Genres
Manga
Comics or graphic novels originating from Japan, in a style developed in the late 19th century; within Japan the word means all comics.
Manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most follow a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century; in Japan the word refers to all comics and cartooning, while abroad it means comics published in Japan. The industry model is the one web novelists know from the light novel: series are serialized in thick anthology magazines such as Weekly Shonen Jump, then collected into tankōbon volumes, shelved by demographic (shonen, shojo, seinen, josei) and adapted into anime when they hit. The market is enormous and global: manga reached about 76 percent of United States comics and graphic novel sales in 2021, and in 2024 digital manga far outpaced print in Japan.
For prose writers, manga matters as a neighbor medium: its demographic labels name the reader rather than the content, and its serial-to-collection pipeline is the same shape as the web serial to collected volume path. The Korean cousin is manhwa.