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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Manga Magazine

Magazine no Mori in the Evening

December 18, 2011 by Erica Friedman 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 its slightly odd twin brother Morning Two. Likewise, people are relatively familiar with their older sister, Afternoon. But, because it’s out all day at work, and doesn’t get home until late, very few people know about their big brother magazine, Evening.

Evening magazine has a 2010 circulation of 147,980/month. It sells for 330 yen for just slightly over 400 pages an issue. Evening is one of those magazines you see most walking into convenience stores anywhere in Japan.

A few of the Evening series are going to be well-known to western readers. Most well-known are Moyashimon, that comedic series by Masayuki Ishikawa about cute bacteria, which is still ongoing in the magazine, and BLOOD ALONE, Masayuki Takano’s manga that shifted from Dengeki Daioh to Evening. Evening was involved in another another notable shift, when Gunm, Last Order (translated here as Battle Angel Alita, Last Order) was famously picked up and huffed from Ultra Jump to Evening finish its run when the creator, Yukito Kishiro, had issues with management.

Of note to people like myself who like oddball series, is “Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san,” by Yasuhisa Kubo about “funny”  demons in hell (which has recently gotten anime treatment) and “Shoujo Fight!,” a series about women’s volleyball that will never make it over here because, while sports manga in the west sells indifferently, sports manga about girls never even make it here at all. Forget then, ever seeing “O-Gari,” Tachiko Aoki’s action gaming story around women playing Shogi. (Fans of Saki, and Shion no Ou take note of this one.)

On Evening‘s website, one finds the typical features one expects with a manga magazine website – series overviews, interviews with creators, sample comics, features of new series, downloads and, somewhat less usually, a job board and special non-profit collbgoration with Father’s Quarterly (FQ) magazine related to a series “Prochichi,” a story about a stay-at-home father by Mieko Osaka.

Instantly a reader of Evening will realize that they are presumed to be an adult. The focus is on story, character and art, instead of gimmick or service. Where something like “Captain Alice” would, in Ultra Jump be full of T&A, in Evening, it focuses on great reactions shots and a surprisingly detailed  plane interiors. It’s easy to imagine salarymen picking up a copy of Evening on their commute home, and so they do.

Evening magazine from Kodansha: http://kc.kodansha.co.jp/magazine/index.php/02134

 

 

Filed Under: FEATURES, Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Kodansha Comics, Magazine no Mori, Manga Magazine

Lifting Our Heads for a Little Kiss

November 19, 2011 by Erica Friedman 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, it is now released on the 10th and 25th of every month. It weighs in at approximately 350 pages an issue, for 450 yen (5.53 USD at time of writing) and pulls in a very respectable 127,962 monthly circulation, according the the JMPA’s 2010 numbers.

Kiss magazine has a website on Kodansha’s Comic Plus system, which offers current volumes for sale, a community on which to share thoughts about one’s favorite series, and a way to send messages to the creators, sample chapters, special sites with interviews, contests for new artists and more.

Series from Kiss are not high on the list for either translation into English as manga or transition to anime. Nodame Cantabile was a notable exception, as it spawned anime, manga, live-action dramas and even documentaries. Currently the series Kuragehime, by Higashimura Akiko, has created some noise as a popular anime.

There is little experimental art in Kiss. The style runs to clean, realistic rendering, even in explicitly fantastic stories like QB Karin – Keishichou Tokushu SP-ban.

Overwhelmingly, the feeling of stories that run in Kiss are stories for adult women. “Kiss and Never Cry,” “Gin no Spoon,” “SatoShio,” “Maison de Nagaya-san,” all are focused on relationships – life, family, career and romance. In fact, if there’s one strong theme running through Kiss, it’s the drive towards life-work balance…a topic that will be of interest to just about any working woman.

Kiss is a gentle magazine. There’s going to be no surprises here, no violence, no sex; fan service comes in the form of adult male characters who treat their women well. Kiss magazine is a familiar touch, a gentle peck on the cheek from a dear friend.

