Add Precocious Curmudgeon’s David Welsh to the list of those who think josei manga is an idea whose time has come. “I’ve been wondering when someone would make a concentrated appeal to the potential audience for josei works,” he says, then points out a few efforts that have fallen short: Dark Horse’s Harlequin line, which appeals almost exclusively to people who like Harlequin Romances, and Tokyopop’s Manga After Hours line, which never seems to have gotten off the ground.
Manga After Hours? Time to step into the wayback machine. Here’s a PW article from Tokyopop’s initial announcement.
Tokyopop publicity director Susan Hale said that the current manga reader demographic is focused on tween and teen girls. “There isn’t really manga that attracts a woman reader who’s a little bit older, intelligent, independent and discerning,” said Hale. “Manga After Hours will include selected Tokyopop titles that appeal to modern female sensibilities, with real-life situations and problems.”
Hale added several selling points, such as the books can be read in an hour, making them a perfect read for, say, “an evening bubble bath, the beach or a lazy moment on the couch.” A lengthy subway ride would correlate better with my single-girl days, but I guess the job of publicity directors is to make things sound enticing.
Anyway. Manga After Hours was not a separate imprint but more of a “marketing concept,” and therein lies the rub. It’s hard to sell women on something that looks just like what their kid sisters read, and Happy Mania in particular doesn’t look like something that would appeal to most twentysomething women. Still, the idea generated some favorable buzz from bloggers at the time (although Lyle wondered if this was aimed at retailers more than readers). So what happened? On the Tokyopop message board, Tokyopop editor Greenlily (Lillian D-P?) says
“Manga After Hours” was something from the early days of the dearly departed Passion Fruits line, which died the sad death of low sales. I’m still hoping it’ll get revived one of these days, because there are so many great josei titles out there, and putting them in a line of their own seems to make sense, but it may be a while.
I think David is right about this:
With rights to Sakurazawa’s books, Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss, Yayoi Ogawa’s very popular Tramps Like Us, and a bunch of other works, they could very easily have repackaged books from their existing holdings into a josei line without having to license anything new. It also would have presented them with the option of categorizing future OEL offerings in the josei line, giving them an extra bit of marketing distinction.
But I would strongly recommend making it an imprint, like they have with BLU, or possibly going for a unified cover design. Take the Go!Comi route and charge an extra dollar or two (not ten!) for a slightly better cover and print quality. And get the PR person to push them in women’s magazines; you could even place them in non-bookstore retail outlets, like clothing stores. (Just as long as you have them in Borders, too; I’m really making that Borders card work for me!) With the success of Nana, and the aging of the original shoujo fans, this may indeed be an idea whose time has come. But it needs to be done right.
So most twenty somethign women don’t read chick lit? Happy Mania is just a comic book version of that.
Shannon,
No, I just don’t think Happy Mania looks like chick lit. Look at the cover of volume 1: It’s yellow and pinkish-purple, and there is something about it that just makes me think it’s a fanservice-ish book for guys. The covers of the other volumes are better, but volume 1 would put me right off (I admit, I haven’t read it—just looked at the cover). Chick lit has a definite look, and this isn’t it.
Ah! I was thinking about the story- young girl has a bunch of crazy mishaps because she fucks around all the time, not the cover.
I think you’re right about the value of a specific, nicely designed trade dress for a josei line… something that incorporates the distinct style of the creators with a recognizable, chick-lit-friendly aesthetic that frames things in a clear, appealing way. While my wallet would weep, a price differential would probably make a lot of sense, too. Del Rey’s upcoming mature line springs to mind as an example of pricing something for a specific audience.
I’ve been saying this for years.. there’s no josei without Saimon Fumi. When is Tokyo Love Story going to be released here? Her works are probably most influential josei manga ever created. I really don’t consider there’s a real josei scene in the West inless I see Asunaro Hakusho in English.
By a bizarre coincidence, the publisher of Go! Comi (that would be me) wrote an episode of Batman: The Animated Series called “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” It was the Riddler’s origin story.
Cool! It’s something my dad used to say (in an ironic-funny way, not a cruel-hypercritical way), but the sentiment is more from my mother, who used to observe that it was much easier to sit on the sidelines and criticize than to actually do something. It turns out she was describing the appeal of blogging, long before there even was a blogosphere.