‘Attack On Titan’ Publisher On How Manga Is Expanding Its Reach

The emergence of Japanese manga as the preeminent style of graphic storytelling in the world, including North America, is one of the biggest trends in the publishing and entertainment industry of the 21^st century. Currently a $14 billion global business, according to some estimates, it is projected to grow to $63 billion by 2033. But now that we are more than three decades and two generations into manga’s reign, some of the market leaders are looking at new strategies to keep fans engaged.

Kodansha USA, the North American arm of the leading Japanese publishing enterprise, has been publishing English-language editions of some of the biggest manga hits, from classics like Akira and Ghost in the Shell to current bestsellers Attack on Titan, Vagabond, Blue Lock and A Sign of Affection, since 2008. Over the past several years, it launched the digital K Manga platform, began a library distribution partnership with Hoopla Digital, and launched a special English edition of Young Magazine, an anthology featuring newly created works, following the Japanese publishing convention of having readers vote for titles for further serialization.

From Manga to Prose

The company is now making a strong push into prose fiction, including the release of a long-awaited sequel to Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s massive best-selling 1981 memoir Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window. On November 25, Kodansha is partnering with the Japan Society to host a special screening of the animated film based on the book, featuring a panel discussion with Yuki Tejima, translator of the sequel, who will be traveling from Tokyo for the occasion, Alexandra McCullough-Garcia, editor of the translation, and Nathan Shockey, Associate Professor of Japanese at Bard College.

“Literary prose fiction has always been a huge part of our parent company’s DNA,” said Alvin Lu, President and CEO of Kodansha USA. “Our focus has been on manga the last several decades, but we have a large backlist, and the acquisition of Vertical, which started as a specialty publisher in Japanese literature in translation, has added to that.”

Lu says that rising interest in Asian popular culture, from anime to K-Pop to American-produced explorations of Japanese history like Shogun, has fueled customer demand for new kinds of content, while the expansion of streaming and digital platforms has made it easier to deliver that directly to fans. Those synergies benefit a company like Kodansha, which can offer multiple entry points and platforms for readers at different stages.

For example, Kodansha recently brought out a new edition of Musashi, Eiji Yoshikawa’s classic samurai novel about the real exploits of a famous swordsman, that has previously been adapted into movies. They commissioned a new cover by artist Takehiko Inoue, the creator of Slam Dunk and Vagabond, in hopes of attracting fans of current popular graphic fiction to a prose classic.

Expanding Audience Demographics

Kodansha also sees opportunities in the maturation of its audience. Manga first gained traction in US markets with kid-oriented series such as Dragonball, Sailor Moon, One Piece and My Hero Academia, thanks to the popularity of their anime adaptations. Now the original manga readers from the 1990s and 2000s are in their 30s and 40s, with decades of experience exploring a broader range of titles, genres and styles. These older readers are not only hungry for new content that fits their mature tastes, but also for reissues of titles with nostalgic appeal.

“We have the reverse challenge of the American comics industry [whose demographics skew older and male],” said Lu. “They are trying to find the youth readership, while we have it. We’ve been discovering that all those great 90s manga are seeing new life in new editions, because there is a genuine nostalgia factor that now has a viable market and an American audience you can speak to. At the same time, I think these titles, because they’ve been talked about by earlier generations, young readers are interested as well, so it’s opened up a whole new area for us to get into.”

Technology trends and challenges

When it comes to broadening the catalog, the manga industry has always had the bottlenecks of translation and localization, as well as the economics of printing and distributing the work in foreign markets. Despite the growth of the English speaking market, it is still a tiny fraction of the estimated $4.65 billion in annual sales generated in Japan, penciling out to $37-38 per year for every inhabitant. By comparison, the industry site ICV2 estimates the entire US market for comics and graphic novels (manga and western-style) w at around $1.9 billion in 2024, or $5.88 per capita. Consequently many Japanese publishers have historically seen little value in bringing out English editions, despite the potential demand.

That has led to an issue facing the industry for decades: the persistence of pirated “scanlations” on free or low-cost sites around the internet, which not only siphons revenues from publishers and creators, but also conditions consumers to expect content for free or low cost. “On piracy, before we confront it head on, there’s still a lot of work we have to do the make more of it available legitimately in ways that meet the readers where they are,” said Lu. “Until we get to that point, the focus is getting authorized content out there in ways that are readily accessible for people to get to. Once we do that, the rest will sort itself out.”

Digital distribution has helped to mitigate some of those concerns, though again, the US lags Japan significantly in digital uptake. Whereas upwards of 73% of Japanese manga customers now read digitally, accounting for 90% of publishing revenues, digital sales remain under 20% of the American market by most estimates. The disparity between those numbers, and the potential for the US to close the gap, is probably driving a lot of the new activity we’ve seen in the American digital comics industry lately.

Some publishers are looking at AI as a potential solution for localization, generating controversy among fans, creators and translators. Lu says Kodansha “remains committed to human translators for now, because of our standards of accuracy and quality,” and is limiting their explorations of AI to tools that help readers discover new content in the company’s vast library.

On all these fronts, Kodansha, like the rest of the manga publishing industry, is looking not just to hold on to its gains in the US market, but to expand them into new platforms and new demographics. For fans and readers, that’s very good news.