Kiss Magazine, from Kodansha: http://kc.kodansha.co.jp/magazine/index.php/02292


This article was originally published on Mangacast.net.

(Sincere apologies for my extended absence here…work has been “interesting.” ^_^;;)

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: kodansha, Manga Magazine

The Edge of Darkness, Comic @Bunch

September 29, 2011 by Erica Friedman 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 the comic scene. Replacing Weekly Comic Bunch, along with Monthly Comic Zenon, Monthly Comic @Bunch began publication in January 2011. There are no circulation numbers available yet, and Weekly Comic Bunch last posted data in 2008, with a monthly circulation of 182,672. At 650 yen ( $8.50 at time of writing) for about 670 pages, you’re getting a page per yen of action, adventure and a fair measure of screaming, for one reason or another.

Compared with other Seinen magazines, Monthly Comic @Bunch  feels very much as if the editorial staff’s main requirement is that the artists draw something they want to draw, as opposed to something that will sell. As a result, there’s no one cohesive thread in Bunch’s choices.  Explosion- and violence-filled “BTOOOM!” by Inoue Junya sits side by side with Mizu Asato’s children-and-animals story “Meina no Fukurou.”

What will probably strike a Western audience first is that few, if any, of the creators or stories’ names are known here. With the exception of some of the “Hokuto no Ken” (Fist of the North Star) stories, and Usamaru Furuya’s manga adaptation of Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human, both of which ran in Weekly Comic Bunch,  Monthly Comic @Bunch is filled with talented artists and skilled storytelling that we’ll probably never see here in English.

Monthly Comic @Bunch does have a website, Web@Bunch, with samples of manga, both running currently, and website-only. The site includes messages from the creators, a blog, links to published collected volumes and the usual sort of functions on magazine websites.

The standout Monthly Comic @Bunch series for me are Nakajima Michitsune’s fantasy war story, “Gunka no Baltzar” set in a Napoleonic War-style setting, about a young man moving up through the ranks; police action/adventure story “Ouroboros” by Kanzaki Hiroya, and the story that dragged me here in the first place, “Avare Senki” by Nakamura Ching. Let me talk a little bit about this story, because in a world where Bakuman is being talked about so often, there needs to be an “Avare Senki.”

Bakuman is a fictionalized story about two young men trying to make it in the manga world, written and drawn by two men who have made it in the manga world. “Avare Senki” (which translates to something like “Stingy Wars” or maybe the “Battle of Cheeseparing,” or “Miserly Combat,”) is a story about the bone-crushing poverty and exhaustion endured by a manga artist and her assistants when she’s working steadily, but has not “made” it. Wrapped in a plot of working on a fantasy series called Avare Senki, Nakamura-sensei draws a sobering, but not entirely depressing, tale of deadlines, ramen, smoking and recycling materials. For people who want to really see behind the curtain of a manga artist’s life, forget Bakuman, and turn to “Avare Senki.” It will open your eyes, I assure you.

When compared with many Seinen magazines, there’s a refreshing lack of creepy fanservice here. The magazine feels quite manly overall, and there is a sense of edginess to it that pervades most of the pages, even if it eschews the most banal tropes of fanservice. This isn’t to say there is none – but when compared with many of the top Shounen magazines, this magazine is significantly more mature.

For fans of the obscure, the authentically edgy, Monthly Comic @Bunch, is a don’t-miss magazine.

Monthly Comic @Bunch from Shinchosha Publishing: http://www.comicbunch.com/

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Manga Magazine, Seinen, Shinchosha

An Introduction to Feel Young Magazine

August 25, 2011 by Erica Friedman 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, while the magzine itself lives a life of near-complete anonymity here, it’s practically glows with talent.

