​Image taken from Ai Mai Mi

​Image taken from Ai Mai Mi

​As she grew older and reached middle school, the ‘real world’ was starting to take control. As most parents would do, Dr. Vee was pressured into academics and safer, more by-the-book pursuits of a career. Becoming a mangaka is a risky game and can often take the form of an all-or-nothing pursuit. After a countless number of arguments with her family, Dr. Vee eventually decided to go with the flow. At the age of 15, Dr. Vee was sent to the USA and UK to attend prep schools in hopes of getting into a med school.

Dr. Vee, editor in chief of Manga Big Bang!®

​Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

EACH year, the annual Doha International Book Fair picks a country as a special featured guest. For 2012, that honour went to Japan.
At the event, which was held from Dec 12 to 22 in the Qatar capital, I produced a runway show by “kawaii” fashion brands, a panel featuring voice actors and a cosplay (short for costume play) show. The runway show and panel were the first ever held in the Middle East, while the cosplay show was the first in the region to be held at a public arena.
Right next to the event space was a booth for Kinokuniya’s Dubai store.
More than 4,200 manga and character products were on display at the fair, and more than 3,500 were sold. Among the 2,500 manga on display – all of which were translated into English – 2,300 were sold. Popular series, such as One Piece andMeitantei Conan (Case Closed) were sold out.
There is a strong demand for manga in the Middle East. According to Kinokuniya’s Dubai store, the most popular vendor at the fair, at least 500 copies of English-language manga are sold each week.
“We selected manga that sold well at an earlier Dubai comic convention,” said Kinokuniya Dubai’s Tomoshi Uramoto, who manned the booth for the entire fair. “But we didn’t realise that young Qataris already had many manga.”
Uramoto said he prepared the first 10 volumes of Naruto to target new manga fans. However, he had to shelve the first and second volumes of the series as many fans already owned them. “We should’ve increased selections for hard-core manga fans,” he said.
Meanwhile, box sets of completed series also sold well. Sets of Death Note andVampire Knight sold out on the third day of the event, he said.
Shojo manga, or girl’s manga, dominated the shelves at the Dubai fair.
“In the Muslim world, public pastimes for women are still limited. As a result, there’s strong demand for home entertainment. Manga-loving girls constantly check the Internet and are more aware of the latest manga than boys,” Uramoto said.
“Series featuring school life are particularly popular because there aren’t coed schools here, and these girls are also interested in cultures they aren’t familiar with.”
Kimi ni Todoke, an international best-selling shojo manga, is popular in the Middle East.
At the Dubai comic convention, Uramoto sold a Japanese-language manga to a young female customer because the English version was sold out. She told Uramoto: “It’s OK. I’ll study Japanese (using this manga).”
According to a Japan Foundation survey, the number of people studying Japanese around the world was 2.1 million in 1998. The number increased to 2.35 million in 2003, to three million in 2006 and to 3.65 million in 2009. However, these figures do not include self-taught Japanese speakers, many of whom learn the language through radio or TV, private tutors or textbooks. Many of my Twitter followers fall into this category.
Despite the weakened brand power of Japanese home electronics and cars, more people are eager to study the language. This must be due to the rising popularity of manga and anime, which have become the most powerful ambassadors of Japanese culture. The lifestyles and environments depicted in manga have sparked interest in modern Japanese culture among Middle Eastern women.
At the Kinokuniya Dubai store, books and magazines featuring crafts, hairstyles and nail art are popular, Uramoto said.
“Manga and anime have become a gateway for people’s interest in Japan, and play a crucial role for women, especially in the Middle East,” Uramoto added.
Uramoto said he was overwhelmed by the widespread popularity of manga and anime in Qatar.
“Since it’s hard to obtain information, people here do a lot of research in advance before travelling all the way from Qatar to visit our Dubai store,” he said. “I’d like to open booths at book fairs in other Middle Eastern countries to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese manga.” – The Daily Yomiuri/Asia News Network

