints. As such many titles are being listed as unavailable.
This is where digital print on demand can deliver responsive, cost effective short runs and runs of one. High speed inkjet and toner technologies offer enhanced production and application flexibility to quickly meet the demand for creative print. Intuitive and easily integrated software solutions support a complex job mix.
Harnessing the power of these technologies will enable manga publishers and their printing partners to more readily adapt to demand and minimise the disruptive impact of the operational challenges outlined above.
From film to events, to books, the reach of Japanese culture continues to spread, offering opportunities to switched on print providers.
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