Yumi Unita (Bunny Drop,) Moyoco Anno (Happy Mania), Tomoko Yamashita (Dining Bar Akira,) Mitsukazu Mihara (The Embalmer,) Kiriko Nananan (Blue,) Mari Okazaki (Suppli,) Erica Sakurazawa (Between the Sheets,) have all at one time or another penned stories for the adult, female audience that makes up the readership of Feel Young. For this reason, as I perused the piles of magazines that live in my house, I chose to take a look at Feel Young as my first josei magazine.

Feel Young was first launched in 1989, as a sister magazine to the now-suspended FEEL magazine. Its intended audience is adult women and, based on the comments it receives and publishes, it is indeed reaching women 18-45 years of age. Based on the a JMPA’s magazine sales data, Feel Young has a circulation of 45,542 (and one overseas reader….)

While stories in Feel Young often star women in their early 20s, juggling careers and romantic relationships, as in Suppli, stories of women in their 30s and 40s attempting to maintain work-life balance are not uncommon. Recently more stories about one-parent or alternative families, such as Bunny Drop and Ohana Holoholo have been serialized in its pages. When the popular series from the 1980s, Hana no Asuka-gumi was re-started after an 18-year hiatus, it was run in Feel Young to try to attract those women who had been fans of the original series when they were in middle and high school. New Hana no Asuka-gumi ran for an additional 8 volumes, so I think we can say that approach worked. The magazine also occasionally runs stories with Boy’s Love motifs, for an overall feeling of “a little of everything that might appeal to women.”

Other than Bunny Drop, currently running in Feel Young is Mari Okazaki’s new series, &, which combines the popular “young woman making her way in the world” with a stong strain of suspense. If  Suppli is re-licensed and sells well, I would be surprised not to see & licensed. Personally, I’d love to see Yamashita Tomoko’s work, HER be licensed – her current series in the magazine is another set of short character profiles that dig surprisingly deeply into people’s live in a short story format.

I currently read the magazine for Shimano Shino’s Ohana Holoholo, a story about an alternative family made up of a single mother, her former female lover, her child, and the child’s late father’s former male lover. (It sounds more dire than it is. It’s quite cute.) Finally, Shinobu Nishimura’s RUSH is something that I am constantly sure must *certainly* be licensed already, but never is. I know of two companies that were, at some point in time, interested in Yamaji Ebine’s Love My Life – which had a live-action movie based on it come out just a few years ago – but neither company managed to get the book over here.

It would be easy to dismiss Feel Young as something filled with soap operas and daytime dramas, but…it’s not. Feel Young is a consistantly excellent women’s manga magazine, with less of an oppressive “style” than many magazines have. The stories vary in temperment, in tone, in art style and often in levels of reality. Stories of meals at home with the family live right next to dramatic stories of pretty boy detectives tracking down Goth-Loli fantasy figures, gang girls roam the streets of Tokyo right next to a well-meaning hospital staff Office Lady trying to figure out what it means when the Doctor who kissed her also tries to kill her. And these live cheerfully next to stories of raising children and having careers. Of the josei magazines I’ve read, Feel Young stands out as a platform for some of Japan’s best josei talent.

This article was originally published at Mangacast.net.

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Josei, Manga Magazine, Shodensha

Magazine no Mori

July 21, 2011 by Erica Friedman 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 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

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

Taking a Close Look at Ultra Jump

June 16, 2011 by Erica Friedman 11 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 series that resolve without ending or end without resolving. For these readers, Ultra Jump is the magazine of choice.

Running 16 series currently, Ultra Jump is heavy on the sci-fi/fantasy and action, with some martial arts and a soupçon of magic. Ultra Jump got it’s start in 1999, some 30 years after it’s younger brother Shounen Jump. UJ is a monthly magazine, retailing in Japan for ¥560 ($6.65USD at time of writing) for just over 500 pages and like Shounen Jump, it’s available pretty much anywhere manga magazines are sold in Japan and in most Japanese bookstores in America. The 2010 circulation for Ultra Jump is reported to be 73,20 which is slightly up from 2009’s 70,834 and close to the 2008 circulation.  Ultra Jump has a digital magazine called Ultra Jump Egg, which provides sample chapters of manga series that have just begun to run in the magazine or, are perhaps being considered for it.

