The manga industry is booming! Sales are at historical highs, and the year-over-year growth is far outpacing the rest of the economy, even as AI is nipping at its heels. The source of this growth is no mystery: unprecedented expansion in the global marketplace, driven primarily by digital platforms, is hooking the medium up to revenue streams that had been anemic for decades.
But is Japan’s youth steering clear of manga? That’s what at least one controversial journalist in Japan claims. Others, however, point to data showing that manga is doing just fine and the kids are alright.
Do numbers signal a shift away from manga?
Iida Ichishi, writing for PRESIDENT Online, examined manga readership data and found a steady decline among youth from the 1990s to the present. Tracking data from the National Association of School Librarians’ (全国学校図書館協議会) yearly surveys of elementary, middle, and high school students, he writes that he observed precipitous drops in manga magazine readership.
The number of high-school boys in the survey who were regular readers of Jump magazine – Japan’s most popular manga magazine targeted at young boys – had dropped from almost 500 in 1996 to 54 in 2019. Similar trends were found among young girls, with the number falling from almost 200 to 32. The only magazine holding strong was KoroKoro Comics, Japan’s premier manga magazine for early readers.
This tracks with manga readership percentages among these demographics. Readership surveys from the same database showed that in 1985, 85% of elementary schoolers were reading manga magazines, dropping to 68% in 2023, a 17-point drop. Among high schoolers, the drop was even starker, falling from 77% to 49%, a 28-point drop.
Given that Japan’s youth and child populations are steadily dropping, the decline in raw numbers is even harsher. Across age demographics, Iida argues, manga magazines have been losing youth readership year over year.
Do middle schoolers lack an “offramp” to digital manga?
Part of this change is an overall industry shift away from print magazines toward digital publishing apps. Anecdotally, I’ve been reading manga digitally my entire life, and I’m far from alone.
In 2020, manga’s digital publishing sales overtook print sales for the first time. The market share has only expanded since. This new publishing format has also driven sales to record highs, even as the print side of the industry steadily shrinks. From this perspective, the decline in youth magazine readership could just be an artifact of the general trend away from print towards digital.
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Iida argues that this shift is precisely what is leaving the youth market behind. A 2023 survey by the Benesse Education Research Group found that only 15% of elementary schoolers read manga online. For middle schoolers, that percentage jumped to 30%, and for high schoolers, it was around 50%.
While the market is moving towards digital, elementary school kids are sticking with paper – primarily KoroKoro. But as they grow up, there’s no clear off-ramp from the kids’ books to the phone apps that are dominating the market. So, Iida argues, the youth market dwindles as this childhood readership is left behind.
The kids who grew up on magazines in the 90s have become adults, and the market is chasing their money with apps that target their discretionary income with content more directed at young adults. Companies are letting their future reader base languish, even as revenue continues to climb. Should this trend continue, Iida argues, the current digital manga boom could easily fizzle out in a generation.
Is Iida selling something?
While Iida sees this as a potential death knell for the manga industry, insiders have a generally more measured take on the situation. In a tweet, Higuchi, an editor for Square Enix manga label Gan Gan Joker, said that they found data from MMD that shows 61.3% of people ages 10-20 have read comics at some point. Higuchi thinks the shift simply reflects a move from print to digital.
Higuchi does think there’s room for improvement, however. “Even as those 10-20 change, what doesn’t change is their demand for interesting manga, and there are still proper channels for delivering it to them.”
O, a manga editor for Kadokawa, reposted Higuchi’s data and noted that the debate about the “death of manga” is a recurring theme in Japan.
“The argument is that manga actually has its own unique ‘etiquette’ or set of rules (such as reading from top-right to bottom-left),” he writes. “For younger generations who haven’t fully mastered these rules, manga is perceived as being too difficult. As a result, the claim is that manga is losing its position as the primary form of children’s entertainment to short-form videos and anime.”
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Others are far less charitable. At least one reply on O’s thread accused Iida of being a shill for AI-generated imagery and webtoons, and claims he’s been making this argument for years. Others who replied to O lamented the death of physical manga. “If the app goes down so does my collection,” said one.
Future of manga in the digital age
In a very real sense, digital publishing has been a massive boon for comics as a medium on a global scale. Digital sales in Japan have brought the industry to historic highs. Without the internet, the Korean comic industry might not have survived at all.
Naver Webtoon launched in 2004, before which the manhwa industry – Korea’s counterpart to manga – was dwarfed by Japan’s massive manga publishing houses. As such, most Webtoon artists were independent hobbyists drawing primarily for digital platforms on which they developed a new style of comic meant to be read on a phone.
As media consumption shifted from physical to digital, Webtoon took off, exploding in audience and revenue with a production pipeline and formal conventions that met digital readers where they were at. Meanwhile, Japanese manga publishers have taken their sweet time adapting production and distribution models to support digital platforms.
Coming into the 2020s, by the numbers or by the vibes, it’s clear that the future of comics as a medium will be primarily digital, just like every other medium. Japanese publishers that want to sustain the art form going forward need to find ways to make their platforms as accessible to anyone – especially to growing kids – as a magazine on the rack in a convenience store.
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Sources
10代の｢マンガ離れ｣はもう止まらない…｢大人向け課金｣に走った日本のマンガ界の”歪さ”を示すデータ. PRESIDENT Online
