Manga: The Complete Guide

• 1. Introduction

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  Manga: The Complete Guide landed in 2007 as a reference book unlike any other in the English-speaking world. Written by Jason Thompson and published by Del Rey, it set out to review more than a thousand Japanese manga series that had been translated and released in North America. The questions it raises are worth sitting with. How does one person compile a thousand reviews? What choices shape a guide that aspires to cover an entire medium? And what happens when the book is finished and the medium keeps moving?

• 2. A Long Road to Del Rey

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  Jason Thompson first wanted to build a manga reference work back in 2000, while working as a manga editor at Viz Media. At the time, no publisher was interested, and the project stalled. Thompson didn't leave empty-handed from those years at Viz. He became the first editor in chief of Shonen Jump when the company launched the anthology magazine in North America. The magazine performed well, but Thompson wanted to pursue his own ideas. After six issues, he stepped down, having asked to switch to part-time work and been refused. It was not until 2005 that Del Rey came back to Thompson with fresh interest in the encyclopedia idea. From that point it took two more years to compile the finished book, and Thompson resigned from Viz entirely to see it through. His original vision for the project differed from what was ultimately published. He had planned to organize the entries by artist rather than by title, and had wanted to explore more deeply manga's relationship to anime, which he regarded as the more popular medium.

• 3. Twenty-Four Helping Hands

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  Thompson is the name on the cover, but twenty-four additional writers contributed entries to the guide. Thompson brought them in, by his own account, when he "started to stress from all the workload." He then read every outside entry and corrected whatever he felt was inaccurate. The contributors included Patrick Macias, Patricia Duffield, Julie Davis, Derek Guder, Carl Gustav Horn, Hannah Santiago, Leia Weathington, Shaenon Garrity, and Mark Simmons, who was brought on as a Gundam expert. The result was a book with a single editorial voice sitting over many different original authors.

• 4. Inside the Pages

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  Every title in the guide receives at least a one-paragraph write-up. Each entry carries a demographic label, shojo, shonen, seinen, or josei, a star rating out of four, and an age advisory that spells out any objectionable content. Boys' love and adult manga are collected into their own dedicated sections at the back of the book. Beyond the title-by-title reviews, the guide includes a primer on the basics of the Japanese language and a glossary covering anime and manga terminology, cultural concepts like magical girl and dojinshi, and Japanese pastimes that appear frequently in the translated titles.

• 5. Critical Reception

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  Maniа.com took aim at the paperback's physical packaging, calling it "flimsy," and argued the book overrated unusual manga while showing impatience with longer series. The same review conceded that "sheer usefulness" compensated for those weaknesses. The Library Journal found only "a few minor instances of incomplete information" and judged the volume "highly useful for reference, readers' advisory, and collection development" in library settings. Anime News Network called it "highly addicting" and praised its range, saying it had something to offer readers at every level of manga knowledge. Comic Book Bin went further and described it as an indispensable reference for anyone writing about manga. Ain't It Cool News offered a more measured view, noting the guide had "less personality" than Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements' The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917. In 2008, Manga: The Complete Guide was nominated for an Eisner Award in the category "Best Comics-Related Book," but lost to Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean.

• 6. Life After Publication

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  As early as June 2007, the same year the guide appeared, Thompson confirmed he was under contract to update the book, though the format of that update had not yet been determined. By September 2009 he announced a different approach: the reviews he had been writing since the first edition would be released online as part of a project he called "365 Days of Manga." Alongside the new reviews, Thompson ran a competition in which he gave away the bulk of his personal manga collection. By the 21st of September 2010, he had distributed approximately 2,850 volumes to readers.