The expression was first used by Kiyoshi Kusumi, editor of the Japanese manga magazine Comickers, in referring to the work of French expatriate Frédéric Boilet, who lived in Japan for much of his career but has since returned to France in December 2008.
Whereas European cinema often bases its theme on everyday life, French/Belgian bande dessinée has, for a long time, been restricted to stereotyped genres such as science fiction or westerns.
Japanese authors on the other hand exploit daily life extensively – but these are often the least likely to be widely translated.
[citation needed] Boilet prefers 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 more usually published in France.
[citation needed] Examples of artists who are associated in varying degrees with the outputs and debates surrounding Nouvelle Manga are: Moyoko Anno, Aurélia Aurita, David B., Matthieu Blanchin, Frédéric Boilet, Nicolas de Crécy, Étienne Davodeau, Yoji Fukuyama, Emmanuel Guibert, Kazuichi Hanawa, Daisuke Igarashi, Little Fish, Taiyō Matsumoto, Fabrice Neaud, Loïc Néhou, Benoît Peeters, Frédéric Poincelet, David Prudhomme, François Schuiten, Joann Sfar, Kiriko Nananan, Hideji Oda, Kan Takahama, Jiro Taniguchi, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Vanyda and Naito Yamada.