Although the manga craze came to Germany later than it did to America or the Romance countries, German publishers have lost no time in capitalizing on the popularity of this Japanese import. Particularly important economically has been the appeal of manga to a previously barely tapped young female readership. Not content merely to import and translate Japanese product, however, the German manga publishers have aggressively fostered local manga artists by means of national competitions, with the winners publishing stories in German manga periodicals, often going on to produce stand-alone paperback volumes. The overwhelming majority of these artists have been young women, mostly working in a style indebted to the conventions of shōjo manga.

Thanks to this shōjo boom, there are probably now more German comics artists being published, and certainly more female artists, than at any previous time in history. Thus, it might not be inappropriate to compare this wave with Japan’s famous “Forty-Niners” (nijuuyonen-gumi), the generation of female artists who in the 1970s largely created modern shōjo manga—except that in this case, the wave is apparently being firmly guided by corporate interests, seeking to revivify a formerly stagnant industry.