Reference:
http://www.thestar.com.my/story.aspx?file=%2f2013%2f1%2f25%2flifeliving%2f12598460&sec=lifeliving

Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

This post comes by way of Andria Cheng, professional translator and all around awesome human being:
I’ve been a freelance translator for six years, and people always want to know how I got started in the industry. After I graduated with my degree in Japanese in 2005, I sent my resume to all the major manga publishers at the time: TOKYOPOP, Digital Manga Press, Viz, and Del Rey. I got no responses from any of them. Two years later, a professor told me about an online message board (now Google Group) for professional translators called simply “honyaku” (translation). A translation agency posted a request for freelance Japanese manga and novel translators. I applied, took and passed a translation test, and then waited for my first project. At the very beginning I had to “compete” for every job I received, which meant a sample text would be sent out to a pool of translators and the client chose which translator they wanted. But after I won a few of these, the publishers began to request me directly and I no longer had to compete for work. Through this translation agency I was able to work with and have my translations published through all the companies who had previously ignored my resume. Throughout my years as a translator, numerous volumes of manga I translated have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Manga.
But I wouldn’t recommend working with a translation agency. At the time, I was desperate to break into the translation industry and had no other means to do so. But I had to sign restrictive contracts with non-compete clauses, and who knows how big of a cut the agency got from all my translations. If you’re fluent in another language and want to become a translator, I recommend that you post your resume to proz.com, a site for professional translators. Companies can contact you directly and you can browse job postings. I have a paid membership, and I definitely think it is worth it. Another one of my classmates took his resume to Comic-con in San Diego and directly approached all the publishers’ booths. He got some steady work translating novels for a major publisher thanks to this tactic.
Around the same time I started translating professionally, I began graduate school to pursue my Master of Fine Arts in literary translation. A big part of this degree was participating in translation workshops, during which the students would bring in poetry or prose they translated and have it critiqued and evaluated by fellow students and the professor. There were about fifteen students in the entire program whose ages ranged from 23-50+, and there was only one other student who also translated Japanese. The others translated Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and one student translated from Chinese. I was actually surprised that I was the only published translator among the entire group.
But it didn’t take me very long to find out the director of the program at the time did not consider what I translated and had published “real literature.” She actually stopped one of my former Japanese professors in the grocery store one day to inform him about her concerns about how serious I was about translation. When it came time for me to choose the piece to translate for my thesis, the first question the professor asked me was, “Is this ‘real’ literature?” It was, in fact, a fiction novel by a prize-winning Japanese author, but she still seemed incredulous. At this point in my career I was not only translating light novels and manga, but I translated the bulk of a short story anthology for Del Rey manga called Faust 2, which featured many gifted and popular Japanese fiction writers. But even though I was the only one in the entire program who was actually making money translating, the content of the work I translated was apparently not “real” enough or “literary” enough to count. In the end, I came to the conclusion that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t gain this professor’s approval, so I switched to a different advisor and successfully completed my thesis and got my MFA in translation.
I came into the manga translation industry at a great time. I made enough money to pay for my graduate school education in full, but it wasn’t enough money to support myself. If I didn’t have my husband’s income, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue translation as a career at that time. In the beginning I got paid a flat fee per volume of manga. This was anywhere from $400-$700, but when you get a contract for an entire series of say, ten volumes, it can add up quickly. I generally translated anywhere from five to seven volumes of manga a month, in addition to any light novels I was doing at the time, which I got paid for by the page. When I started translating manga, someone else would be hired to “adapt” my translation, which basically means they Americanized my literal Japanese translation. This only lasted for one manga series I did for Viz called St. Dragon Girl, and after that I was credited with my own adapting. Most of the time the adapters don’t even know Japanese, so in my opinion there are much better results when the translator can adapt their own work.
