French publisher Glénat’s manga series will abandon traditional Japanese demographic classifications. Starting in September, traditionally designated jobs juvenile/girl/his/City Saint Instead, the back cover will have keyword descriptors for the content and an age rating. This move will free them tomato soupof The Witch: The Legend of Fatima [Tenmaku no Jaadugar] (Volume 1) September 18.
To date, Glénat has previously used a color-coding system and collection labels on the spines of its comics – juvenile (traditionally for boys) green, girl (girl) wears pink, and his In Burgundy. While in Japan”his” denotes works intended for adult male readers, and in France it is widely regarded as an adult category – the merger was originally published as his and City Saint in Japan.
The publisher announced the initiative through a video posted on social media by Glénat’s editorial director Satoko Inabawho discusses and demonstrates the format changes via the following transcript Jadugar. Inaba says the move is partly due to changing reader habits in Japan and France, which are no longer cautiously driven by gender or age:
“Magazines in Japan are starting to change. The audience is changing too. There are less restrictions on specific categories of works. So, in order to keep up with the natural development of comics, we decided to abandon these book categories.
Add to:
“for jadugarh, This will be the first book published in this format and we have a blue spine laid out to fit the Japanese volume. On the back cover you will find key words that indicate the theme of the book. So for Jadugar We will have: “Conspiracy”, “History”, “Authorization”.
Publishers hope this will be an industry change but know it will take some time for book distribution libraries to move to the new system. Although the spine of the book no longer marks it as “seinen”, Jadugar Listed on Glénat’s website.
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“[Book retail and distribution] The library will contain categories we can’t ignore. We must fill out this information so that the books can be delivered to your bookseller. Effectively, Jadugar Will fall into the “Seinen” category, which is the closest thing we’ve come to since we’re talking about adult women: the Japanese Josei.
“Development is always slow, so we need a little time to change these databases. I think we also need to give ourselves time to update our website. We count on you to support us in this process.
Glénat is the leader in France’s highly competitive comics market. A 2019 Statista study reported that publishers accounted for 23.9% of sales, followed by Pika (13.4%) and Kana (12.5%). The research was conducted before the pandemic, when the French market exploded to account for more than half of the entire comics market and a fifth of the entire book market. Glénat, a large publisher of bande dessinée, graphic novels and traditional books, has been in the French comics game for over thirty years and its inventory includes “Akira”, “Dragon Ball”, “Ranma 1/2”, “Berserker”, and one piece.
Comics – like bande dessinée (comic strips) – are widely sold in France, in supermarkets, bookstores and specialist comic shops. Although there is no uniform organizational pattern for comics on the bookshelves, some stores (such as the Manga Kat in Bordeaux and Angoulême) shelve books in a similar way to traditional bande dessinées: by genre, age (children’s section) and main author. France is generally considered the world’s largest manga market outside of Japan.
The move was not universally welcomed. Some critics on social media believe that moving away from the traditional Japanese classification system would lead to an overemphasis on the more marketable shōnen (boys) and gōjo (adult male) titles, to the detriment of shoujo (girls) and, especially, shōjo (adult women). ). There is also skepticism about changes taking place at the retail level of books.
Satoko Inaba, Editorial Director (Glénat) Video transcript [translated by DeepL]:
“Hello everyone, I’m Satoko Inaba, editorial director of Glénat. I’m here to play a little game with you. Can you guess the difference? Jadugarwhich is a new book launching in September compared to the other series we’ve published?
“I’ll show you this book. [slowly turns the book] So, have you found it? It’s on the back.
“So far, in the Glénat comics, we had a color code and then a little label indicating the name of the series. So boys were green, girls were pink, boys were burgundy. We decided to separate ourselves from Freed from these collections.
“Magazines in Japan are starting to change. The audience is changing too. There are less restrictions on specific categories of works. So, in order to keep up with the natural development of comics, we decided to abandon these book categories.
“for Jadugarwhich will be the first book published in this format, we have a blue spine with a layout that fits the Japanese volume. On the back cover you will find key words that indicate the theme of the book. So for Jadugar We will have: “Conspiracy”, “History”, “Empowerment”.
“In the case of Jaadugar, this comic was originally published on a website with no specified genre. However, it was run by the editorial team that produced the magazine City Saint. Josei is a genre that does not exist in France. Because currently in France , we limit ourselves to the main categories: teenage for young girls, teenage for young boys, and youth for adults.
“In Glénat, then, you will find that the books themselves will no longer have categories. On the other hand, the database will contain categories that we cannot ignore. We have to fill in this information so that the books can be delivered to your bookseller. In fact , Jaadugar would fall into the Seinen category, which is the closest category since we’re talking about adult women: the Japanese Josei.
“Development is always slow, so we need a little time to change these databases. I think we also need to give ourselves time to update our website. We look forward to you supporting us in the process. Please feel free to provide us with your feedback, So that we can move forward together.
