Manga outside Japan

Manga, or Japanese comics, have appeared in translation in many different languages in different countries. France represents about 50% of the European manga market and in 2011 manga represented 40% of the comics being published in the country. In 2007, 70% of the comics sold in Germany were manga. In the United States, manga comprises a small (but growing) industry, especially when compared to the inroads that Japanese animation has made in the USA. One example of a manga publisher in the United States, VIZ Media, functions as the American affiliate of the Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. The UK has fewer manga publishers than the U.S.

Since written Japanese fiction usually flows from right to left, manga artists draw and publish this way in Japan. When first translating various titles into Western languages, publishers reversed the artwork and layouts in a process known as "flipping", so that readers could follow the books from left-to-right. However, various creators (such as Akira Toriyama) did not approve of the modification of their work in this way, and requested that foreign versions retain the right-to-left format of the originals. Soon, due both to fan demand and to the requests of creators, more publishers began offering the option of right-to-left formatting, which has now become commonplace in North America. Left-to-right formatting has gone from the rule to the exception.

Translated manga often includes notes on details of Japanese culture that foreign audiences may not find familiar.

One company, TOKYOPOP (founded 1997), produces manga in the United States with the right-to-left format as a highly publicized point-of-difference.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture announced in 2015 that it has blacklisted 38 Japanese anime and manga titles from distribution in China, including popular series like Death Note and Attack on Titan online or in print, citing "scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism and crimes against public morality."

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