Manga & Japanese comics: Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss. (11 points)

 Manga. One of the most widely accepted forms of comics (by its home land at least.) With dozens of weekly, monthly, and quarterly magazines to choose from spanning all demographics and genres, manga makes up a massive share of all printed and digital literature consumed in Japan. Shoujo for young girls,  Shounen for young boys, Seinen for adult males, Josei for adult females. With these rigid demographic based genres placed in the early days of the industry, the stage has ultimately changed very little. 

Osamu Tezuka is a legend amongst Manga enthusiasts. The Walt Disney of japan. He pioneered the manga industry and set the standards that it still follows to this day. One of the standards he set is respecting your audience. Primarily a shounen writer, his stories aimed at children contained themes of death, class struggle, war, brutality, distopya, class struggle - all packaged within an adorable and iconic art style. His buddha series deals with all of the above within its opening volume, on top of telling a fairly complex story with chapters that each push the narrative forward as opposed to monster of the week type storytelling. Tezuka clearly respects his audience to follow and accept everything that’s going on without wasting too much time spoon feeding information, which creates a fast paced and gripping narrative. Years later, the works featured in Japan’s #1 shounen magazine Weekly shounen Jump carry much of that same feel. Chainsawman, The Promised Neverland, Dr Stone, all deal with high stakes narratives with intense themes to boot. Chainsawman’s heavy levels of violence, gore, emotional manipulation, death, sexual themes, and betrayal are a lot for even an adult to take in. But there it is, lining the pages of WSJ for its full 97 chapter run. This contrast to western media is quite clear, where action cartoons with overarching plots and characters with depth made for children are few and far between.

On the seinen side of things we have Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. The story of a traveling samurai with a young child in tow, the story is made up of vignettes with less focus on overarching story than Buddha. It has its own trademarks that set it apart from shounen and keep it in a more adult territory. For one the artstyle is more realistic, with properly proportioned humans who often get appendages sliced off and entrails spilled. The characters are also more morally grey with the lone wolf getting one side of a story. Accepting payment, and then killing whoever he was hired to kill. He uses dirty tactics often including his infant child as a distraction or a way of getting the jump on his enemies. Even the Mandalorian keeps Baby Yoda out of trouble whenever possible despite being a similarly brutal bounty hunter. There are also rather explicit depictions of physical intimacy, clearing the simple sexual references and partial nudity of the typical shounen. As time has gone on seinen has only gotten more graphic, the crowning example being Berzerk. Dark and depressing with lots of graphic continent presented in one of the most fully rendered styles in modern manga - it's not for the faint of heart. Its magazine mates in Young Animal are also (for the most part) rather graphic. The magazine’s successful works are mostly sexualy focused, with the odd exception of the emotional drama 3 gatsu no lion. 

Overall it may appear that manga has stagnated if boundaries were already being pushed from the onset, however that is not the case. Finding new ways of re inventing the basic shoujo, shounen, seinen, and josei archetypes is key to building a successful series. New ideas and amazing exaction helped bring series like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Hunter X Hunter above their piers and continue to evolve the medium into the future.