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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Hakusensha

Humming a Love Song with LaLa Dx

April 2, 2013 by Erica Friedman 2 Comments

laladxSo, we’ve talked many times about the vague lines that differentiate shounen/seinen and shoujo/josei. In real life, there is no one age when all boys shift from caring about becoming ninjas to liking looking at girls in bikinis and there is no one moment when girls stop wanting to be a princess and suddenly start paying attention to the cute boy in class.

When we read manga that has been licensed from Japan, we’re often seeing the very best of the bunch—the Fruits Baskets and the One Pieces—and yet, when you see pictures of manga stores in Japan, there are acres of shelves filled with…what?

Today we’ll talk about LaLa Dx, one of those fields filled with flowers of shoujo romance that you are never likely to see here in the US.

LaLa is a relatively well-known monthly magazine, home to several properties that have made to our shores, such as  Yuki Midorikawa’s Natsume’s Book of Friends and Hiro Fujiwara’s Kaicho wa Maid-sama, because of the relationship Viz has with LaLa publisher Hakusensha. LaLa Dx was originally a supplement to LaLa and is now its own bimonthly shoujo manga magazine. Like most of the Bestu, Za and Dx issues of monthly manga magazines, LaLa Dx is smaller than it’s better-known sister—international size A5 rather than the typical B5 size for the monthly magazines. According to the Japanese Magazine Publisher’s Association, Dx comes in at about 67,050  per issue circulation in 2011 (as compared with LaLa‘s 155,950). Small, but packed, Dx comes in at a hefty 850 pages with surprisingly little advertising—none of these series are making it to anime. So for the 690 yen ($7.32 at time of writing) you’re getting a lot of love.

LaLa Dx has a website, but perched in that vague space between childhood and maturity, it’s not quite interesting enough to be appealing to children, and doesn’t quite have content for an older audience. Part of the LaLa family of websites, the site is mostly and advertisement for the current issue. Interviews and other features are integrated with the other magazines on the site. Giveaways are, as well. These days, you’re likely to find a LOT of nyanko-sensei items as LaLa gifts and contest prizes.

When one opens the pages of Dx, one is looking at story after story of young women and young men not getting together for any number of reasons—you know, typical romance stuff. The plot might be driven by horror or comedy, but the story is romance. Friendships will be torn, secrets will be revealed, kind faces will become stern and angry faces will prove to be protective.  This magazine is a field of smiles, of tears, of love. This is what you see, when you look at all those shelves in manga stores. And this is the space between pop idols and cute boy in class…with a little princess thrown in for good measure. ^_^

LaLa Dx by Hakusensha: http://www.hakusensha.co.jp/lala/mag_laladx/now.html

 

 

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Erica Friedman, Hakusensha, Magazine no Mori, Manga Magazines

The Most Familiar Manga Magazine You’ve Never Read, Hana to Yume

December 12, 2012 by Erica Friedman 7 Comments

Here on Magazine no Mori, I seek to introduce you to the rich and varied world of manga magazines available in Japan. From kids’ books to the kind of thing you might actually see that mythical salaryman read on that mythical commuter train, I’ve barely scratched the surface. If I’m fortunate enough to continue this column for ten more years, I will still have barely scratched the surfaced, there are just that many manga magazines…and new ones popping up all the time.

Today I wanted to step off the unbeaten path I usually take through this forest of magazines, to look at what is arguably the best known manga magazine that no one in the west has ever read. ^_^

Hana to Yume (花とゆめ) magazine published by Hakusensha is the source material of a huge chunk of Viz’s shoujo imprint (and before that, much of Tokyopop’s shoujo in later days.) Just a random sampling of titles from this magazine will be instantly familiar to most western manga readers: Tachibana Higuchi’s Gakuen Alice, Suzuki Julietta’s Kami-sama Hajimemashite (published in English as Kamisama Kiss), Oresama Teacher by Izumi Tsubaki,  Nakamura Yoshiki’s Skip Beat.  Hana to Yume was also the magazine in which the record-breaking Fruits Basket  by Takaya Natsuki, ran. Two of the seminal (yes, pun intended) BL classics that comprised the vanguard of the Boy’s Love genre back in the day, Yuki Kaori’s Angel Sanctuary and Matsushita Youko’s Yami no Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness) also come from the pages of Hana to Yume. For as comprehensive coverage as possible on Hakusensha titles available in translation, check out Sean Gaffney’s blog,  A Case Suitable for Treatment  here on Manga Bookshelf.

In fact, so many titles are familiar to the English-language manga audience, it’s worth taking a look at the Wikipedia article for the magazine just to take stock of all the titles that *haven’t* made it over here, among which is one of my favorite series of all time – Shinji Wada’s Sukeban Deka, Which brings me to an interesting point about fashion in manga magazines. In the 70’s and 80’s, Hana to Yume was a “weird” magazine, full of speculative fiction series, action, and really off-beat stories. I picked up a recent issue to find that the current art style is significantly simplified and the stories, while they may have supernatural elements, are mostly romantic comedies.

Hana to Yume has a website, Hana to Yume. com,  with the traditional girly, pink, sparkly, flower-y look, previews of this and next month’s magazines, a game corner, and a branded “mangaka course.” The magazine also has a stripped-down Hana to Yume Online site, suitable for reading on mobile devices. The lack of decoration makes the exact same content suddenly appear more mature.  ^_^

Hana to Yume premiered in 1974 and now has supplemental titles,  Bessatsu Hana to Yume  and The Hana to Yume. These come in a smaller size than the monthly magazine, which sells for 350 yen ($4.24  at time of writing.), with about 500 pages per issue – and one of the strongest creator line-ups in manga. The most recent data from the Japanese Magazine Publisher’s Association put the magazine’s monthly circulation at 189,113 for 2010-2011. Thanks to English-language translation Hana to Yume series are probably better loved here, (as unknown as the magazine itself is,) than in Japan where its standing among girls’ comics magazines has been slipping – from 4th in 2006, to 7th in 2010.

If you’re a western fan of shoujo manga, Hana to Yume has probably been your gateway drug. ^_^

Hana to Yume, by Hakusensha: http://www.hanayume.com/hanayume/index.html

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Erica Friedman, Hakusensha, Manga Magazines

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