Manga outside Japan
, or comics, have appeared in translation in many different languages in different countries. France represents about 40% of the European comic market and in 2011, manga represented 40% of the comics being published in the country. In 2007, 70% of the comics sold in Germany were manga. In the United States, manga comprises a small industry, especially when compared to the inroads that Japanese animation or Japanese video games have made in the USA. One example of a manga publisher in the United States, VIZ Media, functions as the American affiliate of the Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. Though the United Kingdom has some manga publishers like Titan Manga and formerly Tanoshimi most manga sold in the United Kingdom are published by U.S. publishing companies like Viz Media and Kodansha Comics which are in turn owned by their Japanese counterparts. Alongside the United Kingdom, the U.S. manga publishers also sell their English translated manga in other English speaking nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand with manga being quite popular in Australia compared to other English speaking countries.
Flipping
Since written Japanese fiction usually flows from right to left, manga artists draw and publish this way in Japan. When first translating various titles into Western languages, publishers reversed the artwork and layouts in a process known as "flipping", so that readers could follow the books from left-to-right. However, various creators did not approve of the modification of their work in this way, and requested that foreign versions retain the right-to-left format of the originals. Soon, due both to fan demand and to the requests of creators, more publishers began offering the option of right-to-left formatting, which has now become commonplace in North America. Left-to-right formatting has gone from the rule to the exception.Translated manga often includes notes on details of Japanese culture that foreign audiences may not find familiar.
One company, Tokyopop, produces manga in the United States with the right-to-left format as a highly publicised point-of-difference.
Asia
Bangladesh
Few Bangladeshi Publishers, Editors and Comic Book Artists came up with an idea of native manga called Bangladeshi Manga which is solely created by Bangladeshi Publishers, Editors and Comic Book Artists, sometimes only by Bangladeshi Publications, distinctly inspired by the art form of Japanese Manga, story is mostly set in Bangladesh or fusion with Bengali culture and customs; published mostly in Bengali language and printing-reading method follows Bangladeshi publication standards.The first Bangladeshi manga is Kinsa Khyong which was published by monthly juvenile magazine Kishor Alo in 2016, October edition. An artist duo named Shantona Shantuma created this manga. The idea of Bangladeshi manga was initiated by them and because of the concept of Bangladeshi manga and for creating the first published manga of Bangladesh, Shantona Shantuma is known as the first professional manga artist of Bangladesh.
In August 2018, Shantona Shantuma started a manga publication known as Manga Stage to promote and popularize Bangladeshi manga. Manga Stage is the first manga publication which is dedicated only to publish Bangladeshi Manga. Few manga artists of Bangladesh joined Manga Stage to publish their own works. Dewan Inzamam Adib, Michiko Rahman, Syed Irfan Ahmed are among the prominent manga artists of Manga Stage.
While working on Bashap manga series, Shantona Shantuma started a new Bangladeshi manga series called Agnijoddha from Panjeree Publications Ltd. It is a commercial success as it has sold over a few thousand copies. Later, Panjeree Publications published a few other manga titles.
In December 2022, NRB Scholars Publishers Limited. published a left to right biography manga. It was unveiled in April 2023 with an enormous ceremony. The manga was authored by ME Chowdhury Shameem and Iwamoto Keita. The book won a Bronze award in 17th Japan International Manga Award, this prestigious manga award is arranged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan every year.
In February 2023, a new manga publication named Fournetsha Bangladesh Limited launched a manga magazine named Source which received huge public appreciation. In the following year, the publication published a few book titles as well.
Aside from local publishers, some distributors like PBS, Batighar and Rokomari distributes Japanese Manga in Bangladesh.
China
China has censorship laws for manga. In 2015 The Chinese Ministry of Culture announced that it has blacklisted 38 Japanese anime and manga titles from distribution in China, including popular series like Death Note and Attack on Titan online or in print, citing "scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism and crimes against public morality."A 2015 research report showed that out of 31 thousand surveyed users, 85% were manga enthusiasts.
India
Manga in India is published by VIZ Media.Indonesia
Manga in Indonesia is published by Elex Media Komputindo, Acolyte, Level Comic, M&C and Gramedia. It has influenced Indonesia's original comic industry.The wide distribution of scanlations contributes to the growth of bootleg manga. Seventh Heaven publishes bootleg versions of One Piece titles. Many popular titles, such as Bleach, Loki, Magister Nagi, Rose Hip Zero, and Kingdom Hearts, have been pirated.
