Manga critic
Representative of Tokyo Comic
Market
Mr.
Yoshihiro Yonezawa, a president of Comic Market and a critic of Manga
Born
in 1953 in Kumamoto prefecture. He graduated from the department of engineering
at Meiji University, Tokyo.
(Main
publications)
In
1991, The World of Shojo (Girls’) Manga I & II (Heibonsua, Tokyo)
In
1996, The World of Syonen (Boys’) Manga I& II (Heibonsya, Tokyo)
In
1997, Tezuka Osamu Manga Taizen (Summary of All Tezuka’s Manga)
1.
Mr. Yonezawa was originally interested in Pop-culture/media including manga,
TV, movie, and so on since he was a teenager due to the influence of his
hometown, which was a center of pop-culture in the area. Coincidently, there
are at least three famous pop-culture related critics who went to the same high
school where he graduated.
2.
In 1975, when he was twenty two years old and a college student of Meiji
University, he lanched the comic market to give young people an opportunity to
introduce their created manga by giving them a common space. Of course, there
were many manga circles; however, there was no place to exchange amateur ideas
beyond each circle before the comic market.
3.
The comic market started with about 700-800 participants and about 30 circles
in 1975. In Summer 2000, the circles expanded to more than 22,000 circles and
the participants were more than 400,000 during 3 days at Tokyo Big site.
4.
He already knew that the activity of the comic market would become popular, as
we can see now. The function of the comic market reflects the manga
circles’ expectations, which were 1) a place to sell original creative
manga (Dojinshi), 2) a social
communicative place of exchanging information.
5.
Generally, the comic market is divided into three days: 1) the first day is
based on parodies of famous manga and/or animation, 2) the second day is based
on computer game, and 3) the third day is based on the original story by
amateur, semi-amateur, professional mangaka, and college/university manga
circles.
6.
Most dojinshi groups must lose money except for a few famous dojinshi groups of
famous professional mangaka.
7.
Around 1984, mainly printing companies (e.g. Comic city and Comic live) started
to provide comic markets; however, the genre was very limited depending on each
comic market, unlike the Comic market, which cover all genres.
8.
There are about 800 groups of comic markets and about 2000 markets are provided annually throughout
Japan. For example, the comic market of “Comic Live" (a printing
company) holds a market three times annually and a local comic market group
holds the market twice a year.
9.
In China and Taiwan, there are about 3000 comic market fans.
10.
In the USA, there is an animation comic market. Generally, about 70-80 percent
of comic market fan is male. However, about 50 percent was female in a female
comic market (manga depicted by female mangaka), which was held in San
Francisco at the beginning of August, 2000. The popularity has begun to go
beyond gender differences.
11.
When the comic market was launched, there were mostly original manga and the
fan clubs.
12.
During the1970s, there was an animation boom.
13.
At the end of the1970s, there was a boom of boys’ manga.
14.
At the beginning of the1980s, parodies of girls’ character in animations
became popular (Loli-con = Lolita complex).
15.
In 1984/85, Ichigo sedai (the strawberry generation) who were born around
the1970s started to create a genre of YAOI, which is a homosexual story based
on teenage boys. This is an expression of girls’ desire for characters in
manga to have pure love between a boy and a boy.
*YAOI
means Yamanashi (there is no highlight scene), Ochinashi (there is no point in
the story), and Iminashi (there is no logical meanings).
16.
The characteristics of this YAOI is that the homosexual stories are depicted
based on characters of famous manga, but there are no original characters used
in the story. Yaoi stories are less than 5%.
17.
YAOI story includes hardcore, comedy, and romantic love story (called JUNE).
18.
In the1990s, the parody of game characters became popular.
19.
Although the characteristic of dojinshi in the comic market is said to be a
parody of manga, original stories is also increasing (about 20 percent of
dojinshi are original stories).
20.
Each copyright problem should be taken care of by each dojinshi group. In
reality, each group does not realize that their parody based on manga
characters infringes on copyrights.
21.
The issue of copyright is getting bigger; however, Mr. Yonezawa is going to
take his stance for the freedom of the dojinshi. Although many groups use the
characters from manga to create their parodies, the content of dojinshi is
still original. The characters are just borrowed to express their original
stories. Mr. Yonezawa is going to write about this stance on
the problem of copyright in his critical writings.
22.
Since the comic market started and from now on, the purpose of the comic market
will never change, which is to give people an opportunity to express their own
originality through manga and other media by reflecting pop-culture and a place to exchange their ideas. No
matter how the content of dojinshi itself changes, the attitude of the comic
market will never changes.