Monday, 9 Jul 2007
I’ve been wondering about the saleability of seinen manga ever since Kethylia’s original comments. I remember my first thought was of titles like Monster and Akira, seinen titles that have been deemed successful, but after wondering if I was looking at a fan-filter view of seinen (that just noticed the high-quality titles), I started thinking about how neither were introduced as seinen. At the time it was introduced, Akira was seen solely manga, the market wasn’t diverse enough to tell shounen from shoujo, much less shounen from seinen. Meanwhile, Monster is billed as a quality “Signature” title.
That got me thinking to the josei manga titles that have been marketed stateside as shoujo. I’m not sure what it means, but for some reason adult-oriented manga seems to do better here if you don’t market it that way.
July 9th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Here’s some recent examples of seinen that did not make it (even as the manga market as a whole was ballooning):
1) VIZ’s PULP magazine
2) Gutsoon! (the publisher), and their Raijin magazine
3) Comics One (whose most important Japanese properties were seinen titles by Koike Kazuo)
4) DMP’s seinen titles
All of these losses correspond to the rise of shoujo. Amazing, isn’t it, that when you consider how Viz first tried and failed to market shoujo (Hagio Moto, Nishi Keiko, etc.) how quickly the climate changed.
The only publisher that does consistently “well” with seinen is Dark Horse, and consider their connection with the mainstream comic industry. Yet even they have taken a huge hit in the manga industry.
And yes, no shoujo manga have shown up in Viz’s “signature line”. Which goes back to their “it’s either serious or it’s shoujo” mentality which I’ve been noting for years.
July 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Can PULP really be called a failure? It lasted for quite a long run and I’ve long had the impression that it’s cancellation was more about there being more profitable genres (namely shoujo) to invest the labor.
At the Shojo Beat launch panel at Comic Con one of the Viz editors said something interesting, telling the audience that there are three types of manga — shounen, shoujo and seinen. I’m not sure it that’s a revelatory moment or if it was a matter of simplifying things (the editor was answering someone asking if Viz would be expand to seinen soon, so it could be just that she didn’t want to add josei into the question, having already dodged a similar question about BL). Your comment about their Signature line gets me thinking about that.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Well, what is this discussion about other than the lack of profitability of seinen generally? If you look at the major, long running titles that originated from PULP, only two–Banana Fish and Dance Till Tomorrow–survived to continue in graphic novel form after the magazine was cancelled. One was shoujo (arguably THE most important modern shoujo title), and the other was a romantic comedy/drama.
Even so, none of those big-name authors that ran for a long time in PULP have seen more of their work brought over here since. Which suggests to me that none of it was especially successful. (Though I’m betting of all of them, Banana Fish did the best.)
I don’t know whether I’d call it an “abject failure,” but I wouldn’t call it a “success” either, by any means.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
“Even so, none of those big-name authors that ran for a long time in PULP have seen more of their work brought over here since. ”
Oops, that may not be quite accurate, depending upon what you call “major.” Actually, Viz brought out a number of single-volume works by Junko Mizuno (woman), and one more by Ito Junji (much of whose early work was actually shoujo manga, if I remember correctly).
July 9th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
As always “profitable” is a tricky term since a publisher pursuing or distancing itself from a genre doesn’t indicate profit or loss… it indicates where the publisher sees a good return on their investment. Without a very detailed look at Viz’ P&L sheets (or an insider spilling some dirt) it’s hard to say whether PULP was profitable or not… what is clear to me, however, that Viz realized it could make more money for (roughly) the same amount of effort by shifting their focus to shoujo as the market changed.
Unfortunately, while Raijin and Comics One can be examples where seinen clearly wasn’t profitable, those publishers made other mistakes that blur the picture.
Anyway, my bit of musing aloud was equally about the problems josei has faced and the realization that, aside from TRAMPS LIKE US, both genres seem to have succeeded best when they were perceived as different genres.
