One of Japan’s most successful manga series will be translated into English, 19 years after it began dominating its home market.
The new version of Kingdom, which chronicles ancient China’s dynastic wars, will go on sale starting in November, Yasuhisa Hara, the artist who created it, said in an interview. The manga has sold roughly 110 million copies domestically, making it one of the top 20 best-selling series of all time.
Japan’s cultural exports including Pokémon, Hello Kitty and the Mario Brothers have long attracted overseas fans. Hara, who left his job as a system engineer to pursue a career drawing manga, expects the English version of his work will help him do the same.
"Outside of Japan, I think manga is still an undiscovered treasure chest,” said Hara.
Sales of manga globally reached about US$15.6bil (RM69bil) as of 2024 and are expected to rise to US$42bil (RM186bil) by 2030, according to the analytics firm Grand View Research. Japan’s US$7.7bil (RM34bil) in revenue accounts for about half of the global total. While the US market currently sits at an estimated US$1.1bil (RM5bil), it is expected to grow at a faster pace than Japan, more than tripling by 2030.
Kingdom’s popularity as a comic book has also translated into other mediums. It was turned into an ongoing anime adaptation for television, which first aired in 2012, as well as four live-action films. The latest installment was the third-most popular movie in Japan last year, grossing over ¥8 billion (US$53mil, RM235mil).
Still, some observers say that the focus on historical drama risks failing to attract readers to the series.
"Period pieces have had a hit and miss result in the west as it can be difficult to capture the historical story essence and deliver it to a culturally unfamiliar western audience” said John Parker, chief executive of Patencio Development LLC., a California-based company that helps Japanese anime and manga publishers on overseas licensing and marketing. - Bloomberg
