Sunday, March 22, 2009
Major manga comic weeklies 'Magazine,' 'Sunday' mark 50th anniversary
Posted by erusan81 at 12:55 PM
Japan’s two pioneering manga weeklies, Shonen (boys) Magazine and Shonen Sunday, mark their 50th anniversaries Tuesday amid concerns about their future profitability. The weeklies, only featuring manga stories, along with similar manga magazines for girls, have helped comics in Japan develop into a distinctive style of art worthy of an adult audience.
The Magazine and the Sunday were first published respectively by Kodansha Ltd and Shogakukan Inc on the same day—March 17, 1959. But the characters of the two magazines are totally different.
The Magazine preferred serious stories focusing on human nature and the success of amateur athletes with realistic and graphic pictures while the Sunday featured relatively light tales such as love stories involving students or urban life.
But recently, there have been signs of a decrease of readers as the forms of entertainment have diversified.
According to data made available by entities such as the Japan Magazine Publishers Association, sales of the Magazine have fallen to 1.8 million copies from a peak of 4.5 million copies in 1998.
The Sunday has also suffered a decline in sales to 870,000 copies from 2.3 million in 1983 and even sales of the most popular manga weekly for boys, Shonen Jump, have more than halved to 2.8 million copies against 6.5 million in 1994.
But well congrats for Shonen Weekly Magazine, keep up the good work!
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