Shopping Guide
From comics to movies, TV shows, games, and toys, popular content is gathered inside one building at the yearly San Diego Comic-Con. The event also serves as a good summary of America’s pop culture. However, this year’s event saw an even more definite retreat in Japanese-related content. There wasn’t just a decrease in participation from related companies, there was also a decrease in the amount of Japanese content being sold. Compared to the manga and anime boom seen in America in the mid 2000s, the presence of such content is becoming less noticeable.
In the midst of this, one of the few companies at the event representing Japanese anime and manga was Viz Media. Viz Media, backed by contributions from Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Shogakukan Shueisha Productions, is the premier North American company for distributing popular anime and manga like Naruto and Bleach. In the exhibit hall, the company had a booth set up at which they were conveying the appeal of Japanese manga together with anime through their digital manga magazine Shonen Jump and their anime distribution service Neon Alley. However, compared to average years, the scale of their space was reduced by half.
The reduction of their booth size didn’t just show a decline among Japanese manga and anime in America, it also reflected a change in the company’s strategy. In addition to their booth throughout the event, they held announcements and panel discussions, as well as a party at which fans could intermingle. The three panels were each themed after either the company as a whole, the digital magazine Shonen Jump, or the video distribution service Neon Alley. The party was themed around Shonen Jump with much of its relevance being geared toward the digital version. Viz Media’s business is already largely digital, with the company migrating to online mediums. When it comes to publicizing online services, it’s not always necessary to have a big exhibit space in an exhibit hall. Rather than this, the company obtained excitement for their services through online relays of the fan-attended party.
The Viz Media panel held on July 18 was a good opportunity to survey the company as a whole. The panel was organized into three parts that focused on their paper publication, digital publication, and video distribution service. There wasn’t much reference to anime DVDs or Blu-rays. Instead, more emphasis was placed on obtaining licenses for distributing video content through their online service. Newly acquired anime titles announced include Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet and Blood Lad. Shojo manga stood out among the new manga titles announced.
Furthermore, they attempted to win over old school manga fans with their announcements of big titles such as full-color editions of Dragon Ball and a remodeled reprint of Ranma ½, which also served as a glimpse into their efforts to cultivate even more new readers. Their strategies have likely been an influence even on the remodeled version of Sailor Moon.
In novel-related news, it was announced that the novel All You Need is Kill, which is becoming a huge-scale Hollywood movie, will also be made into a graphic novel. Making this work into a graphic novel as opposed to a manga can be seen as the company aiming for a larger market than Japanese manga fans. Also, a new translation for Koshun Takami’s Battle Royale was announced. There are also rumors of this work being adapted into an American live-action movie, so there is deep interest in how the manga, anime, and novel develops.
Source: AnimeAnime
