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This blog is a storage space for various thoughts, observations and musings centering on shōjo manga (少女漫画, Japanese comics for girls), josei-oriented manga (Japanese comics for women) and manga created by women (in the widest sense). Topics from other fields of relevance, such as music, art, literature and film may be discussed here as well.

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Viewing all posts with tag: publisher: shogakukan



[Artist Profile/Manga Review] Remembering Yoshino Sakumi

Itsuka midori no hanataba by Yoshino Sakumi (Shogakukan)Today marks the first anniversary of mangaka Yoshino Sakumi’s death on April 20, 2016. The sad news came as a tremendous shock to many of us as it was so sudden and unexpected. Yoshino Sakumi, born in 1959, debuted in 1980 in Shueisha’s now folded Bouquet magazine and made a name for herself with works featuring memorably quirky characters, often twins, just as often going through a serious identity crisis, and exploring the depths of the human mind and soul. Shōnen wa kōya wo mezasu (1985-1987), Juliette no tamago (1988-1989) or the long-running period, published in Shogakukan’s defunct seinen magazine IKKI from 2004 to 2014, are among her most beloved and well-known works. Yoshino was also a respected film and literary critic and essayist.

Kioku no gihou by Yoshino Sakumi (Shogakukan)The works of her late period are closely linked with Shogakukan’s Gekkan flowers magazine. One of her strongest manga, the psychological thriller and human drama Kioku no gihō (highly recommended if you want to buy one single bunko volume to sample the authors work, be prepared for some emotional shocks though!), was published in the very first issue of the magazine in 2002 and a colour illustration for it was used on the cover. Through the first and second decade of the new millenium, she kept coming back to the magazine for more one-shots and visually intriguing two-tone comics.

These last works, previously unpublished in comic book form, were lovingly compiled by the editors at flowers and turned into a beautifully designed single volume called Itsuka midori no hanataba (A Green Bouquet For You). The large A5 format book comes with a transparent dust jacket printed with flowers and contains several short and super short stories showcasing the range of this extremely talented author who had to leave this earth much too soon.

Cover design of Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

The title story is a romantic and touching ghost story while in the others included, readers will chance upon a dream dragon, a watermelon bringing possible death by doppelgänger, a princess with a bat as her earring, a green cat reminding a young woman of her guilty conscience, a woman obsessed with her fortune teller and an undertaker being the only one left after the powerhungry kings of the world have killed each other. Like many of Yoshino’s works, these stories depict the nature of us humans with a sharp sense for our dark side, but also with gentleness, poignancy and tongue-in-cheek humour.

Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

The largest part of the book is reserved for her second-to-last published short story, MOTHER, which was supposed to be continued soon in flowers until death ended this fantastic artist’s career. The unfinished 100-page rough script (called nÄ“mu/name in Japanese) composed of dialogues and pencil-drawn sketches for the manga layout is also included in the book. It’s surprisingly readable and, as a look behind the scenes, interesting from a manga fan’s point of view, the story itself being a post-apocalyptic sci-fi vision of the future, in tone and subject very similar to some of Hagio Moto‘s works.

Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

Yoshino Sakumi's Itsuka midori no hanataba (Shogakukan)

As much as I miss Yoshino-sensei and would have loved to see her work on something longer again after finishing period, this wonderful book provides something like closure, as chlichéd as it might sound. She’ll always be in the top ten of my favourite mangaka and I hope her unique, sometimes shocking, always moving works will continue to fascinate readers for many years to come!

Title: Yoshino Sakumi SakuhinshÅ« – Itsuka midori no hanataba (吉野朔実作品集 いつか緑の花束に)
Author: Yoshino Sakumi (吉野朔実)
ISBN: 9784091670748
Publisher: Shogakukan
Format: A5, 248 pages
Year: 2016
Additional information: Last collection of short stories, published in December 2016 after the artist’s death on April 20, 2016. Contains works previously published in Gekkan flowers from 2004 to 2016: MOTHER and the unpublished follow-up in raw script form (name), the title story plus 3 other very short one-shots and 4 two-tone one-shots (black & red, black & green), plus a gallery of colour artworks, author comments and an interview recorded shortly before her death. More info at Shogakukan Comic.