When the economy took a turn for the worst in late 2008, the entire publishing industry got hit hard, but manga suffered a lot. Not only did I see my pay get cut by more than half, but the publishers were putting out fewer volumes of manga, more series were getting discontinued, and very few new series were being considered. TOKYOPOP basically tanked completely. Shojo Beat, the only monthly magazine specifically for young girls’ manga and which featured a few of my translations got cancelled. This was when I saw a very sharp decrease in my translation income and I had to start supplementing with things like translating family registers, legal documents, and other miscellaneous things just to stay afloat. (Strange anecdote: Around this time, I received a translation request from a man who sent me emails from his Japanese wife to a friend of hers. The man clearly didn’t know Japanese and wanted to know the content of these emails. I skimmed them and found out the woman was cheating on him after an emotional breakdown related to painful infertility treatments. It was clear he broke into his wife’s email account and there was no way I could ethically complete this translation, so I emailed him and turned it down without any explanation! Life of a freelance translator=crazy!)
I think when the economy tanked, there was a huge boom in amateur manga translations (“scanlations”) since the number of manga series being published started to drop. But in my opinion, I don’t think that scanlations have ever majorly negatively affected the translation industry or the livelihood of professional translators. Obviously any time someone chooses to read a scanlated version of a manga over a professionally translated published version, the industry loses money. But I actually know of quite a few series that were specifically chosen to be published because of their popularity in scanlation form. Seeing what scanlated series are most popular and most read can give a publisher a quick idea of how well a certain series or genre might do. And if it’s done right, the published version will be a better translation and of better quality than the scanlation, so a hardcore fan will still purchase the real thing.
But the biggest blow to the industry was just simple economics. Half the publishers I worked for before stopped working with freelancers altogether and turned to their own in-house translators to finish series. And the publishers who kept me on didn’t care that the series I translated for them (and was previously getting $700 a volume for) had every single volume on the NYT Best Sellers List for Manga. They just wanted the work done as cheaply as they could manage, and I had to suck up a lot of my pride at the time because I didn’t want to burn any bridges just yet. I felt loyal to these publishers and didn’t want to leave them mid-series with no translator. I even took on a series at volume 25 after its previous translator jumped ship after the pay cuts to show my loyalty. Trying to figure out the plot and continuity for that series was a nightmare, and obviously I never got paid for that extra time and effort.
So for a few years I translated a number of series for a ridiculously low amount of money. It wasn’t until this particular publishing company removed the first page translator credits and stuffed my name in the very back of the book in a tiny, barely readable font that I finally knew I was done.
I had held onto hope that when the economy turned around my pay would go up and more volumes would be published, but that just didn’t happen. I had hung onto these manga series despite the poor pay, insane deadlines, and almost complete lack of credit up until that point because I know there is always someone who will work for a cheaper rate than you. Despite my initial request for a higher rate of pay in 2008 when my rates got slashed (which was, of course, denied) I had never complained about the poor pay. I faithfully turned in every volume on or before the deadlines. My initial plan was to just say no when the next translation request came. But no translation request came. The translation agency I worked for never even gave me a courtesy email to inform me my projects had gotten assigned to another translator. My suspicion is that most of those series I had worked on, some for years, got re-assigned to in-house translators. So my career as a manga translator ended with very little fanfare, but it was great experience and an amazing boost to my resume. I’ve been told by numerous clients since then that the “New York Times Best-selling translator” line on my resume caught their eye.
Within a few months of my retirement (termination?) from the manga translation industry, I got contacted out of the blue by a company in Japan which makes games for mobile devices. They’re a great company to work with, the pay is great, the work is steady, and there’s no way I’m saying more because in this industry someone can steal your work right out from under your nose! I’m sure my former professor would turn her nose up at the content of my translations because they are most definitely not “real literature” but the work is fun and I’m finally able to contribute to my family’s income in a meaningful way, which is worth more to me than anything else.
Andria Cheng is the translator of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Ninja Girls, Wallflower,ARISA, Mardock Scramble, Faust 2, and more.

