La nouvelle manga is an artistic movement combining French comics with Japanese manga. It was first mentioned by Kiyoshi Kusumi, the editor of the Japanese manga magazine Comikers, referring to French expatriate Frédéric Boilet, who lives in Japan. Boilet adopted the term himself, and encouraged other artists to participate.

Boilet sees this movement as an attempt to narrow the gap between comics of all nationalities. Boilet wishes to do this by promoting and creating works that combine the best aspects of French New Wave cinema, daily life manga, and Franco-Belgian comics (known as bandes dessinées). According to him the strengths of Japanese manga are commonly thought to be experimentation in storytelling whereas French/Belgian bandes dessinées are known for experimentation in style and design. As a result Boilet wants to see comics which capture the essence of real human life done with a dynamic visual and storytelling style. The result of this (according to Boilet) would be comics that appeal to a wider audience than just comic fans.

In addition Boilet wishes to refer to nouvelle manga as being in the French feminine form (la) as opposed to the French masculine form (le) which is used for the very mainstream action-oriented manga that is usually published in France.

Generally most nouvelles manga fall into alternative or semi-alternative manga genres, with Boilet being published in relatively mainstream Seinen magazines like Big Comic and Takahama being published in the alternative magazine Garo.

A mangaka who combines French and Japanese comic aesthetics who isn't part of this movement is Taiyo Matsumoto.

Examples of artists who are associated with this movement:

• Frédéric Boilet
• Nananan Kiriko
• Jiro Taniguchi
• Kan Takahama
• Naito Yamada

External links

• Boilet's Novelle Manga Manifiesto
• A Spanish and English publisher that emphasizes Novelle Manga works