ABSTRACT
North American comics and Japanese manga have influenced each other since at least the end of the Second World War. The centrality of manga in Japanese popular culture, however, can be hard to appreciate given the low status usually afforded comics in the West. Manga have a distinctive history in terms of content, style and marketing strategy, and a symbiotic relationship exists between manga, anime (Japanese animation), gaming, live-action film and off-shoot merchandising, such that narratives and characters successful in one medium are often repackaged and marketed in others. There is also a considerable amount of amateur manga – dojinshi 1 – produced by Japanese teenagers, young adults and even professional mangaka (artist-authors) that is sold, swapped or made freely available on the internet and at Comiket and other amateur comics markets. A significant proportion of dojinshi activity is the production and consumption of yaoi.
