Word: shonen
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...Wolverine wins, right? Not if sales figures are a measure of superstrength. When Yugi and a bizarre cast of fellow manga characters debuted in the U.S. last month in the Japanese mangazine Shonen Jump, pre- and postpubescent consumers snatched up all 250,000 copies with a WHOOOSH! Not even the X-Men are a match for Shonen Jump; issues of the most popular U.S. comic books rarely see print runs of more than 150,000. "It's a crazy amount of sales," says Robert Bricken, managing editor of the New York-based comic fanzine Anime Insider. "By all indications [Shonen...
...KAAAA-CHIIING! How could U.S. publishers have been so blind? Before Shonen Jump, no one had thought to export translated versions of Japanese manga to the U.S. mass market, despite the fact that the genre?characterized by its fanciful stories and earnest, teardrop-faced heroes?has been a favorite in Japan for decades. It's not that American kids are clueless. They've been exposed to Japanese animation, or anim?, for years?thanks to the success of manga-based TV cartoons like Pok?mon and Dragon Ball, and the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. Yet no one thought manga would...
...except Seiji Horibuchi, president of San Francisco-based Viz Communications, who observed the popularity of anim? among American kids and decided the country was ready. Two years ago he approached Japanese publishing giant Shueisha about exporting its popular teen-oriented Weekly Shonen Jump (shonen means "boy" in Japanese) series to the U.S. After a year of negotiations, Horibuchi convinced Shueisha's skeptical executives that American kids were an audience waiting to happen. It may have helped that Weekly Shonen Jump's Japanese circulation has declined by half, to about 3.4 million, since the mid-1990s, and the company was looking...
...venture is not without risk. Shonen Jump is up against the tried-and-true formula of American comics, which are traditionally based on red-blooded superheroes triumphing over evil in 36 pages or less. The five series that appear in the 300-page first issue of Shonen Jump?Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, SandLand, YuYu Hakusho and One Piece?have nuanced story arcs that may not be resolved for years. For example, the archives of Dragon Ball Z?a tale of galactic war over a set of wish-granting orbs?run to 8,000 pages printed over more than...
...Readers will still have to be open-minded. In the translated version of Shonen Jump, staple Japanese onomatopoeias like ZA!, DON! and GAGII! have generally been replaced with more familiar sounds such as WHOOOSH! and BONK! But some, like KIIIIN! (the sound of a superhero hurtling through the air), haven't been changed. To get readers up to speed, an editorial team (comprised mostly of American 20-something manga enthusiasts) assembles pages of interviews with cartoonists, background information on characters and story lines, and explanations of the comics' Japanese cultural aspects. The American comic reads in Japanese fashion?right...