I believe I wrote something on this LJ about the topic before, but it’s been a long time and I can’t remember. Maybe it was someone else’s LJ.

The folks at Pseudome posted up an interesting article of Matt Thorn’s. Matt is pretty well known – he’s an associate professor at Kyoto Seika University, and has been studying shoujo manga for over 20 years. He’s an avid fan, and there is no better person to talk to than him about shoujo manga in general, but I was surprised to see him lambast contemporary shoujo manga (or rather, shoujo manga editors) in the way he did.

Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of shoujo manga – I grew up reading and liking my “DragonBall Z”. I didn’t start reading shoujo manga in earnest until I was in my 20s, and by then I was too old for alot of 80s and 90s shoujo; even the critically acclaimed shoujo manga of the past few years. “NANA” bored the bejesus out of me. “Fruit Baskets” was cute and uninteresting. Nodame, from “Nodame Cantabile”, is a talented dimwit. But whether I like the stories or not, it doesn’t change my respect for shoujo as an institute. Nowhere else in the world would you find a cultural phenomenon as dedicated to women’s entertainment as shoujo manga and it’s offshoots. So I felt genuine sadness when I heard the news of “Margaret”, one of the oldest shoujo magazines around, struggling with low sales and cancellations.

This is a matter of grave concern. Weekly and biweekly magazines are the life-blood of the manga industry – how well they sell and what stories they carry can influence the direction of the industry. Most manga magazines have suffered a drop in sales since the early 90s, including front-runner “Shounen Jump”, but then shounen magazines have always outsold shoujo magazines. “Shounen Jump” may not sell 6 million copies anymore, but it’s not losing any readers. Instead, they’ve been gaining readers, mostly female. This isn’t a big surprise to someone who grew up reading shounen, but from the sales of the shoujo magazines, it seems that girls are either abandoning them to read shounen, or abandoning manga altogether. This has been happening for quite a while, and it’s the cause for alot of debate. We all know shounen is unapologetically aimed at boys, just like shoujo is unapologetically aimed at girls. Why is it that shounen is gaining girl readers, whereas shoujo hardly ever attracts male readers.

I have several theories for that, and one of them is that shounen is no longer unapologetically aimed at boys. It hasn’t been aimed purely at boys for a long time, and you can clearly see the delineations should you compare a 70s “Shounen Jump” with a contemporary one. The drawing styles have completely changed, for one. No more thick-eyebrows gekiga, rough edged art. There are less simpering, idiotic female characters. There is often romance, and large ensemble casts. And most of all, there are alot of pretty boys – bishounen and biseinen that only used to be found in shoujo. In other worlds, shounen manga has consciously become more gender-neutral in its appeal, by appropriating what used to make shoujo manga appealing to girls. If you were a girl and you weren’t all that INTO girly-romance, you’re just as likely to read shounen manga with cute male leads than you would read shoujo. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the shounen audience. Shoujo to this day has not done anything to attract a male audience, but if it tries, we’ll all end up with this unisex of an androgynous teen manga look.

The second reason for the rise of the female shounen readership may be the yaoi doujinshi subculture. Girls like to draw dishy young men in bed with other dishy young men, and the shounen magazines offer a very good selection of dishy young men for this purpose. “Prince of Tennis” comes to mind – it’s definately a shounen sports manga, but take one look at the (many) male characters in it, and you know the yaoi fans have descended on this title long ago. This is good enough reason for the yaoi fans to want to read “Prince of Tennis”, no matter how bad it is, and I guess some of this fuels the shounen magazine readerships. Certainly, professionally-drawn “Boys Love” has also been a sizeable part of the shoujo market since the 90s, but I don’t think it has much to do with the doujinshi market. As far as I can tell, girls buy BL manga, but they don’t draw doujinshi based on them. In fact, the most popular doujinshi tend to be based on existing shounen series.

Some people suggested the reason for this is because shounen manga often has larger casts than shoujo. This can’t possibly be true, because while “Prince of Tennis” has a large ensemble casts, other targets of yaoi artists have very small male casts. I take some recent Taiwanese yaoi doujinshi as an example. Taiwanese doujinshi has the advantage of being very attuned to what the Japanese doujinshi market is doing, and so they act accordingly. Thanks to Poshua bringing stacks of Taiwanese yaoi doujinshi into the workplace, it’s now possible to figure out a timeline for the popularly of certain shounen series. A few years ago, it was “Harry Potter” (yaoi doujinshi artists don’t necessarily work from manga, and they also do original work). Then came a huge wave of “Prince of Tennis”, and when everyone got bored with that, along came a stack of “Full Metal Alchemist”. Currently, the yaoi of the month is “Death Note” (or was, 2 months ago). The last two are particularly telling. “FMA” has only a hand-full of bishounen, a fraction of “Prince of Tennis”, while “Death Note” has only TWO yaoi-worthy males (and one of them looks like a freak). The fact that there are endless scenes of these same two guys in sexual situations shows that yaoi doujinshi artists aren’t attracted to shounen because of ensemble casts. The size of the cast has no bearing on who they choose to put into bed together. The qualities required seem to be based mostly on popularity in general society.

So does that spell doom for shoujo? Ofcourse not. As Matt said in his article, shoujo may currently be crippled by bad stories and formula plots, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. In the 70s, shoujo was mainly know for it’s innovation and its willingness to push boundaries – now, it just needs another dose of reactionary politics. Who knows what the future may hold? As Matt said, young Japanese are now more politically-minded than their parent’s generation, and if the editors know how to capitalise on that, they may win back their old readership. Only time will tell. I, for one, don’t want to see the market merge into something androgynous just to appeal to both sexes. There are advantages to appealing to only one gender, and you’re able to do things that you won’t if you were working in a mixed environment. And the existence of shoujo in the first place proves you can make money out of it too.

