Why France has a bigger market than the US and UK…

I came across this article in Business Week (it’s actually now up on ANN as well I see).

One thing that is immediately obvious when you go to France, especially places like Paris, is that Japanese animation is treated in almost a completely different way than the UK. Largely thanks to Goldorak (UFO Robo Grendizer to those outside of France) back in the 70s/80s on TV in France and a now more prominent comic culture – Anime is flourishing. Grown up businessmen remember Goldorak fondly and often find themselves investing in newer series too now, something many hope will eventually happen as a result of CSC’s Anime Central and other such ventures.

Nowadays in France, it’s common to see a lot of people reading manga both on their way to and from work as well as in most places you see people reading books. Sales exceed the USA’s sales to the extent that even your regular supermarkets in the suburbs will sell manga in its woefully understocked book aisles! An interesting question raised by the article I linked to is that now a lot of teens about to hit their 20s feel they’re outgrowing the content available. Although this could be due to any number of factors – what we may see soon is a branching into more “adult” manga getting a release, which is already beginning to happen to an extent in fact.

This is highlighted as well by conventions in France, home of an event that doubles the largest US convention with sales over the three day event that would make your average distributor in the UK blush at, as they often resemble a whole month’s sales for a title in the UK.

What relation does this have to the UK? Well DVD sales there vary – more common is it to see a release of series in two boxsets (see my mini-appendix for examples of this), some coming with individual DVD releases also and some not. Sales figures stay relatively constant however – not as much so as with manga but still enough for distributors in the UK to want to kill to get the equivalent of.

One often under-valued effort that may well turn the balance is the hard work put in by people at Tokyopop UK who along with the other slew of manga distributors are trying their best to build up a similar atmosphere for manga in the UK that it has in places like France and Germany.

Will the efforts of manga publishers and CSC’s Anime Central help grow the market in the years to come? We can but hope…