Forum - View topicA Mature Manga Magazine
|
Goto page 1, 2 Next |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2819 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
With the demise of "ShojoBeat" and the few issues of "ShonenJump" Viz has sent me despite my please-give-me-back-my-money letter (I'm sure they'll send it), along with my sister's subscription to "Yen Plus," I've been doing a lot of thinking about manga magazines in the anglophone world. While I really enjoyed SB, I generally thought that they did themselves a disservice by taking out some of the more mature titles before they reached their M ratings (i.e. Nana and Godchild), and that along with the decision not to publish a preview of the upcoming Butterflies and Flowers were probably not great choices on the part of Viz. (And then when one considers that the first chapter of Butterflies and Flowers is actually much less sexy than Blackbird it seems a bit odd.)
So my question is this: would SB have lasted longer with an older target audience? Would an M rated magazine survive longer as the original fan base (which has an income) ages? In support of such a theory, I would point out that ANN is running ads for Harlequin romances at the moment, so someone thinks there might be a correlation. Then there is the possibility of pulling a "Yen Plus" and combining genres in a mature magazine - half josei and half seinen, if you will. Would that work? (The grain of salt to this question is that it is posed by someone in education, not publishing or business.  )
|
|||
|
|||
Buster Blader 126
 Posts: 1208 Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada |
|
||
|
The main questions would probably be "how many adult women would read Shojo Beat?" and "is the market actually there for them?".
My guess would be that they think that the market really isn't there for them. And sure, adult women have more (disposable) income, but who would be more willing to spend the money? Likely the teenagers. As for the genre mixing, I'm not sure. |
|||
|
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 2819 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
oops, double post
Last edited by Princess_Irene on Sat Aug 01, 2009 2:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|||
|
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 2819 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
So is the market really not there, or is the mindset that the market is strictly teens and males? Clearly some demographic shows that adult women pay attention to manga or ANN wouldn't have the Harlequin ads. Are companies not willing to break tradition in terms of marketing?
"Yen Plus" seems fairly successful with their genre-mixing (though their pulling titles is a whole different story). Most of the Korean/American side appears more shoujo, while the majority of the Japanese side feels more shounen. While I've read many complaints about the magazine, that hasn't been one of them. This animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2009/san-diego-comic-con-international/women-in-manga makes me think that perhaps the issue of adult female readership may be under some consideration. |
|||
|
|||
Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
|
||
To answer your question, there isn't a large market for manga targeted towards adult females. Just look at the best sellers list, Fruit Basket is up there, not Nana. The majority of the female manga audience are teenagers. Now this of course doesn't mean that manga for mature female isn't going to sale, it just means it doesn't sell as much. Even mang for mature males is a hard sell. You don't see Blame on any top sellers list. Business focus on the largest part of the audience. P.S.: It seems to me that Yen Plus doesn't have any focus at all. It seems more like Yen Press is just throwing anything they have on hand in there to try and get readers to buy the volumes (not that I'm complaining). |
|||
|
|||
|
dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9903 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
|
||
The market simply doesn't exist outside Japan. Taiwan had had licensed Afternoon but it was closed down; likewise, we had had Nakayosi and LaLa but they couldn't support themselves either. If the market can't support young adult male (seinen) and female grade-to-middle school (shōjo) magazines then you can forget about adult female (josei) magazines, for the market of the last one is far smaller than others. |
|||
|
|||
bahamut623
 Posts: 1463 |
|
||
|
Look at Ikki as an example. The fact that Viz is doing it as an online magazine shows that there isn't a market for a print version of something like that. Like dormcat said, if there isn't a market for a seinen or shojo magazine, then josei is completely out of the question.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Mushi-Man
Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
|
||
|
This discussion does raise a sad fact, that outside of Japan manga magazines are hard sells. I really like the idea of having manga magazines to subscribe to and use to find new series, but they've just failed in America. Right now (correct me if I'm wrong) there are only 2 manga magazines left in America. We still got Shonen Jump and Yen Plus but all other manga magazines have died out.
|
|||
|
|||
|
bahamut623
Posts: 1463 |
|
||
|
I'm curious, does anyone know how well Yen Press does?
