• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

July 21, 2011 by Erica Friedman 2 Comments

Magazine no Mori

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 amount of manga and of manga magazines, my tastes run to the fringes of all typical categories of manga. Of shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei, the manga I read the least is the most popular – the shounen.

So it was some suprise to me that Shounen Sunday really is all that and a bag of chips.^_^

Of course I had heard of Shounen Sunday. I just hadn’t ever given it any thought. When I finally cracked the covers, I was instantly greeted by series that I, and you, will be familiar with.

First published in 1959, Shounen Sunday has a 2010 monthly circulation of 678,917. At a cover price of 260 yen per volume ($3.31 at the time of writing) for more than 450 pages, you’re getting a page and a half of manga per cent spent.

And, oh, what you are spending those cents on! The names that write for Shounen Sunday are, well, legendary. Prominent among them are Adachi Mitsuru (Asaoka Kouko Yakyuubu Nisshi), Takahashi Rumiko (Rinne), Watase Yuu (Arata Kangatari ~Engaku Kougatari~). These run alongside series that are probably better known over here by title than by their creators’ names, such as Takashi Shiina’s Zettai Karen Children, Hata Kenjiro’s Hayate no Gotoku (known in the west as Hayate the Combat Butler), Wakaki Tamiki’s Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai (known as The World Only God Knows) and Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan (known here as Case Closed).

Weekly Shounen Sunday has a website in Japanese with news, interviews and “backstage” with the manga artists, links to collected volumes, and other typical magazine “stuff.” In addition, Viz has an English-language site for “Shonen Sunday” where you can find downloads, creator profiles and series synopses.

Despite the somewhat irksome persistence of misogynistic “service” (breast groping, nipples visible under clothes and crotch shots), this magazine is undoubtedly targeted to boys who plan on becoming immature man-boys in the future. I’d love to love Sunday, but it’s hard to see past the “Boys Only, Girlz Stay Away” sign on the treehouse door.

This is particularly frustrating, as Sunday’s pages are replete with very cool baseball, soccer and other non-dating sim-esque manga inside. If the service was notched back a few degrees, I might add this to my monthly rotation. As it is, I think I’ll pass.

As a box of chocolates, while there are a whole lot of caramel and peanut treats inside, there’s just a few too many yucky jellies for my taste. But your taste may vary. ^_^

Weekly Shounen Sunday, by Shogakukan

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: manga, Manga Magazine, Shounen, VIZ

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Erica Friedman says

    July 21, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    Before I forget, a big thanks to Sean Gaffney, for prompting me to review this magazine!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Viz launches manga site, Square Enix offers freebie « MangaBlog says:
    July 22, 2011 at 12:49 pm

    […] Erica Friedman kicks off her Magazine no Mori column at Manga Bookshelf with a look at Shounen Sunday. […]

    Reply


Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.