I can see reason for the optimistic and the pessimistic reactions to Aurora Publishing, which will specialize in josei manga. On the pessimistic side, there are plenty of josei titles that didn’t get the attention they deserved and when one finds a josei title that did well, in all likelihood, it was marketed as shoujo. Still, I find myself agreeing with David Welsh’s optimism. While I agree the timing is better (since the audience that read shoujo so enthusiastically has gotten older), most of my optimism (like David) is based on a feeling that there hasn’t been a significant effort to sell josei. A couple years back, Tokyopop had their “Manga After Hours” initiative that (from what we can tell) went nowhere. Dark Horse’s published some josei with its Harlequin manga (I believe some of those volumes were josei) but those comics looked unappealing and came from a publisher inexperienced in courting female readers. The only other major josei title I can think of (I won’t count Antique Bakery since many of its readers mistook it as YAOI) is Sweet Cream and Strawberries, a title that’s starting to look like manga’s version of “Duke Nukem Forever” (or, if you’re more musically inclined, Guns & Roses’ “Chinese Democracy”).

I’d add that marketing-josei-as-josei would be a first, considering that Erica Sakuazawa’s work wasn’t marketed as josei but as the work of a highly-respected female creator, equal to the types of work currently seeing release under the Viz Signature imprint.

Then again, just about any discussion that tries to point to past failures show that a certain product can’t succeed can be denied by finding the little points where those past failures went wrong. I mean, just try telling me that the poor box office performance of Spirited Away shows that American moviegoers can’t handle Miyazaki or that the CrossGen compendiums show that American comics won’t ever sell as anthologies. Still, those little details sometimes turn out to be the difference between success and failure… though lucky timing helps, as well.

Anyway, I’ll definitely be interested in Aurora’s output, though, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m way behind in my comic reading.