Special Feature: Manga Jouhou's 2005 Year in Review

[Jason]

It’s been a year of both trial and triumph for US Manga publishers. We saw long time independent publishers such as Studio Iron Cat and Comics One close up shop and go home. Large scale publishers ADV and CPM both placed a number of titles on hold and scaled back their mange plans, while announcing that they intended to return at full production at a future date. However, this year we also saw a record number of new publishers join the manga market. Dr Master, an Asian manga publisher, started up an American/English division by taking over a number of Comics One’s titles. Seven Seas Entertainment began work publishing popular webcomics such as Aoi House while working to bring over both the novels and the manga adaptation of the cult favorite “Boogiepop Phantom.” Drama Queen L.L.C. began work to bring manga to the US that is targeted towards mature female readers.

2005 was also a year for new milestones in the world of manga. ShoPro Entertainment Inc. and VIZ, LLC merged to form a new company, Newco, and celebrated the news by following it up with the announcement that they would be launching a new monthly shoujo manga anthology called Shojo Beat. Tokyopop published their 1000th manga volume release. Del Ray Manga sold over 1 million volumes of manga less then a year after they opened for business. Manga companies, like their anime counterparts, showed they are far more in touch with their target market then typical mainstream companies by releasing preview chapters, both on web pages and for downloading for viewing on the ever popular PSP unit. Keitaro and Naru got married at long last, and someone finally had sense enough to license Blame!

Two things really seemed to mark this year. First off, this was the year for female manga fans. In addition to the aforementioned Shojo Beat manga anthology, this year saw a marked increase in the number of titles aimed at female viewers and a corresponding increase in sales amongst females. Shoujo titles also proved themselves to be equally popular in Japan, with the shoujo series Nana (the flagship title in Viz’s Shojo Beat) outselling most any other title released, volume after volume. This was also the year of English language based series, more commonly known as OEL titles, or Original English Language titles, becoming increasingly popular. Tokyopop saw its Princess AI series, based on alt-rocker Courtney Love, hit record highs while their various Rising Stars of Manga winners started panning out, with admittedly varied success. Other publishers also worked on expanding the OEL world, such as Seven Seas work publishing manga inspired web comics, or web manga’s, Dark Horse’s just released Harlequin Romance series, which are drawn by Japanese Mangaka and written by English romance authors, and RealBuzz Studios’ Christian inspired series Serenity.

Not everything was rosy in the world of manga this year, however. In addition to the problems faced by the US publishers listed above, this year also saw several Japanese publishers run into problems, like Penguin Shobo and Heiwa Shuppa. The manga world was also shocked by accusation of plagiarism, first with the news that Mangaka Suetsugu Yuki traced scenes from Inoue Takehiko’s Slam Dunk and then with news that Inoue Takehiko had in turn taken inspiration directly from a number of actual photos of NBA players such as Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. 2005 also saw the loss of several people in the manga world, such as adult artist Setsuna, and Mangaka Seino Shuuichi, Shinji Imura, and Heiwa Shuppa. For the most part, however, the good has overcome the bad.

This has also been a banner year here at Manga Jouhou. We have done much to improve the site, and work daily to continue to improve. First and foremost, we have worked hard to prove that we ARE the internet’s first and best source for all your manga related news. With a lot of our info coming either directly from American publishers or straight from Japanese sources, we offer much that can be found nowhere else. The entire news staff is to be commended, but I’d like to individually thank Eclipse for all his hard work. Despite only a year on staff, he’s largely responsible for most of the changes you see in our daily news. His tireless work to improve the news that IS the core of “Manga News” is remarkable, and much appreciated by everyone.

One of the other big improvements here at Manga Jouhou is in the field of reviews. Our year long recruiting drive has given us a large and highly competent review staff that also has been working tirelessly to give to you timely and well written reviews and articles on any number of titles and topics. I’ll not list everyone for fear of forgetting someone and having to spend the next year living it down, but I want my entire review staff to know that I am proud of them and all they have accomplished. In addition to the excellent work you all have done to create a steady stream of reviews for everyone to enjoy reading, you also have to put up with a moody head editor. I don’t say this nearly enough, but… thanks.

And lastly we come to the hardest working people at all, our coders. Most of what they do goes on beyond public eyes, so most of you reading this don’t get to see the time and effort they put into keeping this site running. They have been working hard to re-write or re-work a huge chunk of the site’s code; code that has been written as needed and patched over more times then anyone can count. The changes they have done and continue to do makes all the magic that the news team and review team does possible, and they are working even now to bring major innovations to the site.

It’s almost impossible to guess where the manga world is heading in the year to come, but I expect that it will be one wild ride. We here at Manga Jouhou want to thank you for your dedication to our site, and for coming back to us time and time again, helping us to become and continue to be the best place on the net for any and all manga related news, reviews, and articles. Many changes and improvements are on their way, so strap yourselves in and prepare for another exciting year in the world of manga. See you in 365 days!

Firedog