Look -
http://www.nlljapan.org/Manga.htm
No other country has a manga culture similar to that of Japan. While in the West cartoons are mainly read by children, in Japan they are read by most every age group on any social level. About one third of everything published is in the manga form and a staggering 2,100,000,000 copies are sold every year. With an average thickness of 2 cm per book/magazine (in actuality it is probably more than that) these books, if stacked on top of each other, would make 11,122 mountains the height of Mt. Fuji. If stacked as in a bookshelf, they would stretch approximately 14 times the distance between Hokkaido and Okinawa. The awesome figure of 2,100,000,000 manga means that 16.6 copies for every man, woman, boy and girl are sold yearly. The three top selling ones alone have a total turnover of 10,000,000 copies every single week.
These enormous amounts of manga books/magazines are without doubt having a deep impact on this nation, and we know that their influence is not good. The majority of the manga are filled with violence and sex, and some deal with the occult. Evil forces are almost entirely dominating a widespread medium which in itself is not evil. What have we as Christians done to change the tide? The answer is: almost nothing.
What have we come up with as a countermeasure? The answer, unfortunately, is still the same. Only to a negligible extent have we made use of the powerful manga media. We have been sitting on the fence. While bookshelves and racks in convenience stores, kiosks and bookstores are filled with cartoon materials, there simply is not a Christian copy to be found. We just have not been able to come up with an alternative to all the violence, filth and dirt. Our absence from the scene of influence is screaming at us.
New Life League, Japan, in cooperation with others has decided by God's help to do something about this. After more than two years of ground laying work, the first four manga books are now on the market. A new publishing house, E-book Shuppan, has been formed. The plan is to flood all of Japan with this popular media - yes, even to reach Japanese overseas.
In order to reach this goal we do, however, need the cooperation of churches and individual Christians. We are asking concerned believers to become COMIC MEMBERS and commit themselves to using at least ten copies for their own personal evangelism. Even those who have never done any type of evangelism can certainly find ten people or more to whom they can give manga books!
We are also hoping to have the manga books published in several other languages. The book production will be stepped up considerably, and from 2004 the plan is to see the book production evolve into a monthly magazine publication. The harvest is ripe.
Life League, Japan 2003