Looks at the rise and fall of Japans mammoth comic industry since the 1960s. In this stimulating and refreshing work, Kinsella documents the structure and history of the manga industry, probes into its related subculture and the anti-nerd otaku panic, and examines the difficult and fascinating relationship between the artists and editors who create manga. In the process, she argues that Japanese comics have shifted from being a lower class medium for marginal citizens to become a novel form for official communication, recently embraced by big business and national institutions. This ascent of manga through various layers of postwar society reflects the wider transformation of politics and social organization in Japan during the last years of the twentieth century.