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by Taro Toporific » Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:08 am
by Yorik » Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:31 am
by American Oyaji » Sat Mar 18, 2006 6:44 am
by Yorik » Sat Mar 18, 2006 4:47 pm
by Greji » Sat Mar 18, 2006 8:47 pm
Yorik wrote:I don't remember typing that, though there is a lot from last night that I don't remember. I would love to know what possessed me to post that in this thread..
by Choeki » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:14 pm
by Taro Toporific » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:55 pm
Choeki wrote:I just went to Ikebukuro today and searched for 2 hours for this place, with no luck... Found plenty of soaplands and a university though. Did Wired magazine make this all up in order to make a fake fashion trend?
by Choeki » Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:25 am
by Pencilslave » Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:10 pm
by Choeki » Thu Mar 23, 2006 12:33 am
Pencilslave wrote:Well, this is a breath of fresh air. Now even otaku have a chance of getting laid. They just need to turn off the porn anime and get out there and look for their female counterparts.
by Pencilslave » Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:04 pm
by Taro Toporific » Sun Mar 26, 2006 12:22 pm
by Mulboyne » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:31 pm
"Fujoshi" is the word for female otaku (nerds) who like novels and comics about love affairs between men. Manga with fujoshi, literally "rotten girls," as main characters are gaining in popularity. These fujoshi have romances with otaku men and can cause a commotion with their own unique obsessions...Fujoshi tend to let their imaginations run wild when they think about love between attractive male anime or comic-book characters. They build erotic fantasies about favorite celebrities, athletes, samurai or men in their own lives...Last year, magazines and TV programs began focusing on the Otome (maiden) Road in Tokyo's Ikebukuro, a gathering place for fujoshi and a central marketplace for dojinshi targeting fujoshi...more...
by Kuang_Grade » Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:33 pm
Pow! Romance! Comics Court Girls
Inspired by Japanese Manga,
Major American Publishers
Aim for New Female Fans
By MATT PHILLIPS
June 8, 2007; Page B1
The next wave of heroes in the comic book business may look more like "Plain Janes" than X-Men.
Industry heavyweights including Time Warner Inc.'s DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment Inc. are betting that girls represent a big growth opportunity for the traditionally male-dominated medium. It's part of a renewed push in recent years by the two biggest comic-book companies to court a new audience with products aimed squarely at teenage girls.
The new titles are inspired in part by the fast growth of translated Japanese comics called manga. While gory and violent themes aimed at boys are staples of manga, fantasy and romantic storylines meant to appeal to girls have helped manga capture the attention of female readers, an audience comic publishers have long struggled to attract.
Last month, DC Comics launched a line of original books, dubbed Minx, which include "The Plain Janes," about a band of suburban outcasts who form a "secret art gang." Other Minx graphic novels include "Re-Gifters," -- about a Korean-American girl and martial arts enthusiast who falls for a surfer boy who gives a present she buys him to someone else -- and "Clubbing," which follows Charlotte "Lottie" Brook, a London girl sent to live at her grandparents' dowdy country club after being caught with a fake ID at a chic West End nightspot.
The publishers are following the lead of upstart manga publishers -- such as Los Angeles' Tokyopop and San Francisco's Viz Media, both closely held -- that have managed to draw female readers with a mix of girl-friendly content and distribution to both comic book shops and mainstream bookstores. Trade publication ICv2 puts the total comics and graphic novel market at about $640 million last year in the U.S. and Canada, with manga accounting for about $200 million of that figure.
The manga category is expanding quickly. Total sales of manga books jumped 22% to 9.5 million units in 2006 from 7.8 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen BookScan, which collects point-of-sale information from 6,500 retail locations across the country, including those operated by Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. The manga category in 2006 accounted for about two-thirds (68.5%) of all graphic novels sold in U.S. bookstores, up from slightly more than half (53.8%) in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan. (The figures don't include comic-book stores.)
That fast growth helped convince DC that the time is right to cultivate a significant customer base of teenage girls.
