Anime and manga

Anime and manga or animanga for short are forms of mass media produced by the content industry of Japan.
The anime and manga industry forms an integral part of Japan's soft power as one of its most prominent cultural exports.
Subculture
In Japanese, the word does not have the same connotation of oppositional culture as it does in English, so it is frequently used in situations where "fandom" might be preferred by Westerners instead.
In Japan, most works start out as manga, with the most successful titles receiving an . However, for overseas fans their first encounter with the subculture is typically through broadcast anime. It is common for a work to be distributed overseas via fansubs and scanlations, or unauthorized fanmade translations of anime and manga, respectively, before official translations become available. Typically, overseas fans will first translate the work into English, French, and Chinese, and then into other languages using those as an intermediary. The legality of ethics of these fanmade translations has been hotly debated. Many of those involved refuse to profit from their translations out of principle, and destroy the copies once officially licensed versions become available. Some industry participants in both Japan and the United States have expressed tacit acceptance of fanmade translations, seeing them as a trial run for the American market.
Other types of media such as light novels
Anime and manga were not widely marketed in the United States before the mid-1990s, with only a few titles available on network television. The rapid growth of the genre in the United States has led some commentators to deem it an American import rather than a Japanese export. Due to anime and manga's increased popularity overseas, various companies have begun catering to foreign audiences such as Kadokawa Corporation which has adopted the "Overseas first" policy.
In April 2023, the Japan Business Federation laid out a proposal aiming to spur the economic growth of Japan by further promoting the contents industry abroad, primarily anime, manga and video games, for measures to invite industry experts from abroad to come to Japan to work, and to link with the tourism sector to help foreign fans of manga and anime visit sites across the country associated with particular manga stories. The federation seeks on quadrupling the sales of Japanese content in overseas markets within the upcoming 10 years.
Industry growth
In 2021, the Association of Japanese Animations valued the country's anime market at $19.2 billion. Precedence Research, a research company for market insights, projects that the anime market will increase from $24.5 billion to $47.14 billion by 2028.
In other languages
In China, dongman () is a portmanteau of donghua and manhua, used as an umbrella term for animation and comics. The term "dongman" is often mistakenly used to exclusively refer to the animation; in fact, the term should include both the donghua and the manhua. When video games are included, the term used is ACG (), short for "animation, comics, and games". A further extension which includes light novels is ACGN, or "animation, comics, games, and novels". Another term for the genre as a whole is erciyuan (), meaning "two-dimensional space". One of the most popular websites for ACGN content is bilibili.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu