American boys can now read popular Japanese manga like "One Piece" in an English-language "Shonen Jump" and German girls can read girl's manga in the German-language magazine "Daisuki." Is this a passing fad or the start of a full-scale manga invasion?

Fueled by the penetration of anime into foreign TV markets (about 40 percent of the cartoons in the United States, 80 percent in Italy and some 60 percent worldwide), manga appear poised to shed their cult status and break into mainstream publishing in the U.S. and Europe. And this very lucrative market of teens and young adults is starting to attract the interest of local retailers and publishers, as well as the big three manga makers in Japan -- Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Shueisha -- who as recently as ten years ago had dismissed foreign sales as unviable.

According to Tsukuru (6/03) and the Japanese edition of Newsweek (6/18/03), Japanese publishers have formed tieups with local European publishers to launch several manga magazines for younger readers: "Banzai," "Manga Power," and "Daisuki" in Germany; "Shonen" in France; and "Manga Mania" in Sweden. "Daisuki" was the first shojo manga (girl's comics) magazine to be published outside Asia. In the U.S., however, Shueisha joined forces with Shogakukan subsidiary Viz Communications to form Viz LLC, a joint venture that launched the North American edition of the popular boys' manga magazine "Shonen Jump" in November.