Author Archives: torisunanohokori

Fun With Numbers: A Good Summer for Hot Cocoa

Posted on by
6

This past week was a pretty unambiguously good one for Square Enix’s publishing division, featuring sales of over 95,000 for previously-unranked Isshukan Friends, a boost for the old volumes of Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun, and the final volume of Cocoa Fujiwara’s Inu x Boku SS topping the list with over 250,000 copies sold. That last part might not even be the most impressive thing Fujiwara did this week, either. While the 250,000 in IxB sales is, in large part, in keeping with previous volumes of the series, Fujiwara also saw her brand new manga, Katsute Mahou Shoujo to Aku wa Tekitai shite Ita, notch first week sales of over 80,000. While not unprecedented by any means, that level of early sales puts her on a pretty exclusive list.

Continue reading →

Fun With Numbers: Dragonball, Naruto, Love Live, and the Importance of Second-Tier Hits

Posted on by
2

Weekly Shonen Jump is Japan’s most successful manga magazine, something that’s been true, excluding a brief early-aughts blip, for upwards of 20 years. But the brand didn’t get there by some fluke – it earned notability by harnessing a number of talented artists in many eras; Go Nagai in the late 60s, Buichi Terasawa and Osamu Akimoto in the 70s, Hirohiko Araki, Masami Kurumada, and countless others in the 80s.

But that doesn’t mean the past 2 decades were free of uncertainty or bad luck for Shueisha. In actuality, in between the early-nineties peak where the magazine’s circulation topped 6 million copies and the modern era of Oda Eiichiro breaking his own volumes’ records on a regular basis, they experienced one of the biggest misfortunes that can befall a publishing empire: two franchise cornerstone series ending withing 13 months of each other.

Continue reading →

Via Anime Insider: Seiji Mizushima (September 2006)

Posted on by
Reply

Seiji Mizushima is interviewed about the Fullmetal Alchemist series. Again.

It’s still somewhat interesting, talking about Sho Aikawa’s contributions to developing the setting for the Shamballa movie, the difference between TV and movie production, and insisting he’s finished with the series, a pledge he kept when Brotherhood was greenlit. And the fact that he enjoys wearing hats to interviews (I guess one nice thing about interviewing the same guy 3+ times is that you start to get a window into his habits).

Continue reading →

Via Anime Insider: Work Experience (July 2006)

Posted on by
1

Three western artists share their stories from working in the anime industry.

There’s some quirky stuff here (interns polishing bullets for Mamoru Oshii prior to an interview), and some serious bits (difficulty finding a place to rent as a foreigner, long work hours, cultivating camaraderie at work, and dealing with the language barrier). It’s an interesting compliment to Jan Scott Frazier’s insight on the subject

Continue reading →