Shogakukan to halt 3 magazines

Various reports out of Japan indicate that number one manga publisher Shogakukan will be suspending no less than 3 magazines: the variety magazines Shogaku Gonensei and Shogaku Rokunensei (literally “Elementary 5th Grade” and “Elementary 6th Grade”), and the girls’ manga magazine ChuChu.  All three will get the axe in the February to March time frame.  ChuChu was an offshoot of Ciao created in 2005, but Gonensei and Rokusei have much deeper pedigrees… both magazines began in 1922, at the very launch of the company, and both hosted major manga series such as Doraemon,  which was serialized in no less than 8 separate magazines at one time.  In more recent times, Gonensei and Rokusei (along with Yonensei [4th Grade]… yeah, they have magazines for every grade level) were home to the Pocket Monster (Pokemon) manga.

At the height of the magazines’ popularity in 1973 (right after both started serializing Doraemon), Gonensei had a circulation of 630,000, and Rokunensei enjoyed 460,000.  Current circulation numbers are roughly one-tenth of those highs, and their fall was attributed to video games and the internet.

Edit: here’s a news report in English.

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In this brief article about Kindle’s reception in Japan, Mainichi brings up an important point… if any e-Reader hopes to be dominant on the international scene, better support for graphics-heavy comics and their publishers is a must.  In Japan, manga is already available on all kinds of hand-held devices, from cell phones to portable game consoles.  Unless Amazon steps up its efforts to court manga publishers like Kodansha, it will not be competitive in that market.

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Japanese emoticons explained… for those of you who do not read manga.

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Okazu speaks with Morishima Akiko, yuri mangaka and frequent contributor to Yuri Hime magazine, about her work and inspirations.

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Missed it… AnimeOnDVD is looking for manga reviewers.  I only mention this with the hope of stacking their editorial team in our favor, nyahaha.

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Comics212′s Christopher Butcher takes a highly critical look at the Garret Boast interview, finding fault with the business plan and Boast’s decision to permit the interview in the first place.  The moment Shojoberry’s staff considers any kind of real distribution, they’ll become intimately acquainted with the realities that Butcher alludes to so brutally in his post.  But I guess it’s better for them to hear it from someone who’s straightforward, and to hear it now rather than after they make major commitments that cannot be easily undone.