Posts Tagged ‘local manga’
It’s been a long dream of mine to see manga widely distributed in the Philippines. In fact, if people asked what I would do if I won the lottery, I will say that I will establish a manga publishing firm in the Philippines.
Not that I have issues in seeing manga in English (I’ve been thankful that this is available to me), but see, I’m a little envious that our Southeast Asian neighbors have easy access to manga.
Meeting people online as well as traveling to places has shown me how late the Philippines is in the manga game. Almost every major Southeast Asian nation has a manga industry. Ten years ago, I managed to go around the region thanks to my father and back then, localized manga from Thailand and Malaysia were thin tankoubon formats printed in newsprint. The Chinese editions were a little different, with paper closer to a thicker version of parchment.
In my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, I took a shot in buying manga from a 7-11 store. It was the Malay version of Gokudou Twins and I cannot vouch for quality of the translations but I can share that the publishing quality is quite good. It even mimicks Japan’s double cover! The best part yet was it was sold for RM7, just a little over PHP 98, or $3.50.
Upon seeing that edition, I return to what I had reflected on about the five years that came and went since I started this blog. In it, I had high hopes that manga is on an upswing in the Philippines however, can it be as widespread as it is in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia?
Guest on 
d4rkn on 
Ash on 
