Ordering the Classics

Manga has exploded in popularity recently, but the genre has existed long enough to have its own canon. You wouldn’t start a British literature collection without Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and manga holds a similar group of titles considered to be essential classics. Many of these series include Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama, YuYu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi, Slam Dunk by Takehiko Inoue, and Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi. Classic titles like these will serve as a stable foundation to grow a manga collection and popular manga titles will appeal to those who are interested in the genre, but don’t know where to start.

Ordering and Weeding Titles

Manga is challenging to collect due to the high total of long-running series. For instance, 105 English language-translated volumes of the series One Piece by Eiichiro Oda have been released in America. This should not deter you from ordering long-running series, as a series wouldn’t be long-running if it wasn’t popular. Yet there are two things to consider if your library decides to collect a long-running series: cost and shelf space. Collecting a long-running series will affect your budget. Is your budget substantial enough to collect every volume of the series? Is your budget big enough to also order other series? Collecting a long-running series will also affect shelf space for your manga collection.

The most crucial tip for weeding is to avoid selectively removing volumes from a long-running series. Doing so can leave readers with an incomplete experience. Instead, consider whether other libraries in your system hold certain titles before making any decisions.

Short Stories

Short story collections are a great addition to any manga library because they require minimal commitment from readers. Each story can usually be enjoyed independently, allowing readers to skip around without missing key plot points. Additionally, since these collections are not part of continuous series, you won’t risk having incomplete sets if you choose to stop ordering them.

Beast Complex by Paru Itagaki is a series of standalone short stories that bring together different carnivore and herbivore animals as they try to overcome conflict. These unique situations vary from a crocodile and a gazelle cohosting a cooking show in “The Crocodile and the Gazelle” to a snow leopard finding out that her movie co-star, a Japanese deer, had a hunger for method acting in “The Japanese Deer and the Snow Leopard.” Itagaki’s blending of different characters with unique moral situations brings to mind Krzysztof Kieslowski’s television series Dekalog, which dramatized moral conflicts of the Ten Commandments.

Junji Ito is a prolific author of horror short stories, a unique storyteller whose work doesn’t shy away from certain themes such as collecting or idol worship. Ito also doesn’t shy away from incorporating an assortment of objects into his stories. Two noteworthy stories incorporating a unique theme and object are “Hanging Blimp” and “Used Record.” “Hanging Blimp” is a deflating tale about balloons that appear with people’s faces on them, while “Used Record” is a story about a vinyl record with a deadly sound. These series can serve as a gateway to the authors’ longer works, such as BeaStars by Paru Itagaki and Uzumaki by Junji Ito.

Genres

Manga is an art style that serves its readers in various genres. The slice-of-life genre, for example, focuses on everyday life. Prominent titles include the comedy manga series Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san by Honda, which is about working in a bookstore, and The Way of the Househusband by Kousuke Oono, which follows a former Japanese mafia member who enters the dangerous world of homemaking. There are also sports manga series such as Eyeshield 21 by Riichiro Inagaki, which focuses on the American game of football. A unique series in another popular genre, action, is Gunsmith Cats by Kenichi Sonoda, which follows two female gunsmiths who fight crime in Chicago.

Reprints

Another useful collection tip is that older manga series like Eyeshield 21 can be difficult to acquire. Many older series are out-of-print in English, making them limited on the secondhand market and bearing high costs. Manga also doesn’t have a classics series in the English language, like Barnes and Noble Classics, which reprints popular older titles to make them accessible for a broad, contemporary audience. Despite these challenges, manga reprints occasionally occur, so I’d advise you to check publishers’ or booksellers’ websites consistently to check for reprinted manga.