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Categories: Manga Review, Mangaka Profile.
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Posted on Apr 20, 2017 (Thu, 11:57 pm). .

[Manga & Anime News] The April Agenda

We’ve already entered a new month and April ’17 looks like it has some very exciting things waiting for us – some new beginnings that might bring a sparkle to our eyes in best old-school shoujo manga fashion and some endings that will hopefully not be too tear-inducing…

Fukumenkei Noise/Anonymous Noise TV anime by Tokyo MX based on the manga by Fukuyama Ryouko→ The second week of April marks the start of an anime TV series based on Fukuyama Ryōko’s Fukumenkei Noise (Anonymous Noise). The series has been destined for the whole multi-platform treatment it will be getting (there’s also a movie coming out in November this year) from the start. Yes, it’s literally screaming for a form that goes beyond the printed medium and brings sound into the whole affair because it is about just that – sound, music! From April 11 on, which is the day the first episode airs in Japan, we can expect some pop punk noise accompanying the story of the love triangle between the girl Nino who turns into Alice, the lead singer of the massively hyped newcomer band in No hurry to shout (called Inohari by fans and the media), whose members wear bandages and eye-patches to hide their identities. Their guitarist and main songwriter Yuzu brings Nino into the band after Nino had inspired him to write songs for her back when they were kids and Nino had to overcome the fact that her first love Momo had suddenly moved away. Yuzu himself is still in love with Nino while Nino tries to find Momo through her voice but when she finally does, he rejects her. Momo is now a famous composer of pop songs, feeling guilty about making money with the songs he originally wrote for Nino for whom he still has feelings. He’s just in senior high, the same one Nino and Yuzu attend. And what makes the situtation even more complicated, he’s the bassist in band called SILENT BLACK KITTY who’s being criticized for being nothing but a copy band of Inohari.
Fukumenkei Noise follows Nino and the two very different boys, Yuzu and Momo, and their bands all the way to the top of the pop music world. With the added element of ‘real’ music, the anime will hopefully express even more powerfully the youthful energy and passion of the manga, currently running in Hana to Yume. I can’t wait. And please note: a post for the manga is coming to this very space next week!

Palace Meiji by Kuze Banko (Hakusensha)→ The end of the month will bring readers the final chapter of Kuze Banko’s series Palace Meiji in Hakusensha’s Betsuhana (Bessatsu Hana to Yume), with its June issue in stores April 26. To commemorate the conclusion of the magazine’s number one title, Palace Meji will be getting the magazine’s cover, a color spread and a furoku fan book called “Palace no omoide” (literally “Memories of the Palace”) along with the last chapter. And I’m getting my tissues ready because I really enjoyed young hero Kimiyori’s years of training and working at Meiji Palace, serving the young, tough and beautiful (fictional) empress Akiko. 6 comic volumes filled with episodes of court life in alternative modern-meets-traditional Japan, subversions of gender roles and lots of action, human drama, warm humour and suspense have been published so far, already destined to become classic shōjo manga material.
In related news, another long-running series, the romantic comedy Pochama ni by Hirama Kaname will come to an end in that same issue of Betsuhana.

The final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no Hana→ Following up from this post and the publication of the final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi’s Joō no hana, it’s only fair to say the fantasy romance series stuck out like a rainbow-colored swallowtail butterfly among the brownish grey moths usually running in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi. The publisher itself must have come to the same realization and transferred the artist to the place she rightfully belongs on its roster of shōjo magazines, that being Monthly flowers. Izumi’s new series of one-shots will start with its first story titled Suisō Yakyoku (let me see, Nocturne of the Water Tank?), a whopping 60 pages including color pages plus the cover of the magazine, published in Gekkan flowers 6/2017 out on April 28. Looks like we’re back in the present day with a ‘it’s slightly complicated’ type of romantic comedy, judging from the short bit of description and the illustration of the two main characters on the flowers preview page.
The current flowers issue (5/2017) celebrates the 20th anniversary of Watanabe Taeko’s Kaze hikaru along with a sticker calender furoku, the beginning of the final story arc of Tamura Yumi’s long-running post-apocalyptic action manga 7SEEDS (which I must admit has the ability to give me nightmares, that series is just not for the faint of heart), and the very last chapter of Kodama Yuki’s Tsukikage Baby, the follow-up to her hit series Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope).
My order with the limited edition of the final volume of Joō no hana with the memorial fan book isn’t here yet but I noticed it’s already sold out at most places and going for slightly crazy prices at amazon… See the cover for it, which wasn’t out when I wrote my post last month, on the top right!

