Comments on: Danielle Leigh's Reading Diary -- 12/30/08

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:51:44 +0000

Stencil is definitely josei actually which AQUA is but when MgGarden and Ichijinsha broke off from Enix they took Enix's magazine fortmating - where mags generally do not cater to specific demographic. So Comic Blade and ZeroSum were nitially considered shounen (one reason why ARIA is considered shounen).. Now they have sister mags so those pubs can be more demo specific.

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:14:09 +0000

*nodnods* That makes sense.

By: Danielle Leigh

Danielle Leigh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:43:01 +0000

I like the fact that you get so much value out of magazine (bulky but you just end up recycling them / throwing them away) and to be honest there are certain yaoi / shojo mags that I'd enjoy reading but probably only choose one title from the serliazation chapters -- say a Yamada Yugi or Saika Kunieda work -- as something I'd want to "keep" on the shelf as a collection.

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:37:35 +0000

I think I might do pretty well at resisting the magazines, unless it were for a series I loved. They're so bulky, and I'd probably end up collecting stuff I wasn't really all too keen on. That said, I'm buying the Buffy Season Eight comics individually and in the trade format.

By: Danielle Leigh

Danielle Leigh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:24:10 +0000

great resource! I think I would die of media overload if I lived in Japan -- there is just no way I could resist all those wonderful manga magazines. I get the lure of both the manga magazines and the collected volumes and would be one of those people who would totally pay for the same content twice (something I'm not willing to do with American comics -- it is either buy floppies or the trade, but not both).

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:15:51 +0000

Here is one source for the shounen claim. Quite the handy guide!

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:12:25 +0000

Oh, I wasn't trying to point up a mistake on your part; I did notice the distinction you made about the art.

The text calling Monthly Stencil a shojo magazine is the same I noticed on Amazon. Other sources, though, claim it's shounen. That's the same magazine, by the way, that Aqua ran in, and it's pretty universally acknowledged as shounen.

Maybe this is part of an interesting trend. Melinda Beasi recently reviewed seinen title Hitohira, which Aurora Publishing is labelling as shojo on their site.

By: Danielle Leigh

Danielle Leigh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:18:50 +0000

The art style owes its debt to shojo but other than that it is no more shojo than Petshop of Horrors or xxxholic. i.e. the magazine determines everything right? I went by the back of the manga which claims it started off Monthly Stencil (as you note) but says it is a "shojo magazine." I don't know that magazine so I can't verify that claim.

But you are right, there is a reason it went to Viz media and I only claimed that the art was very shojo, not the title itself (Yes, I'm going to weasel my way out of this one, just you watch!)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:18:35 +0000

But you are right, there is a reason it went to Viz media and I only claimed that the art was very shojo, not the title itself (Yes, I'm going to weasel my way out of this one, just you watch!)

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:16:41 +0000

Y'know, I think that Nightmare Inspector might actually be shounen, despite places like ICv2 and Amazon claiming it's shojo. It was serialized in Square Enix's Stencil and G Fantasy, both of which are shounen magazines. And if that weren't enough, most recent shojo licenses from Viz have been released under the Shojo Beat imprint. I can't think of any that went to the Viz Media one. Fumi Yoshinaga's latest is going to Signature, true, but it's very classy and highly-regarded, so that makes sense.

By: jun

jun — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:24:20 +0000

I haven't read this series yet, but it's been on my radar after getting some good reviews. I'm especially interested after hearing that the cases don't keep treading familiar ground.