The Four Color Media Monitor

Forbes interviewed Ed Chavez, the founder of a new company for distributing manga to English-language audiences, Denpa, and the diversity issue was brought up:

We hope that readers will agree with us. Especially since one thing I have heard from readers throughout my career in manga is that they want more diversity. Now diversity is a broad thing. That could mean classic works (Kaiji), adult woman-focused josei (Maiden Railways), indie comics (Crab), adult man-focused seinen (Inside Mari) or something else we have yet to have discovered or announced. Still, we hope our launch titles can provide a taste of what we can provide to the market from Day One.

If he's focused on different genres, then he's hitting all the right buttons. Contrast that with the official US comics medium, where diversity to today's managers only means skin color, homosexuality but mainly supplanting established white characters with contrived diverse replacements, and even attacking conservatives while pushing liberalism for sainthood. If manga industrialists in Japan can avoid this kind of idiocy, why can't the US publishers do the same?

For now, if Denpa takes the right paths regarding diversity, then they're doing the right thing.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime, politics