SILENT MANGA AUDITION VISITS : INDONESIA!

To interview some of the award winners from the first year of Manga-Audition, the  committee went on a trip to the land of hope, Indonesia!

Located in Oceania region of east Asia, Indonesia is a country of diverse cultural and historical background. Consisting of more than 18,000 islands(!), home to 238 million people.

People are very energetic and said to be easy-going, we went to meet some key figures to find out how Manga scene is evolving, in the vibrant capital city of Jakarta…

To begin, we visited “GRAMEDIA”, a large book store in Jakarta!

Although book distribution is made a challenge by the vast size of the country, it did not stop people from loving books, and of course manga! There are many book shops like this, especially around cities where population density is high.

Most books are sold in soft cover format. As well as local authors’ titles, many stories from outside Indonesia are seen on the shelves, such as JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Chinese historical classic “Shui Hu Zhuan” and Legendary Japanese Samurai “Oda Nobunaga” series.

Comic books are priced around 2.50 US dollers a book, about the price of a nice lunch at a food stall.

A lot of translated Japanese Manga, but Indonesian local titles are growing strong, currently at around 10% of the market. They are clearly marked and promoted on the shop shelves. Girl’s contents (Shoujo Manga) seems a little more popular than Boy’s (Shonen Manga) ? It was fascinating to see how Manga scene is growing in volume and numbers. It really shows at the shop shelves 

Along many Manga, we were particularly happy to find many “How-to Draw Manga” style of books, aimed at future Manga-ka’s!

We are sure there will be more bookshops like “GRAMEDIA” around Indonesia. Let’s hope silent manga audition entrants’ Manga on their shelves in future!

Source: http://www.manga-audition.com/silent-manga-audition-visits-indonesia/#more-135

COLUMN

Manga Around the Globe : Germany

With applicants and award winners from around the globe, we asked award winners from the first year of Silent Manga Audition to write us a report, of Manga scene in various countries.

First up, we have report from Germany, by Vincent Lange.

Vincent won the award with “Beginning and Ending”, (one of very few entries which used an old man as the main character! ) .

Here is his report:

Hi there, I am Vincent from Germany, 20 years old and studying in Munich, and one of three “Winner Runner-Up Award”-winners of this year’s first Silent Manga Audition. I was asked by the committee to write a short column about the manga industry in my country. Please keep in mind that this report is highly subjective and mostly my own impression of Germany’s manga industry. Have fun reading!
With 80 million inhabitants living in an area of 357,021 km² in central Europe, reaching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Alps in the south, Germany is economically, politically and inhabitant wise the biggest country of the European Union, and the 4th largest economy of the world.

Almost every decent bookstore has at least one or two big shelves of manga, but distinguishes closely between manga (meaning comics drawn in the Japanese visual and narrative style) and comics (Franco-Belgian, German or American comics or Graphic Novels). The vast majority of manga sold in Germany, are translated Japanese manga, especially for young boys and girls.

However, since most of the manga readers in Germany are girls or young women, my impression is that there are far more manga aimed at a female reader base (including the relatively popular yaoi-genre), leading to a lack in other genres, such as seinen. Unfortunately, as of now, we don’t have a single weekly or monthly published manga magazine available in Germany, which is something I would really love to see in the future.

Tens of thousands German manga fans visit several anime/manga and cosplay conventions like the Animagic, the DoKomi or the Connichi (organized by the biggest German anime and manga community, animexx.de) each year.

Most of the publishers here in Germany are really supportive of manga drawn by German artists (which the community sometimes calls “Germanga”). The quality of some works from German artists like Robert Labs, Christina Plaka, Melanie Schober (she is Austrian, but still), and my personal favorite, David Füleki, is on par with the international manga standard.

I hope this little column gave you some kind of idea about the German manga industry. In my opinion, we have a pretty good manga industry, even in comparison with some of our European neighbors, such as France or Italy, but looking at some of the young German manga artists, there is still so much more potential out there.

Greetings, Vincent

We also received a fantastic response from Germany. In fact at “108 entries”, Germany was the country with highest number of applicants to the first year of Silent Manga Audition!

Manga event “Connnichi”, in Kassel, Germany.

He also kindly sent us pictures taken at local bookshop and the said event, we are so happy to see people in various part of the world, are enjoying Manga the same way!

His report helped us understand the Manga and Comic scene in Germany. Thank you, vincent! We are expecting more reports from around the world to follow…

source: http://www.manga-audition.com/manga-around-the-globe-germany/