Cuba Reads From Right to Left: Cubans Rush to Consume Manga
Alex Jimenez, a 21-year-old, has been running a thriving business that he has decided to call Mangatiny
Por Juan Carlos Espinosa (EFE/14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The room of Alex Jimenez, a 21-year-old Cuban, is an operations center with a katana on the wall, a desk with Dragon Ball Z dolls and a Death Note mouse pad.
His computer contains about 20 gigs of manga — illustrated Japanese stories, similar to comic books, read from right to left — and a couple of design programs, a passion he developed from an early age.
But his uniqueness is what he has done with that digital mini-library. For three years now, the young Cuban has been running a thriving business that he decided to call Mangatiny.
Jimenez hand-stitches the books to deliver them to a wave of many followers of this type of literature in Havana.
The interest in manga (written medium) – as well as anime (animated medium) – has risen like foam in Cuba in recent years. And the young man knew that there was a unique opportunity in a country where buying the original volumes is practically impossible, either because there are none or because, when there are, they are at exorbitant prices.
As he tells EFE in an interview in his room, in the Havana neighborhood of Alamar, the idea originated when he was in military service and saw a colleague in his dead time reading a miniature copy of Harry Potter that he printed at home.
He didn’t think twice and did something similar, though much more professional, with his favorite manga: Chainsaw Man. Everything was positive from that moment on.
“In previous years, if you watched a manga, you were someone special. Something like: ’ay, you’re a child’, you know? The culture in Cuba has expanded totally and thank God my business has continued to grow,” says Jiménez, while showing how he makes a customer’s order.
Jose Angel Gonzalez, a 21-year-old friend of Jimenez is a good example of how Cubans have embraced Japanese popular culture in recent years. His first approach to that world was, like many other compatriots who grew up before the arrival of Wi-Fi in 2014, with a burned CD that his mother bought him at a street stall. Inside the disc was the anime “One Piece.”
The jump from anime to manga was natural. There came a point where he just couldn’t wait to copy new arcs (seasons) from his favorite, Bleach, onto a memory stick.
Gonzalez explains to EFE that, unlike its counterpart, comic strips, manga, and in general the very particular way of telling stories in Japan, has a much deeper exploration of characters than in the West. And that has connected very well with the average Cuban.
“They are stories that reach the heart and, at the same time, the mind. In the West, for example, the comic strip ultimately is more about the epic, the hero: the invincible protagonist overcoming certain problems. But they do not go to the center, the core of what the character feels, of what is going on”, he says.
The popularization of manga in Cuba is more evident if we analyze the varied profile of Jiménez’s clients. His orders range from the lifelong otaku (young person), who isn’t over 18, to a husband’s birthday gift to his wife.
The fans can be a worker, student, reggaeton, rocker or athlete. Jimenez knows it well and reaffirms: “Today, I would dare to say that four out of five people consume anime”. He sees it with his own eyes when the orders arrive.
According to him, printing a manga can take only a few minutes, although wrapping it in cloth can increase the time to an hour.
On a normal day, he may spend 6 to 7 hours working, alternating with his computer studies, not counting the long blackouts in his municipality. In fact, the lights went out during the interview.
Jimenez sees himself in the years to come doing the same thing he does now, but with a much larger operation. He knows that the consumption of manga will continue to rise, and his offer will continue to satisfy that hunger for new issues every week.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.