Reference:
http://whatismanga.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/9b/

​Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

Children’s books and television shows these days are nothing compared to the ones that many of us had growing up. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. I think back fondly on those days of watching Rugrats and Scooby Doo marathons and scoff at the thought of modern-age children rotting their brains with Spongebob and Annoying Orange. But the fact of the matter is that letting kids subject themselves to those books and animations is important to the development of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, though the shows now seem like garbage to our fully-developed minds. In Japan, the same sort of issue arises with kids becoming obsessed with manga and anime. Parents may try to insist that their children put away the comics and pick up a real book. Some may even go so far as to throw out their child’s comic magazines as they begin to pile up. However, according to one of the professors at Tama University, Yuichi Higuchi, in his short essay “Are you a Bad Parent?” keeping kids away from their anime and comics is a terrible thing to do! Let’s start with the manga. According to Professor Higuchi, reading and rereading the same manga many times over is the best way for children to naturally develop their language skills. This refers to more than just basic comprehension of the plot, which can generally be achieved after one quick read-through. For a child to pick up on the deeper meaning behind the words—the foreshadowing and the nuanced humor, hidden between precise turns of phrase and balanced visual depictions—it takes at least two or three reads for the full breadth of the story to unfold. Every time a child rereads their manga of choice, there is something new that they discover. The words and speech patterns make a little more sense and the meaning behind them becomes that much more clear. Every time a child reads that story their ability to comprehend it expands just a little. They are learning in a way that they love, so why not show some encouragement when they toss aside their textbooks for a well-worn comic? But what about anime? At least with manga, Japanese kids are getting in a bit of kanji practice, yeah? Anime uses pictures to convey its story, rather than writing. And yet, Professor Higuchi insists that anime also has ways of raising a child’s reading comprehension. The secret is providing discussion which leads to critical thinking. If your kids love anime, then they’ll love to share the experience with you and to talk about it. Engaging them in something that they love can be both fun and eye-opening. All it takes are some simple questions like, “What was the most interesting part?” to get their brains cooking up some comparisons and judgments. Now, you don’t want to kill their joy by firing of standardized test questions in the middle of the show, but even saying things to yourself like, “ I wonder why the character did that…” can inspire critical thinking in children. In addition, anime can drastically broaden a child’s vocabulary. Not everything that comes up is as inappropriate as Naruto’s “Harem Technique” or as nonsensical as Ichigo’s “Heaven Chain Slaying Moon” sword. What it really comes down to is that there’s no good reason to separate kids from the things that they’re interested in. With manga and anime in particular, there’s great potential for learning language skills. Personally, I’m just happy for the implication that the next time I prepare for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I can read manga rather than textbooks. The thought of studying has finally been made fun!

​Reference:
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/06/28/manga-and-anime-declared-good-study-tools-for-kids/

​Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could roll out of bed and get paid millions of dollars to speak into a microphone while wearing your pajamas? Being a cartoon voice over actor might be the greatest job of all time. But who are the richest cartoon voice actors ever and how much do they make? The lifestyle of a voice actor is pretty amazing, but that doesn't mean the job is easy. The people on this list are some of the hardest working in show business. Many of them work on multiple shows and voice a plethora of different characters. The people on this list have not only been blessed with versatile and interesting sounding voices, they are also extremely lucky to have landed roles on some of the most popular shows on television. If you are an aspiring voice actor, you should make it your goal to work on shows like The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Futurama… anything that has 24+ episodes per season that is shown in syndication around the world. And if there's one major lesson, it's that as always if you want to make the really big bucks, you've got to be the creator, executive producer and writer of a show you own! It also definitely doesn't hurt to own your merchandising rights. But even if you just want to be a regular voice actor, there's still a ton of money to be made, as you will find out by clicking the gallery below:

