I always find it interesting how unfamiliar many Western manga fans are with the way manga is distributed in Japan. I have no doubt that if you were to ask your typical manga fan about manga magazines, you will find them confused, perhaps only able to name one or two with no idea of the economics behind them. That is understandable, why should a Western manga fan have to be familiar with manga magazines and distribution when it seemingly has nothing to do with them? However, I think that fans of any medium should learn about the way their media is distributed.
Manga magazines are different to other media that feature manga such as newspapers, specialty magazines etc in that their primary focus is on manga. These magazines often use low quality newsprint and can be anywhere from about 200 pages to over a 1000! These magazines will often have a common theme such as demographics including Shonen, Shojo, Seinen etc or topics such as golf, cooking, 4-koma and will feature stories from a variety of mangaka who are allotted a number of pages in the magazine for their chapter.
The first manga magazine was released in 1874 and was called Eshinbun Nipponchi. It was cancelled after only three issues but helped pave the way for a variety of other magazines. The first shonen magazine was released in 1895 and was called Shonen Sekai. A shojo version of this magazine was released in 1906 called Shojo Sekai, however, this was not the first Shojo magazine to have been released with the 1902 magazine Shojo Kai predating it.
Many of the manga magazines we are familiar with such as Nakayoshi, Ribon, Weekly Shonen Jump etc did not start until the 1950-60s with the wave of manga inspired by western animation and comics. Recently, we have seen some manga magazines that were traditionally printed move to online only as well as some magazines released exclusively on digital platforms.
I have often heard manga magazines compared to TV channels and I don’t disagree with the comparison. Just like channel surfing, you might start out only interested in a couple of series in a magazine but, when you decide to read the other stories, you might find others that you’re entertained by.
With the growth of popularity of manga in the West, some companies attempted to emulate manga magazines for Western audiences. A couple of examples of these would be Viz’s release of Shonen Jump and Yen Press’ Yen Plus. While these magazines proved successful initially, they eventually transitioned to digital only before being eventually cancelled.
Manga magazines are fascinating to me and I hope that more fans of manga can learn about them. Let me know your thoughts on manga magazines, if you have collected/read any and whether you would like to see Western companies try releasing another manga magazine or if they should stick to an on demand service.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!