|
|||
|
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 2819 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
I do wonder why this is. From what Dormcat says, it sounds like America isn't the only place where they're hard sells. I would think that with the traditional single issue format of American comics a magazine would do quite well, but clearly such is not the case. Any ideas why? |
|||
|
|||
|
dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9903 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
|
||
What I didn't write in my previous post was that currently Taiwan still has licensed versions of
I'd say America has a long way to go before manga magazines can be accepted by the general public. |
|||
|
|||
rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
|
||
|
I think what it all boils down to is that most Americans still think that comics and animation are just for kids. And the industry has done little or nothing to convince them otherwise. Remember that story awhile back about the guy who wanted to join the library manga club but couldn't because it was just for teens? That about sums it up right there. It's hard being an adult manga (and anime) fan.
|
|||
|
|||
littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
|
||
|
It has been attempted before and failed. For example Viz's Pulp magazine, and Darkhorse's Super Manga Blast, the later of which I found easier to get a hold of because it was distributed as a super thick comic that my local comic shop would provide. The manga fans will buy them, but they're so few in between, and they're not very appealing to the typical comic fan which is something I think they should try to expand more to if they want a bigger audience. Maybe if they go real "mature" and try to produce something like Heavy Metal, featuring manga with a bunch of sex and porn ads to help support it it'd work, but I doubt anyone would take it seriously.
I too am interested in seeing how Yen-Press magazine is doing. I for one like the fact that they're blurring the country line in their magazine with combining manga, manwha and an American comic. I don't like limiting myself to just manga, nor do I like limiting myself to one genre, part of the reason I never renewed my Shojobeat subscription after they got rid of God Child/Count Cain, leaving college girl me left with only Nana to sate my older taste (one title was not enough for me to renew). Now in my early 20s I find I really try to steer clear of the Nakayoshi/Ribbon teen drama type manga, something that Shojobeat appeared to be turning into. I'm a girl who likes a bit of gore and fantasy mixed into my slice of life manga, and Vampire Knight was not giving the magazine what Count Cain had. I think the only reason Shonen Jump is successful is because of the large number of manga that have tv shows airing on tv here, or at least ones that have aired, making the fanbase huge whereas something like Shojobeat never had a headliner like Naruto, Yugioh, Death Note, Bleach, etc. Tokyopop's Smile magazine at least had something like Sailor Moon to help it out originally (which their paired up the American Sushi Girl), unfortunately it was hard to find that one since they didn't seem to have the resources viz does with distributing a magazine. I really miss Smile magazine. Shojobeat was the closest clone we got to it, but looking back I enjoyed Smile's articles more, even if they had less manga a month than Animerica Extra. And then Tokyopop/Mixxzine Magazine had Sorcerer Hunters and Magic Knight Rayearth, lots of great articles, but again, hard to get ahold of and I think I even somehow mangaged to get a free subscription. I think Tokyopop suffered from some bad business and publicity, initially killing some awesome magazines, but I think they also failed with trying to make magazines instead of an actual manga anthology. I'd be interested to see which sold more, the anthologies, or the actual magazines. Smile eventually lost the articles and went all manga with Peach Girl and Juline on top of Sailor Moon, but it seemed by that point it was too late to save it. |
|||
|
|||
The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
|
||
|
Not to be my typical gloomy self, but let's face it. We're in a country where periodical sales overall are down. The Boston Globe and New York Times (their owners) are on the ropes. Print is a medium going extinct or at least evolving with maybe a few living fossils maybe living on in some specialty places.
Comics and specialty mags might be one hold out. Yet the majority of manga buyers already buy collected editions and have never bought manga as it comes out in Japan. We have Yen Plus and US Shonen Jump going. Every single other one has gone under, from Shojo Beat Super Manga Blast and the ones like Pulp mentioned above. (Ah.. damned hard to find Pulp manga..) Heavy Metal is one of the odd creatures to survive for all this time. And that was based on the French magazine. So maybe there is something to older readers keeping it alive while sadly younger readers just don't read magazines and comics anthologies anymore. I blame the YouTube and the Twitter. Now tell those damn kids to get off my lawn. 
|
|||
|
|||
einhorn303
 Posts: 1180 |
|
||
|
If you think you've got it bad, just think how unlikely it is we'll ever have a seinen moe magazine like Comic High! or Dengeki Daioh. Never.
|
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group