1. The Richest Cartoon Voice Actors Ever:
2. #1: Walt Disney – Net Worth $5 Billion
3. #2: Matt Groening – Net Worth $500 Million
4. #3: Trey Parker – Net Worth $300 Million
5. #4: Matt Stone – Net Worth $300 Million
6. #5: Seth MacFarlane – Net Worth $100 Million
7. #6: Jim Henson – Net Worth $90 Million
8. #7: Mike Judge – Net Worth $75 Million
9. #8: Hank Azaria – Net Worth $70 Million
10. #9: Harry Shearer – Net Worth $65 Million
11. #10: Nancy Cartwright – Net Worth $60 Million
12. #11: Dan Castellaneta – Net Worth $60 Million
13. #12: Yeardley Smith – Net Worth $55 Million
14. #13: Julie Kavner – Net Worth $50 Million
15. #14: Billy West – Net Worth $35 Million
16. #15: Frank Oz – Net Worth $20 Million
17. #16: Tom Kenny – Net Worth $14 Million
18. #17: Kevin Clash – Net Worth $12 Million
19. #18: Kath Soucie – Net Worth $11 Million
20. #19: Tress MacNeille – Net Worth $10 Million

​Reference:
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/richest-cartoon-voice-actors/

Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

Manga grows in the heart of Europe
Editor's note: Danica Davidson is a writer whose articles have appeared on MTV.com, Publishers Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. She also writes English adaptions of Japanese graphic novels. She has recently finished her first young adult novel and is seeking a publisher. 
Anime and manga are gaining in popularity around the globe.  The realization of that first hit me when I was attending a fair at the German city of Wiesloch. There —  amidst the bratwurst and schnitzel stands, the arts and crafts and the homemade goods — were “Yu-Gi-Oh” tapes and cards.
I was lucky enough to be on an inexpensive (read: actually affordable for a writer) group trip to Germany and France, where we stayed with German host families at night and toured during the day.  I never stopped being amazed by the grandeur of the old buildings or the kindness of the locals, especially the host families, but seeing anime and manga became a regular occurrence.
Every bookstore I went into in both countries had manga sections. Anime and manga magazines were being sold like the ones you can get in America.
I flipped through “Peach Girl” at the bookstore in Wiesloch. I checked out “Bleach” at a bookshop in Heidelberg not far from Heidelberg Castle, which you can see in Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster.”  I could go into a mall, say, “anime,” and be pointed in the right direction.  I didn’t have much time for television watching, but I did see “One Piece” in German and “Naruto” in French.  And, yes, I bought myself “Yu-Gi-Oh Der Film” from the fair.
“In Europe, manga is most popular in France, then Italy and Spain,” said Hyoe Narita, president of VIZ Media Europe, which is headquartered in Paris. Annual manga sales in Japan are about $5 billion, he said, whereas American manga sales are $120 million and Europe and the Middle East combined make $250 million. This combined number given out is probably because VIZ Media Europe distributes to the Middle East as well. Japan is still the huge maker, but these numbers show that manga is moving well outside of Asia.
The popularity does vary by country, but France is by far the leader in European otaku interest, as it brings in 50% of European manga sales. Narita said it’s the same size or a bit bigger than the market in the United States.
The market for anime and manga isn’t new to Europe, either. According to Narita, it’s been going on for 40 years.
“The first huge hit animation was ‘Goldorak,’ broadcast on TV in 1978 in France, and the average rating was 75% in the younger generation category,” he said.
“Manga in Europe is expanding, exponentially,” said Yoko Tanigaki, sales manager of the California-based publishing company Digital Manga.
“Every quarter, it seems there is a new European publisher approaching us for new licenses. I constantly receive e-mails from European readers asking ‘Is (this title) going to be released? I plan to buy on Amazon USA and ship it to myself, no matter what the shipping cost is!’”
Although we don’t have all the same titles here as in Europe, and vice versa, it appears the main ones seem to sell wherever they go. Narita pointed to “One Piece,” “Naruto,” “Detective Conan,” “Fairy Tail,” “Dragon Ball” and “Ranma 1/2" as being top titles in Europe, just as they are in Japan and the U.S.
These are all labeled "shonen," or titles for boys. From my limited but fascinating experience in German and French bookstores, there were definitely a lot of shonen titles, but I noticed a lot of titles aimed for girls as well. This included a good number of girl-oriented "Boy’s Love" titles, some of which have not been licensed in the U.S.
As one might deduce from all this interest in anime and manga, anime conventions also are making themselves known in Europe.
“The biggest one is Japan Expo in Paris, with more than 200,000 visitors,” said Narita. “It is the most important convention in Europe. The others are Salon del Manga in Spain, Lucca Comics and Games in Italy, London MCM Expo in England, AnimagiC and Connichi in Germany… But even outside of these shows, there are a lot of events, conventions and festivals on Japanese pop culture and anime.”  They happen almost every week in France, he said.
Seeing “Yu-Gi-Oh” at a German fair might be small beans compared to that, but then again, seeing “Yu-Gi-Oh” at a German fair shows how immersed the medium has became in parts of Europe.

