When Manhua Comes to the US: A Case Study of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi
Creators: name: Albers, Arianna
Publisher: name: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Year: 2025

This thesis is about the process by which manhua (the Chinese version of manga) enters the US market. It uses Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (hereafter MDZS) as a case study. MDZS was a hit, but this might come as a surprise, because similar Chinese manhua had failed to penetrate the US market two times before (once in the late 90s and again in the early 2000s). This title was published because it (and many others just like it) ticked off all the boxes that both fans and publishers were expecting. MDZS‚Äôs homoerotic (danmei) content guaranteed a strong fan community, it mixed the three main genres (gufeng‚Äìancient style, xianxia-fantasy, wuxia-martial arts) of Chinese themed publications, and it capitalized on the advancements of the publishing (like color printing/deluxe features). 
 
 There are many aspects that need to be broken down to explain how we got to these features of MDZS (deluxe color, homoeroticism, ancient style, martial arts, and fantasy). After manhua failed the first two times, fans had to look towards the internet for online publications. One example of online publications spurring publishers to print physical copies were Korea‚Äôs popular webtoons (online graphic novels/manhwa). Publishers took notice of this and began accommodating the fan‚Äôs preferences. Ultimately this is what invited manhua back into the US. The internet also opened up fan communities on an international scale and this aided in the spreading of manhua. This fan culture originated in Japan and was exported alongside manga (Japanese comics). The internet provided the fans every opportunity to explore what they found interesting under the guise of anonymity. Specific genres bloomed from this as fans favored danmei, gufeng, wuxia, and xianxia. 
 
 Publishers responded to fan culture because the relatively affluent fans were willing to consume ever more content. They catered to the fans' consuming habits by converting online publications into print. This included dealing with formatting the content into panels that were originally in a scroll model. They also upgraded the materials used in publications such as porous paper (used in black and white publications) to glossy color paper. All of these accommodations gave the publishers the opportunity to sell the books at the higher end of the average price range. 
 
 The disconcerting part of these developments is that publishers are translating and publishing only a narrow selection of manhua. The majority of all manhua printed in the US so far are either one of the four genres (danmei, gufeng, xianxia, wuxia) or a mix of these. This either reinforces the consumers' biased view of what they consider to be Chinese culture, or simply reaffirms what publishers consider the consumers to know about China. In China, manhua artists capture their culture in a wide range of genres. But the US manhua market has a very selective and confining view of what genres are acceptable. The combined bias of the consumers and publishers is a problem for them, but it also may lead to broader misunderstandings between the two cultures.