Is it a manga or not?

3 years ago
Posts: 6
I've seen people question this on this series in particular. If you go to Egmont's own web store, they go under the category Nordic Manga. So yeah, officially they are. What are my thoughts however? Personally do I think only Mørkalven counts of what Egmont is putting out. Although Odin Helgheim and Cha Sandmæl call their series Nordic Manga, and it later became an umbrella term for all of them. I do include Swedish manga that are manga in a more traditional sense in the category to soften the blow, the anthology Rakkan too is more of a manga. Most of Egmont's authors are 90s kids who grew up in the Norwegian manga boom, and while later obsolete by English licenses and scanlations, makes the stories feel more like manga than a traditional graphic novel, even though I'd be fine with them calling themselves just that.
Before settling for Nordic manga, they actually called them "Comics for kids" as Norwegian comics tend to be much Family Guy level stuff, then grafisk roman (lit. Graphic Novel), but that sounded too formal, then tegneserie roman (Comic Novel, which just sounds weird), then finally Nordisk Manga. I... wonder if this'll hurt them in the long run as W.i.t.c.h. tried itself as the first Italian manga, which made american publishers confused, and later Japan would attempt to make two adaptions for the Japanese market rather than the comic itself. But we'll see.