Then again, I’m wondering if this all comes down to accessibility. A former Viz editor comments that 16+ or 18+ titles don’t get as many orders — I wonder if that indicates customer tastes or if the challenge lies in the gatekeeper (namely, bookstore buyers).
As for Ito, I never realized he did shoujo. What’s it like? I really love his horror work for focusing on character and emotional elements, so I imagine his shoujo could appeal to me.
July 9th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Viz realized it could make more money for (roughly) the same amount of effort by shifting their focus to shoujo as the market changed.
I think you’re quibbling over semantics. Business people always want MORE, so “profitability” is relative, not absolute; when TOKYOPOP came along and upped the ante, suddenly making $1 wasn’t enough when you could make $10. And, if you choose NOT to make that $10 instead of $1, so they say, your competition will overtake you, which will ultimately lead to very real losses (of opportunity, prestige, and…the bottom line).
BTW, I don’t like the term “josei.” It’s relatively new and ill-defined–a way of removing the stigma of “ladies comics” (which implied bodice rippers). Moreso even than seinen (which is also a bit ill-defined), publishers just throw that term around. Kiss (of Kimi wa Pet) is referred to as a “young josei magazine,” which means…? I don’t know, exactly. But Kimi wa Pet won Kodansha’s “shoujo” award. Some people use the furigana test, but then that means that Shinshokan publications Wings and South are josei. But wait. They were around before the term was common currency, and back then they were shoujo manga! Hmm.
As for why manga bodice rippers aren’t going over big, I think that’s likely because the market for that is already saturated by young adult and adult romance novels right here in the US. After all, BL is doing VERY well, perhaps because there’s nothing quite like it in western print media. Manga readers have always struck me as more of the fantasy/sci-fi slant than the Harlequin one, anyway, regardless of age. And, let’s face it: sci-fi in particular is very male-dominated, and both are very “white.” (Same goes for American comics.) Manga offers that slightly exotic alternative, which, if you’re a fantasy/sci-fi fan to begin with, probably has appeal.
As for Itou, I believe his Tomie was actually shoujo. Really.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:39 am
I think there’s a huge difference between “profitable” and “profitable enough” what’s not profitable enough to be worth a larger company’s time may be the building block that makes a start up. $1 may not be worth Viz or Dark Horse’s while but it would be for someone working out of a home office. (It’s a tough road requiring a lot of luck and intuition, but if people hadn’t taken those risks in the past, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.)
That’s an interesting comment about josei. Does the marketing of titles like Pet Shop of Horrors, Nodame Contabile or Mushashi #9 as shoujo isn’t as inapt as it initially seemed? Based on what’s made it stateside (Erica Sakuazawa comes to mind) I don’t really think of “bodice rippers” when I think of josei. That might not match what josei is in Japan, but the stuff that’s made it here and labels as josei mostly seems to be a lot like shoujo done with more mature themes or more nuanced storytelling. (Sakuazawa probably represents the idea of josei in my mind since it was the first josei title I read.) As always, there could be a fan filter effect at work, with me seeing a view of josei that’s limited to what American editors found worth fighting for.
Ugh. Sometimes I think American publishers should just toss out Japanese genres and just re-evaluate a series and figure out where it fits in its marketing plan. To some degree, I guess Viz is doing that with it’s Shonen Jump Advance line (I think I read somewhere that Yakitate is shounen, even though Viz markets it as a “Signature” title here.)
I agree that the uniqueness of BL helps fuel the genre’s growth. That’s helped, too, that its audience is ready to be catered to after hearing for decades that they didn’t exist or were freakish for showing an sexual interest in gay men similar to what straight men have for lesbians.
Ah, Tomie I think that remains my favorite of his horror comics. I still can go on about that awful movie. I have to admit, I really like the idea of horror comics in female-oriented genres since in the states horrors is seen as a strictly-male genre. That always struck me as strange since, growing up, I knew a lot of girls who loved a scary story.