Jean-Marie Bouissou created the Manga Network (Réseau Manga) in 2006 to build a linkage between researchers and Phd students interested in the subject, in various locations and at various levels:
- Manga and its evolution, related to changes in society, in the economical and political system of post-war Japan;
- The role of mangas and more generally of Japanese popular culture in the current cultural globalization process and the ways it is being accepted or not (a questionnaire is available on the website for this purpose);
- The analysis of imaginaries of mangas, from post-apocalyptical to shôjo manga (teenage mangas) and from “scientific experience” to mecha (combat robots), notably in the scope of the misadventures of the Japanese contemporary memory and of the modernization of the value system;
- Specificities of the “manga language”, whether text or graphics, in a comparative logic…

This network of about 50 participants covers 11 countries. The network aims at organizing conferences and making researchers interact, but it also seeks to favour the dissemination of research results by publishing online the work of its participants and other papers that could be sent.

Since its founding, the network has been supported by The Japan Foundation.