Malaysia
Prior to 2016, there were two major homegrown authorised distributors for Malay language-translated manga which are Comics House, which operated from 1995 to 2016, and Tora Aman which operated from 1993 to 2017. As of date, only Kadokawa Gempak Starz survives following Japanese company Kadokawa's 80% share acquisition in local comic company Art Square Group in 2015, among which owns popular comic magazine Gempak.Philippines
Manga in the Philippines were imported from the US and were sold only in specialty stores and in limited copies. The first manga in Filipino language was Doraemon which was published by J-Line Comics and was then followed by Case Closed.A few local publishing companies like VIVA-PSICOM Publishing feature manga created by local artists whose stories are usually based from popular written books from the writing site Wattpad and are read from left to right instead of the usual right-to-left format for Japanese manga. The very first commercial local manga is She Died, an adaptation of the book written by Wattpad writer HaveYouSeenThisGirl. The art was done by Enjelicious.
In 2015, VIVA-PSICOM Publishing has announced that they will start publishing manga titles in the Filipino language with the line-up starting with Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail and Isayama Hajime's Attack on Titan.
In 2015, Boys' Love manga became popular through the introduction of BL manga by printing company BLACKink. Among the first BL titles to be printed were Poster Boy, Tagila, and Sprinters, all were written in Filipino. BL manga have become bestsellers in the top three bookstore companies in the Philippines since their introduction in 2015.
Singapore
The company Chuang Yi publishes manga in English and Chinese in Singapore; some of Chuang Yi's English-language titles are also imported into Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines by Madman Entertainment. Singapore also has its own official Comics Society, led by manga artist Wee Tian Beng, illustrator of the Dream Walker series.Thailand
In Thailand, before 1992, almost all available manga were fast, unlicensed, poor quality bootlegs. However, due to copyright laws, this has changed and copyrights protect nearly all published manga. Thailand's prominent manga publishers include Nation Edutainment, Siam Inter Comics, Vibulkij, and Bongkoch.Many parents in Thai society are not supportive of manga. In October 2005, there was a television programme broadcast about the dark side of manga with exaggerated details, resulted in many manga being banned. The programme received many complaints and issued an apology to the audience.
In 2015, Boys' Love manga have become popular in mainstream Thai consumers, leading to television series adapted from BL manga stories since 2016.
Europe
France
"French exception"
France has a particularly strong and diverse manga market. Many works published in France belong to genres not well represented outside Japan, such as too adult-oriented drama, or too experimental and avant-garde works. Early editors like Tonkam have published Hong-Kong authors or Korean authors in their manga collection during 1995/1996 which is quite uncommon. Also, some Japanese authors, such as Jiro Taniguchi, are relatively unknown in other western countries but received much acclaim in France.Since its introduction in the 1990s, manga publishing and anime broadcasting have become intertwined in France, where the most popular and exploited shōnen, shōjo and seinen TV series were imported in their paper version. Therefore, Japanese books were naturally and readily accepted by a large juvenile public who was already familiar with the series and received the manga as part of their own culture. A strong parallel backup was the emergence of Japanese video games, Nintendo/Sega, which were mostly based on manga and anime series.
Nippon Animation era (1978–1986)
Producer Jean Chalopin contacted some Japanese studios, such as Toei ; and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, Studio Pierrot and Studio Junio produced French-Japanese series. Even though made completely in Japan by character-designers such as Shingo Araki, the first Chalopin production of this type, Ulysses 31 took thematic inspiration from the Greek Odyssey and graphic influence from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ulysses 31 went on sale in 1981, other shows produced by DiC Entertainment followed in 1982, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Mysterious Cities of Gold, later M.A.S.K., etc. Such series were popular enough to allow the introduction of licensed products such as tee shirts, toys, stickers, mustard glass, mugs or keshi. Also followed a wave of anime adaptations of European tales by Studio Pierrot and mostly by the Nippon Animation studio, e.g. Johanna Spyri's Heidi, Girl of the Alps, Waldemar Bonsels's Maya the Honey Bee, Hector Malot's Nobody's Boy: Remi, Cécile Aubry's Belle and Sebastian, or Jules Verne's Around the World with Willy Fog, notable adaptation of American works were Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Alexander Key's Future Boy Conan. Interesting cases are Alexandre Dumas, père's The Three Musketeers adapted to Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes become Sherlock Hound, both turned human characters into anthropomorph animals.Such anthropomorphism in tales comes from old and common storytelling traditions in both Japanese and French cultures, including the Chōjū giga ''emaki of Toba Sōjō, and the animal fables of Jean de La Fontaine. Changing humans to anthropomorphized dogs reflects a known form of Cynicism: etymologically speaking, the bite of the Cynic comes from the fact he is a dog. The adaptations of these popular tales made easier the acceptance and assimilation of semi-Japanese cultural products in European countries such as Portugal and Spain. The localization including credits removal by Saban or DiC, was such that even today, twenty or thirty years later, most of French adults who have watched series like Calimero adapted from an Italian novel, Wanpaku Omukashi Kum Kum, Barbapapa adapted from a French novel, or Monchichi'' as kids don't even know they were not local animation but "Japananimation" created in Japan.