​Reference:
http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/26/manga-in-the-heart-of-europe/

Manga Big Bang® is UK’s original manga magazine featuring multiple manga comic series and one-shot manga comics. ​You can follow the Manga Big Bang! manga series by becoming our patron on our Patreon page. Click on the Manga Big Bang! logo:

​
​As you probably expected, a lot of it comes down to content - what’s your idea worth to publishers and do you have to artistic skills to back it? Like anything, it’s important to think about audience, and understanding that is the first step to becoming a professional. The main barrier, says Dr. Vee is creating something that appeals not to our culture, but to that of the Japanese - after all, that’s where it all begins! Take Bleach or Naruto for example - yeah, they’re massively popular over here, but Japan is where it all started, it’s the Japanese audience that they’re writing for.
So, how do you discover that audience and cater your writing to them? Well, you move to Tokyo, make Japanese friends, absorb the culture and fully engross yourself in the country. Easy, right? Well - no, it’s not. Luckily though, there are alternatives, and plenty of success stories where people have got stuff published in Japan from overseas. What’s important is to learn as much as you can about your target audience. Take an interest in their culture, read up about it and objectively look at your favourite anime and manga and ask yourself ‘what themes does this have?’ and ‘Why has this done well?’. Understanding the fact that you’re writing for a Japanese audience is perhaps the most key aspect of all, and acknowledging this fact is the first step into becoming a professional.
​

​So you’ve thought about what your manga needs to have, you’ve got your idea and maybe you’ve even gone ahead and written it - but now what? Unfortunately, having a great idea just isn't enough to get noticed. You need to make sure people can see it, and you need to make sure you’re not waiting to be found - slam it in peoples faces. The way to go about this is to target manga magazines through either entering contests or by taking your work directly to the editors or the publishers. Dr. Vee says that the most important aspect here comes down to that same thing again, target audience. If you’re writing a girly romcom, Jump probably won't be interested. Instead, research what’s out there and find magazines that match both your genre and your writing and art style. Smaller, less known magazines are probably where you want to be looking, and from there you can grow out and expand. What it all comes down to is getting your name out there, not waiting around to be found.
If all that doesn’t suit you, there are roads less traveled, but just as valid, which might be an option for you, especially as a foreigner in the eyes of the Japanese. This road is the road of a doujin artist, an indie artist who self publishes his work either at events, or on the internet. It’s not unusual for publishers to head-hunt creators - if it’s worth the money, a publisher is goign to make sure that they don’t miss you. There is one problem though - why would a publisher be looking outside of Japan? Why would they be searching through the English side of the internet? The short answer is that they probably wouldn’t be. Like was mentioned before, you have to be the one to thrust it in their faces. If you can, spread your work around the Japanese web space, visit doujin events in Japan and really show off your work. If it’s good enough, you will be found so long as you get it out there.