"We were looking at the success of manga as a great sign that teenage girls were actually reading comics again," said Karen Berger, a senior vice president at DC Comics who oversees the Minx line. "Girls tend to read more than boys historically, and the fact that there hasn't been that much material in the comic and graphic novel form aimed for young girls before this just leaves the area wide open."
Reading manga can be an unusual experience for the uninitiated. The paperback books, usually translated from Japanese, are read top right to bottom left and are priced around $10. (In some books the first pages remind readers to start at the back.) Manga also has a different pace and story-telling style than traditional comics. For instance, instead of action-driven storylines punctuated with frequent fight scenes, manga titles -- especially those aimed at girls -- often dedicate significant space to awkward silences, embarrassing moments and close ups of tear-filled eyes. Friendships and romance tend to figure prominently, even against fantastical backdrops that include robots, ninjas and vampires.
Viz Media's "Vampire Knight" tracks the adventures of Yuki Cross, who attends a boarding school loaded with vampires. Its pages feature their fair share of gun play and neck bites. But even in this setting, a complicated relationship quickly emerges between Yuki and Zero Kiryu -- who both are responsible for protecting regular students from the vampire contingent -- and a tall, dark, dashing vampire named Kaname Kuran.
The artistic conventions and techniques of manga can differ markedly from U.S. comics. For example, female characters in manga tend to be less voluptuous than the superwomen in U.S. comics. Such curvaceous characters can be tough for young women to relate to, says Nicole Lewis, a 19-year-old manga reader who is going into her sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "It's a little off-putting," Ms. Lewis says of some female superheroes in American comics. "Especially to young women who don't look like that at all."
Ms. Lewis says she likes the fact that the female stars of manga are often girls without any special powers, who wear normal clothes, attend high school and are trying to resolve some life problems. "They don't need to be bit by a spider or be from another planet," Ms. Lewis said.
DC Comics has an existing manga imprint, called CMX, which is translated from Japanese. The new Minx series will mimic the general look and price-point of manga. But Ms. Berger stresses that the books are designed with American readers in mind. They read in the standard, left-to-right, manner. And they're written in English, not translated.
Meanwhile, DC's archrival, Marvel, has also been gunning for female readers, although its strategy differs. Instead of starting a separate line dedicated to the demographic, the company has been hiring writers known for their established female following. In format, these comics are more like traditional superhero periodicals, but the company's strategy also involves repackaging the material in hardcover and graphic novel formats.
Last year, Marvel launched its "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series of comic books, based on the swift-selling novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. The title character in the series tracks criminals through the sometimes-seedy vampire underground of St. Louis. The series has proven popular with women and brought a range of new shoppers into Carol & John's Comic Book Shop in Cleveland, says co-owner John Dudas. "They came out of nowhere," Mr. Dudas says.
Marvel has brought in other writers popular with women before. In 2006, Marvel began publishing a miniseries on the character Storm, a female mutant member of the X-Men that was written by romance novelist Eric Jerome Dickey. Before that, Marvel hired Joss Whedon, the creator of cult television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," to write Marvel's "Astonishing X-Men" title, in part because of his track record attracting women readers.
Such moves have been part of a push by Marvel over the last three years to try new strategies to bring readers to Marvel titles, says David Gabriel, senior vice president of sales and circulation at Marvel's publishing unit. "Before that, the thought was, if you do 'She-Hulk,' that will attract girls," he says.
The moves to attract female readers come as the comic-book industry is at its healthiest point in recent memory. In 2006, dollar sales from dominant distributor Diamond Comics to specialty comic shops rose 15% -- the biggest jump since comic-and-hobby trade publication ICv2 began tracking figures in 2001. Last year, Marvel Entertainment's publishing-segment revenue -- which includes sales to booksellers and comic shops -- rose 17% to $108.5 million. (Time Warner doesn't break out DC's numbers.)
Barnes & Noble's graphic-novel buyer, Jim Killen, says sales of manga books are roughly split between the sexes. But that's a far cry from traditional comic-book audience, dominated by male buyers.
"We want all of our customers to realize this isn't an exclusive club just for college age males," said Cliff Biggers, who owns Dr. No's Comics & Games in Marietta, Ga. "There's material for everyone. That's what we keep stressing."
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