Seinen sign-in
This week’s Flipped is up with reviews of Housui Yamazaki’s Mail (Dark Horse) and Kashimashi ~ Girl Meets Girl (Seven Seas).
While looking stuff up for the column, I was interested to see the titles that have been serialized in seinen anthology Dengeki Daioh, mostly because many of them don’t fit with my conventional (and probably too narrow) definition of seinen.
I mean… Yotsuba&! is seinen? Who knew?
I mean… Yotsuba&! is seinen? Who knew?
No one who ever listens to my reviews apparently ―(T_T)→.
Actually I bought MAIL the night before I left for Japan and had a good time with that. A little episodic but I enjoyed the Alfred Hitchcock feel to it as the lead (was also narrated) had a great sense of humor despite his deep personal connection to the supernatural. A bit of poetry before firing guns helps as well.
Comment by Ed — January 9, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
Good point on the Twilight Zone intros to the chapters. Those were nice touches.
Comment by davidpwelsh — January 9, 2007 @ 7:10 pm
Well Dengeki Daioh is a pretty otaku-oriented magazine, so it probobly isn’t a good representation of the average seinen magazine (I could see Yotsuba&! running in Afternoon, Monthly Beam or even Ikki though). I think alot of people take labels like “seinen” a bit too literally; adult men (and of course women for that matter) are probobly going to be more open to diffrent kinds of stories than children, which is probobly why there’s such a wide range of titles that could be considered seinen when compared to shonen manga.
And maybe its just be, but the fact that Strawberry Marshmallow’s target audience is older than 16 is a bit creepy…
Comment by Huff — January 9, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
True enough, Huff, and obviously more people are buying the Yotsuba&! digests than just a seinen audience, given how well the latest did in the Japanese sales charts. Unless the seinen audience is frighteningly large.
Comment by davidpwelsh — January 10, 2007 @ 5:01 am
Unless the seinen audience is frighteningly large.
Cough, cough.. It is, but we don’t tell people. Look at how many magazines we read and how they are on the forefront of technology (being some of the first to go digital and cell only). Oh and from the looks at the number of circles at comiket dedicated to seinen… Yeah seinen teh big time!!
Why else would Moyoco Anno draw seinen ^_^
Comment by ed — January 10, 2007 @ 9:47 pm