Why should we care about French manga translations, anyway?
Simply put, there are a whole lot more of them than there are English translations. Not so much in terms of the number of different titles translated, as in the number of volumes per title. [N.B. The following figures are from early 2000!!] A single French publisher, Glénat, has issued over 300 manga volumes, which by my rough count just about equals all the English publishers put together. Viz has been putting out Ranma since 1993 (more or less) and has just published the 15th volume; there are at least 15 French series which have gotten that far, most of which started much later than that. (In France, active series come out at a rate of about one tankoubon volume every two months – some even come out at one volume a month. By contrast, the rate in the U.S. seems at best around one volume every five or six months.) What sustains this publishing rate is also simple: Manga translations are much more popular in France (and other francophone countries) than here; for example, the latest v
