One of the greatest challenges that retailers and librarians face in incorporating manga onto their shelves is explicit content. No one wants to see a 10-year-old child leafing through a book meant for someone that is at least 18 years old!

Nearly ten years ago, TOKYOPOP helped remedy this potential problem by creating the first full-scale ratings system that was applied not just to mature manga but to every series the company published. TOKYOPOP implemented this program voluntarily, and most other manga publishers quickly followed suit, making an age rating on every manga published an industry standard.

This went a long way in helping book buyers and consumers make informed purchasing decisions—but we know it didn’t go far enough. Although every manga published today has a rating printed on its cover, each publisher’s standards differ and none of them are made public, leaving it a mystery to buyers and consumers as to what exactly a particular rating means. And unlike the film and video game industry, there is no industry standard.

TOKYOPOP is aiming to change all that. Over the last few months we have developed a comprehensive ratings system that not only reflects the graphic novel industry as a whole but also provides detailed explanations of its ratings, akin to the video game industry’s ESRB ratings. And we’re not making it up on the fly, either. Several months ago we hired an outside consultant, Michele Gorman, MLS, author of an SLJ “Teenage Riot” column and Getting Graphic!: Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy with Preteens and Teens and Connecting Young Adults and Libraries, whose experience with graphic novels in the library market has made her a key expert in determining the kinds of ratings that would be most helpful to our audience.

The result is the most thorough ratings system developed by a manga publisher to date. Taking into account language, violence, gore, sexual themes, nudity, as well as a number of other issues, the TOKYOPOP ratings guide includes more than 40 content indicators divided among our original five age ranges. As of September 2007, each new series will be subject to this new ratings system, undergoing an extensive review with an in-house ratings committee to ensure that no content issue is left unexamined. A general set of indicators will then be published on the back of each book, with specifics available in the book’s interior pages and on the book’s page on our website, www.TOKYOPOP.com. An interactive guide to the entire ratings system will also be available on the website, including detailed definitions of each indicator and examples.

It is our hope that by explicitly stating the reasons behind a manga’s rating we can help librarians, educators, parents, retailers, and consumers make informed buying decisions in a way that is unprecedented in the graphics novel category.

For a detailed list of TOKYOPOP indicators, please e-mail ratings@tokyopop.com

Click here to read about the new ratings system and TOKYOPOP’s 10th anniversary in Publishers Weekly.