So this looks like a fun-packed month that is guaranteed to bring lots of material to shorten rainy spring days and long commutes to and from school/work!

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Categories: Anime, Manga, Manga News.
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Posted on Apr 2, 2017 (Sun, 2:34 am). .

[Manga News] Limited Edition of Final Volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi’s Joō no Hana announced

cover image for vol. 1 of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no hana published by ShogakukanIzumi Kaneyoshi’s long-running historical manga Joō no hana (The Flower of the Queen) officially came to end with its last installment published at the end of last year, in the 1/2017 issue of Shogakukan’s Betsucomi. The final comic volume, the 15th of the series, will come out in about three weeks on March 24. Besides the regular edition of the tankōbon (463 yen), Shogakukan has announced a special limited edition for 850 yen that comes with a memorial fan book containing lots of illustrations, character analyses and famous phrases, and the alternative ending of the manga published as a furoku in Betsucomi 2/2017. It’s already up for preorder at most online book sellers. This sounds like an absolute must-have for any Joō no hana fan, even the casual one!

Joō no hana started back in 2008 in Betsucomi. It received the 60th Shogakukan Manga Prize in the shōjo category. A French translation (titled La Fleur millénaire) is being published by Kazé Manga, while Ever Glory Publishing has licensed it for publication in Taiwan.

cover image for vol. 12 of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no hana published by ShogakukanSet in a fictional world inspired by the China of the Warring States period, it tells the epic story of Aki, the daughter of the king of the powerful state of A and of the princess of the small state of Kō, and Hakusei, a young slave with blonde hair and blue eyes who swears eternal loyalty to Aki because she doesn’t treat him like a lower class human being and keeps defending him from discrimination. The two of them often talk about the myth of the “Queen’s Flower”, a very rare flower that only blooms once every thousand years. It is said that a legendary queen a long long time ago wanted this flower to bloom on her grave because it possessed the mysterious power to grant any wish…

cover image for vol. 14 of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no hana published by ShogakukanAlong with Hakusei and the mysterious merchant Seitetsu who supports them, 14-year old Aki has a long journey ahead of herself during which she’ll have to prove that despite being a young woman, she has the tactical abilities, the talent and the strength to rule over the country of A. Through the years she’ll experience loss and betrayal from people she trusted. Her development from a girl seeking revenge for her mother’s death to someone worthy being called a queen has captured many readers over the years, not just thanks to its gripping story but also because of the romance between her and Hakusei, of course ;) This is a shōjo manga after all, a pseudo-historical one, yes, but rest assured this doesn’t drown you with dry facts and terms. It does explain some strategic elements during the conflicts and wars between A, Kō, Do and Sō but it’s all easy to follow and helps keep up the tension of the story. The final comic will be the 15th volume of the series which means it’s been a long journey for both Aki, Hakusei and the reader, but I haven’t experienced a single boring moment during my time reading it, so I have the highest of hopes for the ending!

Information for volume 15 of Joō no hana and the limited edition:
Title: Joō no hana 15 (女王の花 15 & 女王の花 15 スペシャルファンブック付き限定版)
Author: Izumi Kaneyoshi (和泉かねよし)
Publisher: Shogakukan
ISBN: 4091391249 (regular ed.) & 409941888X (limited ed.)
Format: Tankōbon, 463 yen (regular ed.) & 850 yen (limited ed.)

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Categories: Manga.
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Posted on Mar 3, 2017 (Fri, 7:03 pm). .




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