Beyond Otaku Community to Global Business: Manga in Academia - a Literature Review

Aug 20, 2026

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Comics are often treated as entertainment rather than serious intellectual material, yet manga has been increasingly addressed with academic rigor. This literature review surveys how manga is studied across disciplines, especially through cultural studies and textual analysis. Research also examines manga translation, educational and media roles, and its use as soft power and cultural commodities. The economic value of manga remains comparatively underexplored, prompting future innovation-focused research to explain manga’s business competitiveness.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Manga’s Global Popularity

Manga-Linked Merchandising and Markets

Manga Studies in Academia

Literature Review Focus and Research Questions

How Manga Is Studied Academically

How Manga Success Can Be Systematically Explained

International Journal of East Asian Studies, 23(2) (2019), 400-416 . Beyond Otaku Community to Global Business: Manga in Academia—a Literature Review Jiraporn Phornprapha¹ Weerayuth Podsatiangool¹ 1 Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University Corresponding Author: Weerayuth Podsatiangool Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Rangsit Campus, Pathum Thani 12121, Thailand [E-mail: weerayuth.p@arts.tu.ac.th](E-mail: weerayuth.p@arts.tu.ac.th) Received: 21 Oct 2019 Revised: 20 Nov 2019 Accepted: 121 Nov 2019 Abstract Comics is commonly appreciated for its entertaining value but ignored for other values due to its lack of seriousness. Japanese comics is in no way an exception. Despite its popularity in the global market, manga is the reading material that is far from being intellectual. However, the study on manga suggested differently. Manga is treated with seriousness in academia. This article reviewed how manga was studied in various aspects. It was found that manga was studied from multidisciplinary, mainly from cultural studies. Other studies of manga focus on the translation of manga, its role in education and media, and its application as soft power and cultural commodities. While manga is interrelated to merchandise from entertainment industry and other consumer products even in automobile industry, its value in economy is less explored. Porter (1990) indicated that innovation was crucial for a business to remain competitive. Therefore, this article suggested that to understand the value of manga in economy, innovation studies should be taken into account in the future research of manga studies. Keywords: manga, cultural studies, innovation studies, literature review, economic value International Journal of East Asian Studies, 23(2) (2019) INTRODUCTION Once merely an object obsessed by otaku, those who are viewed as social isolators in Japan, today manga is loved by its fans around the world. For Japanese, otaku is not a positive term since it connotes antisocial and deviated behaviors. This is in no way to stop manga lovers outside Japan to proudly call themselves otaku (Tsutsui, 2008) . The immense popularity of manga has become a global phenomenon. For many countries in Asia, Japanese popular culture, including comics, is nothing foreign. Children in Thailand, for instance, spend their free time reading Japanese comics and watching animation on TV (Phornprapha & Podsatiangool, 2019). The success of manga in the U.S., however, is another story. The market in the U.S. has just welcomed manga in recent years reflected by the establishment of publishing houses specifically for Manga in the U.S. (Podsatiangool, 2017) . In discussing the achievement of manga, one should not consider only the sales of Manga but should take a closer look at other related merchandise since Japanese comics is often associated with other products such as video games, toys, and animations (Nobuoka, 2010; Hernández-Pérez, 2019). In Japan, the popularity of a manga can lead to the production of toys, video games, and animation of its plots and characters. It is common with Japanese consumers to read manga before watching its adaptation into animation or ‘anime’ in Japanese. On the other hand, consumers of Japanese manga abroad often start from watching anime before getting to read manga. This discrepancy is due to the different patterns of publishing between Western left-to-right and Japanese right-to-left styles (Phornprapha & Podsatiangool, 2019) . Nonetheless, products originated from manga such as character goods and video games are not in any way less successful in the international market. Third of licensing revenues of $13.9 million from Crayon Shinchan, for instance, was made from the market outside Japan. In 2002, at the peak of Japanese Manga industry (Hernández-Pérez, 2019), the value of market of Japanese animated charact

FAQs

Why is manga considered worthy of academic study despite being viewed as entertainment?

The article argues that manga, though popular and often treated as non-intellectual, is studied with seriousness in academia, and research attention has grown as manga spreads globally.

Which academic approaches are most common in manga studies?

Manga studies are described as largely multidisciplinary, with emphasis on cultural studies and textual analysis.

What research gap does the article identify regarding manga’s business impact?

The article notes that manga’s economic value is less explored, even though its popularity drives revenues through related products.

Aug 20, 2026

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