Newsflash: Teen Girls Read Manga! at Comic Con

Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 3/4/2009

Robin Brenner, teen librarian at the Brookline Public Library in Massachusetts outlined the role young women play in manga culture. “Females comprise a majority of the manga readership and in the comic world ‘manga’ means women’s comic,” Brenner stated. “It is the equivalent to chick flicks.” Nevertheless, little emphasis is being paid to them by the comic retailers, Brenner noted, saying “most comic stores are liquor stores with books” though one retailer, Comicopia, in Boston, MA, was held out as an exception.

In the shojo manga (girl characters under 18), the panel noted that words get in the way of the narration, with emotions depicted in the graphics. Most female readers begin with the Fruits Basket (Tokyopop, 2002) series in middle school then move onto Vampire Knight (Viz, 2007-) with older teens reading Suppli (Tokyopop, 2007-) and Honey & Clover (Viz, 2006-). Brenner projected that women will become the ‘tastemakers’ in the comic world as they begin to write and review the format. 

Goldstein and Phelan described the common themes in manga as parallel to those in traditional young adult literature. Reading from their soon to be published paper, Are You There God? It’s Me, Manga, they identified the shojo, shonen and shonen-ai stories with youth searching for an identity. Despite the fact that many of the stories deal with gender bending topics and the theme of ‘boy love’, teen girls are big fans. The panelists noted that “it seems that girls are in love with boys in love with boys.”