With applicants and award winners from around the globe, we asked award winners from the first year of Silent Manga Audition to write us a report, of Manga scene in various countries. First up, we have report from Germany, by Vincent Lange. Vincent won the award with “Beginning and Ending”, (one of very few entries which used an old man as the main character! ) . Here is his report:

Hi there, I am Vincent from Germany, 20 years old and studying in Munich, and one of three “Winner Runner-Up Award”-winners of this year’s first Silent Manga Audition. I was asked by the committee to write a short column about the manga industry in my country. Please keep in mind that this report is highly subjective and mostly my own impression of Germany’s manga industry. Have fun reading! With 80 million inhabitants living in an area of 357,021 km² in central Europe, reaching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Alps in the south, Germany is economically, politically and inhabitant wise the biggest country of the European Union, and the 4th largest economy of the world. Almost every decent bookstore has at least one or two big shelves of manga, but distinguishes closely between manga (meaning comics drawn in the Japanese visual and narrative style) and comics (Franco-Belgian, German or American comics or Graphic Novels). The vast majority of manga sold in Germany, are translated Japanese manga, especially for young boys and girls. However, since most of the manga readers in Germany are girls or young women, my impression is that there are far more manga aimed at a female reader base (including the relatively popular yaoi-genre), leading to a lack in other genres, such as seinen. Unfortunately, as of now, we don’t have a single weekly or monthly published manga magazine available in Germany, which is something I would really love to see in the future. Tens of thousands German manga fans visit several anime/manga and cosplay conventions like the Animagic, the DoKomi or the Connichi (organized by the biggest German anime and manga community, animexx.de) each year. Most of the publishers here in Germany are really supportive of manga drawn by German artists (which the community sometimes calls “Germanga”). The quality of some works from German artists like Robert Labs, Christina Plaka, Melanie Schober (she is Austrian, but still), and my personal favorite, David Füleki, is on par with the international manga standard. I hope this little column gave you some kind of idea about the German manga industry. In my opinion, we have a pretty good manga industry, even in comparison with some of our European neighbors, such as France or Italy, but looking at some of the young German manga artists, there is still so much more potential out there. Greetings, Vincent

We also received a fantastic response from Germany. In fact at “108 entries”, Germany was the country with highest number of applicants to the first year of Silent Manga Audition! He also kindly sent us pictures taken at local bookshop and the said event, we are so happy to see people in various part of the world, are enjoying Manga the same way! His report helped us understand the Manga and Comic scene in Germany. Thank you, vincent! We are expecting more reports from around the world to follow…