A Brief History of Manga ~ Doujin Manga Society

For the second post in the "Anime/Manga Vs. Cartoon/Comic" section, today we will have a look at some Manga history. But don't worry I will try to avoid making any of you doze off of boredom.

3 centuries old and still way better than anything I can do *sobs*

In the late 18th. century merchants and citizens of the middle class developed a consumer culture, one of the popular entertainment products at the time where the "Kibyoshi" a type of story book popular among adults which depicted several genres of stories including adult material , drama , novels, comedy, etc. (so yeah..hentai and pornographic drawing in general it's nothing new...)

While not the ancestors of the modern "Manga" Kibyoshi ("Yellow Cover") shows that Japan had an inclination for consuming that type of material for entertainment purposes, though the real industry of Manga begins in the mist of the post-war Japan.

I still find it weird how the Kibyoshi were written

Previously animated movies, propaganda comics and similar were used to rise the moral during war (like in many of the countries at the time) but after the war Manga called "Akahon" (Red cover) were popular among kids since they were cheap to buy and unlike other more "respectable" comic books at time authorized by parental organizations and the government, this were usually lacking of censoring-ship and editing; during this time is were one of the most famous Mangaka of all time and titled as "The god of Manga", Osamu Tezuka , made his debut with the story "New Treasure Island"

That's how Manga looked , but everything changed when Osamu Tezuka attacked

At the time this comics books where not much than 4 strip jokes and slapstick comedy (similar to the ones in the news paper ), but what made Tezuka work stand out was the fact that he realized that single panels and 4 strips would never reach the audience to make a real impact on them, so inspired by films and animated work (including animated movies by Walt Disney) he tried to apply cinematographic views and angles to the comics. Tezuka wasn't the first to try this, tho being a part of the Akahon industry allowed him more freedom than other authors before him, thus making his work excel to the great innovation we know today.

Yup Astro boy or rather Mighty Atom one of the very first modern manga

After Tezuka success many publishers responded intermediately and enthusiastically, quickly hiring young artist ready to follow on Tezuka's footsteps and change the whole market.

In later years the (1960-1970) the manga Market grew and several publishers (including the underdog Weekly Shonen Jump) battled for the market and genres such as "Seinen" ( which funny enough it's actually aimed towards teenager audience not...17+) Super Robo and others were created.

The Shoujo genre on the other hand is as old as the Shonen one, contrary to the western counter part, female readers were avid consumers of comic books and if few at first the marked grow quickly with the years.

So that concludes this brief segment in the history of Manga, I hope it wasn't to boring and if you would like to add something or ask remember we are always happy to hear your thought and ideas on the comment section~

For those of you who would like to read more on the subject , here is a link to website with an article on the history of Manga , which I found really useful while making my research (cause yeah there are other places to look other than Wikipedia )

"A History of Manga"

And for those who missed the first post:

here a link if you got lost on what is going on.

Anime/Manga Vs. Cartoon/Comic

A brief History of Comics

A Brief History of Anime

A Brief History of "Cartoons"

Next week I will be doing some brief history on Comics and you will be surprised that Manga and western comics aren't really much different in their origins, if anything as someone really wise told me once "Japanese never creates, but rather they refine"