San Diego Comic Con by GamingAngels

One of the few panels I was able to make was the Women in Manga panel at San Diego Comic Con. The panel was aoderated by Eva Volin, and featured Leyla Aker (Viz Media), Deb Aoki (About.com), Robin Brenner, Becky Cloonan, Lillian Diaz-Przybyl (Tokyopop), and JuYoun Lee. The original aim of the panel was to discuss women in the manga business, how to keep manga readers as they get older, and what are some thoughts on the future of manga in the United States.

Women in Manga Panel at SDCC

The panel was pretty early Saturday morning yet the room was full of women eager to hear advice from other women about starting a career in manga. The first topic that Eva brought up to the panel was the fact that teenage girls have been credited with the success of manga in the United States. Now that those teenagers are growing up, how do we help them follow a career in manga. Leyla mentioned that a common problem in any publishing house is the lack of women in executive positions. JuYunn explained that in Korea much of the editorial staff is female. This can be because the companies are smaller and that creates more opportunity for women to move up.

Becky Cloonan will be starting to sell her own manga soon and she explained how she was a comic book fan at a very young age but felt that she could never work in the comic book industry. When she first found manga, Becky immediately knew that was what she wanted to do.

The panel then went into a discussion about how manga can appeal to women fans as they get older. Personally, I enjoy Shojo manga but I can also see how certain titles no longer appeal to me. Josei Manga, (pronounced “joe-say”), refers to manga who’s target audience is women or girls in their late teens. The themes of these manga are more complex, the characters may be in college or working and have problems that older women can relate to. A few examples of titles in this genre of manga are Nana and Tramps like Us. I hope to feature more Josei Manga here on GamingAngels.com through research. Both Leyla and Lillian discussed that it can be a difficult fight to bring these Josei titles to United States because the sales numbers aren’t there yet. While 40% of Shonen Jump readers are female, only 5% of Shojo Beat readers are male. Because of these stats, many publishing houses feel that women will read manga that appeals to men and that is where their focus lies. But every once in awhile they test the waters and hope to be able to do that more in the future. Robin mentioned that it’s up to us as fans, readers, and press to bring more attention to these novels. People react to personal recommendations and we will work harder on GamingAngels.com to help expose you to more choices.