The post Building and Curating a Manga Collection to Meet Growing Community Demand first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The Disaster Tourist (Korean, 2013; English translation, 2020) By Yun Ko-Eun, Translated by Lizzie Buehler

Shakespeare famously wrote that “all the world’s a stage,” and in The Disaster Tourist by Korean novelist Yun Ko-Eun, the island of Mui takes center stage. In this novel that discusses the written record of climate change, Yona is a programming coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specializing in trips to places affected by disaster. Yona’s boss sends her on an all-expenses paid vacation to evaluate an unpopular Jungle travel destination, where Yona’s report will determine if her boss will eliminate the unsuccessful travel package. Yona decides to go to Mui, and her trip becomes uneventful, as Yona realizes Mui is not currently affected by disaster, which makes it an unappealing destination for her company. Yona gets lost on the return route to Korea, and a series of events leads her back to Mui, with Yona getting a proposition to take part in creating a disaster that would alter Mui’s future. Will Yona sink or swim in this nefarious climate? Where does the responsibility for natural disaster lie? All will be revealed once you read The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun.

Sand Land (Japanese, 2000; English translation, 2003) By Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama’s manga Sand Land was released in Japan in 2000, and its English translation was published by Shonen Jump in 2003. Sand Land takes place in a desert that is the last remaining habitable place in the world. The desert is controlled by the nation’s king, who restricts access to the desert’s water supply and price gouges the supply of water for his own enrichment. A human, Sheriff Rao, is on the hunt to find Phantom Lake, a secret lake that would give water access to the desert’s citizens. But he will need the help of a powerful demon to make the dangerous trip. The human and demon develop a thirst for teamwork to save their climate, and, joined by another demon, confront questions about accountability for damage to the environment, as well as the possibility of correcting wrongs.

Note: The manga Sand Land has a few adaptations. Sand Land: The Series was recently released in March on Hulu and Disney Plus. The video game adaptation of Sand Land will be released in April on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

The Wandering Earth (Chinese, 2000; English translation, 2017) By Cixin Liu, Translated by Ken Liu, Elizabeth Hanlon, Zac Haluza, Adam Lanphier, and Holger Nahm

The Wandering Earth is a collection of ten science fiction short stories that tackle various topics. A standout is the title story, which is one of Chinese author Cixin Liu’s most famous stories and which was adapted into the 2019 movie The Wandering Earth (a prequel movie, The Wandering Earth 2, released in 2023). “The Wandering Earth” is the story of an unnamed narrator who was born when the Earth stopped moving. Astrophysicists had discovered the Sun would undergo a helium flash and vaporize the Earth, which led the Coalition (the Earth’s government) to create Earth Engines that would halt the Earth’s rotation and make the Earth revolve around a star named Proxima Centauri instead of the Sun. This plan radically affects the Earth. It takes the unnamed narrator years to see their first sunrise, and conflict emerges between the Takers who support The Coalition’s plan and the Leavers who favor abandoning the Earth. The narrator’s life also drastically shifts once someone close to him develops a different view on the conflict. When push comes to shove, in debates about the future of the planet, who will prevail?

Snowglobe (Korean, 2020; English translation, 2024) By Soyoung Park, Translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort

Soyoung Park’s Orwellian young adult novel Snowglobe tackles a flurry of topics, including reality television and climate change. Park sets her dystopia in a world where the average temperature is -50 degrees Fahrenheit. The only place with moderate temperature is Snowglobe, a glass dome that houses many celebrities. Jeon Chobahm, a teenage girl who works at the power plant outside of Snowglobe, exercises on human-sized hamster wheels with other workers to power Snowglobe. The workers’ currency for their labor is entertainment, and they’re able to watch Snowglobe’s 24/7 reality shows starring its actors. Chobahm is an aspiring director who dreams of directing a Snowglobe show and one day abruptly receives a powerful proposal from the director of Goh Around, her favorite television show. The director proposes that Chobahm replace the show’s sensational teen star Haeri who committed suicide. Chobahm decides to step into Haeri’s shoes, yet this is no Cinderella story. She doesn’t get the warmest reception inside Snowglobe, and the novel explores whether she will be able to weather the storm of superstardom and a toxic on-set climate. Step inside Snowglobe to see how entertainment can be used to divert the focus from the issues of climate change.

The post Notable Asian Climate Fiction to Read on Earth Day first appeared on Public Libraries Online.