Of the series running currently in Ultra Jump, several have had a checkered experience on US shores. Infamously, Tenjou Tenge, which recently finished, was originally licensed by CMX, who had the nerve to deprive the readership of a glimpse of girl’s underwear and was therefore censured strongly by the folks least likely to actually buy the thing anyway. Viz has rescued this audience from that hell of not being able to see girl’s underwear, and new omnibus volumes are starting to hit the shelves.  Hayate x Blade (the actual reason that I get Ultra Jump) has been licensed and published through volume 6 by Seven Seas. Because Sevens Seas licensed the title from the original publisher, Mediaworks (who ran it in Dengeki Daioh magazine through Volume 8, when it moved to Shuiesha and Ultra Jump,) there is some confusion among fans whether Seven Seas will be able to continue it at least through that point or whether Volume 6 will be as far as the series makes it in English.

Because Ultra Jump is a Shueisha book, it’s no surprise that Viz has a strong presence in the UJ license game. Hyperviolent dystopian Gumn, known here as Battle Angel Alita, has undergone only slightly fewer iterations on these shores as it has in Japan and has managed to successfully reach Volume 14 of the Final Order series. Volume 15 is slated to be released in autumn 2011 Bastard!!, which made it to Volume 19 in English, is known for going on hiatus with some regularity (and has reached that stage of “venerable old series, which means it is serialized on the order of twice a year, perhaps.) Bastard!! is now on hiatus in English, as well. Also currently published by Viz is the hyperviolent dystopian Dogs, Bullets and Carnage.

Ultra Jump series have a tendency to be very long-running as manga series, (Ninku, Tenjou Tenge, Gunm, Steel Ball Run) but if they are turned into an anime at all, the anime tend to be OVAs or short series without second seasons. The overwhelming feeling as a reader is that this is a magazine for readers of manga, as opposed to anime/manga fans. And not just readers, but readers who are in for the long haul, who are content to see the plot develop through long fight arcs and the small spaces in between them. Of the remaining unlicensed titles, I can see Jumbor being ported here, fueled by any success with Takei Hiroyuki’s collaboration with Stan Lee, Ultimo – Jumbor has very similar character designs, but a slightly more classic sci-fi feel. And I wonder if America would be ready for a Wild West manga like Minagawa Ryouji’s Peace Maker. Viz is still slowly popping out Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, so there’s at least a chance that, when that finishes, Steel Ball Run, a hyperviolent dystopian tale of the meanest polo game you ever did see, might make it over here. That, or when they hit the lottery and want to throw some of that money away on something people want, but will never buy.

The hyperviolent dystopian magical series Anima Chal Lives (one of my personal faves in the magazine), Grandeek Reel, Heaven’s Prison and Hatsukoi Magical Blitz all have about the same chance of being licensed as Needless, which is to say little, for any number of reasons, from constant, uneditable nudity, to constant, uneditable semi-nudity. (The Needless anime was licensed, I’m still not sure why. never was there a better-named series.)

I’ve seen UJ alternately labeled shounen (for boys, say 12-15) and seinen (for young men, say 16-25.) I’d weigh in on the side of seinen. It’s not that young boys can’t or won’t read and stick with long series – One Piece proves the lie on that pretty quickly – but that the sensibility of the stories, and the crises of identities are more “adult,” if you will. When I began this article, I was surprised, pleasantly, at how many of the series for this magazine have made it over here.  Viz has already resurrected Tenjou Tenge and, damn I’d love to hear that Hayate x Blade will be continued.

Ultra Jump, published monthly by Shueisha. http://ultra.shueisha.co.jp/


Erica Friedman write reviews of Yuri Manga, Anime and related media at her blog Okazu .

Filed Under: Magazine no Mori Tagged With: Manga Magazine, Seinen, Shounen, Shueisha

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