The irony this month is thick. I have been reading IKKI magazine for approximately three years and in that time I have not managed to review it. Now that my reason for reading it is gone, I finally am taking the time to review it…just before I stop getting it regularly. In fact, part of [...]
Magazine no Mori
A Comic Beam of Light
March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
“Monthly Comic Beam A Magazine for the Comic Freaks!” reads the tagline of Enterbrain’s Comic Beam magazine.(コミックビーム) At a mere 25,000 copies sold every month, Comic Beam is not a contender in sales in any category of manga magazine, but that’s not a concern for the creators and editors of Beam – instead, they are [...]
From the Heart, Cocohana
February 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
It’s not often I’m in the right place at the right time to see the birth of a new magazine. This time, I was. Shueisha’s Cocohana launched in time for January 2012 and I just happened to be at a store that carried it when it hit the shelves. Cocohana is being positioned as a [...]
Wrapping it up with Ribon Magazine
January 19, 2012 by 1 Comment
If Nakayoshi is the Queen of Shoujo magazines, Ribon is the Grand Duchess. Begun in 1955, Shueisha’s Ribon magazine is one of the unquestionable leaders in shoujo manga, with Kodansha’s Nakayoshi and Shogakukan’s Ciao magazines. Each issue of Ribon is approximately 550 pages. At 480 yen ($6.24 at time of writing), you’re getting more than [...]
Magazine no Mori in the Evening
December 18, 2011 by 7 Comments
It’s a well-known, unwritten rule of otakudom that one should never write or talk about something that other people know anything about. If one should venture into known territory, there’s a high likelihood that someone will be moved to explain to you how wrong you are. Many people are familiar with Kodansha’s Morning magazine, and [...]
Lifting Our Heads for a Little Kiss
November 19, 2011 by 4 Comments
Kiss magazine, published by Kodansha, has star power. If for no other reason than that one of the most popular and successful Josei franchises of recent years, Ninomiya Tomoko’s Nodame Cantabile, called Kiss home until the series and supplementary chapters came to an end in 2010. Kiss magazine began publication in 1992 as Monthly Kiss, [...]
The Edge of Darkness, Comic @Bunch
September 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment
If you’ve read anything I’ve written about manga magazines, you know I love the obscure and unique. Not AX unique, “look at me, I’m so experimental! Penises!” unique. I like unique when it comes by it honestly. Authentic oddballity, if you will. Fortuitous circumstance lead me, therefore, to Monthly Comic @Bunch. Monthly Comic @Bunch is a relative newcomer to [...]
An Introduction to Feel Young Magazine
August 25, 2011 by 9 Comments
If you’re an average American reader of manga, you have probably never heard of Shodensha Publishing’s Feel Young Magazine. For one thing, it’s Josei, the genre of manga least represented on American manga shelves. Nonetheless, many of the artists featured in the pages of Feel Young have made it over our to shores and so, [...]
Magazine no Mori
July 21, 2011 by 2 Comments
Welcome to the newly named Magazine no Mori, where I will try to guide you through the dark tangled forest of Japanese Manga magazines and, hopefully, we’ll discover some wondrous manga truffles along the way. (Was that pushing the metaphor a little too far? I think it might have been.) As much as I consume a ridiculous [...]
Taking a Close Look at Ultra Jump
June 16, 2011 by 10 Comments
This article was originally published at Mangacast.net. As sure as boys become men, some boys who read manga become men who read manga. And, at some point, battles for ninja clan supremacy fail to fully meet the emotional needs of that audience. No, that audience wants more violence, less focus on teamwork and strangely uncomfortable [...]
