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A recent study, reported on by Livedoor News, sheds light on a frightening fact for the future of manga culture. You see, kids don’t understand manga anymore. And we are not talking about complex manga and the nuances they carry, we’re talking about not getting speech bubbles! Why is it then that the children of the rising sun are out of touch with manga culture?

Well Kama Toshimura, Assistant professor at Kyoto Seka University’s Faculty of Manga is blaming technology and the internet. While the west is getting more and more used to manga culture through scanlators (think Manga fansubs) on the net, Kids in Japan have too little time to pick up a Manga and read it. What with cell phones, PDAs, DS lites, RPGs delivered daily to their door like fresh milk and robot battles, I don’t think I’d have the time either!

So, is the manga culture in deadly danger? Toshimura thinks not:

Just because there are some kids who can’t read manga, doesn’t mean that the manga-loving population is declining. It’s true that anthology magazine sales are going down, but sales of graphic novels are doing well. This means that we are seeing more and more people who only read certain favorite titles.

We can only hope!

[ComiPress]