Supanova Convention: This is, what, the fourth convention in a row? I don’t remember what it’s like to have a free weekend anymore, even though it’s only been a month. But then Supanova is the big one, a popular culture convention that seems to have been taken over by anime a great deal in the past few years.

That said, I’m on yet ANOTHER panel for Supanova. And why not? It’s another great opportunity to talk about my work. For the details of my panel, it’s:
Supanova: Wharf 8, 53-59 Hickson Rd, Sydney
Area: Shin Tokyo Anime Area
Time: Saturday 15th October, 4:30 pm
About: The Dreaming!! This time, I think I ought to talk some more about the OEL phenomenon and what TOKYOPOP is aiming to do with the concept.

Animania: I had a good time at Animania, and I can say that I’m officially the Iron Artist of Animania 2005!!! Yes, I won the Iron Artist contest… almost by default. Truth is, the competition was spread over 2 days. Day 1 was the prelims, while Day 2 was the finals. Unfortunately, the winners of Day 1 (Iron Artist Sid and Challenger Naomi) were both busy on Day 2 – so it ended up being that the only people available to duke it out on Day 2 was Challenger Chuck and… me. I got a bottle of correction fluid out of it, and it was fun enough. I thought I’d be really nervous, but it turned out I had no trouble doodling on a stage infront of a big crowd with a guy poking a camera in my face. I have to put a word in for Chuck though – he was 16, and he handled the situation remarkably well. If I were 16, I would have been running off the stage instead of sitting there drawing confidently.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take many pictures of Animania, because I was involved in so many events. I had a chain of events running one right another, and frankly I was flat out tired by the time I got to the drawing panel. Iron Artist, immediately followed by the self-publishing panel, and then immediately followed by the Drawing Panel, which I hosted. God knows why I didn’t use the drawing panel to plug my book more – because there was a fair amount of interest in it. I guess I was so tired it didn’t occur to me to do so. I liked how I handled it too – I field questions from the crowd on what they wanted to draw, and demonstrated how to do it and told them what to look out for. However, at the same time, I was so tired I couldn’t even HEAR properly. I mean, I mistook “bishes” for “bitches”. Like, can you teach me how to draw bitches? If I was thinking straight, I might have realised something was wrong. In either case, I realised that I liked teaching people, and that I did it well. The panel was completely improvised, and if I can do it while half-asleep, I can probably do a better job while fully awake. Perhaps they’ll be an opportunity in the future to run a manga class of sorts.

There was also a bunch of art contests, including a doodling one filled by people doing sketches. I didn’t participate in any of the art contests, but ended up having to judge them. I think it’s safe by now to admit that I was the judge of the art contests – and that to shirk full responsibility for such a difficult and dangerous task, I dragged several innocent bystanders into it. Namely Iron Artist Dan and “My Neighbour Totoro” Kenny; last seen at Manifest as Saint Seiya. Together we chose something technically proficient but simple, and I was glad at the end of the day that the judging was anonymous. I’d hate to brave going on stage and explaining why I made the choices I did. For a moment, I pictured myself going on stage with a paper bag over my head, but then everyone would probably recognise me from Iron Artists that morning.

Nintendo DS: I finally bought a Nintendo DS, with Nintendogs, for $200. It’s a great deal, and I even bought a PINK one, to ward off potential thieves. I’m getting a labrador named “Major”, after my mum’s current dog. My mother will probably wrestle the DS from me to play it herself.

LATE!! But not too late to mention that tomorrow, 1st and 2nd October, will be biggest bashes of the “This Is Not Art” (TINA) Festival in Newcastle. As I’ve mentioned before here, I’m part of the Electrofringe Festival in conjunction with RocketArt gallery, and will be presenting at a panel on Saturday. The details are as below:

Panel: Otakulture Artists Talk
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Location: City Hall, Banquet Room
Fellow Presentees: Corin Edwards, Halszka Masash, Kirsty Boyle, Rachel O’Reilly, Thea Baumann
About: The Japanese term “Otaku” translates to “obsessive fan” and is a global subcultural phenomenon. RocketArt exhibiting artists talk about their work and survey the personalisation of commodity culture.

Otakulture Art Exhibition: The RocketArt Gallery is hosting a number of exhibits, including mine, as part of their “Otakulture” Art exhibition. The exhibition had its opening night on the 22nd September (I missed it since I had to head over to Manifest), but the artwork there is fantastic and I hope to meet more of the artists when I go there this weekend. For my part in the exhibition, there are 6 pieces of artwork – 2 opera singers and 4 from “The Dreaming”, and I’ve included a first-chapter preview of “The Dreaming” at the art gallery too. For those attending the Newcastle Festival, information is as below:

Gallery: RocketArt
Exhibition: Otakulture
Location: 488 Hunter St, Newcastle
Opening Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 12pm – 5pm
Dates: 22nd September ~ 9th October
Others: This exhibition is travelling it’s way up to Brisbane on the 9th December, and I’m going to include a complete ARC copy of “The Dreaming” with the Brisbane exhibition.

I get free accomodation there too!! I’ll be staying overnight in Newcastle from 1st-2nd October, and attending the huge fanzine market on Sunday. It’s in conjunction with the National Young Writer’s Festival, so I’ll be sure to sit in on some panels that talk about writing.

I HAD to write up on Manifest – the first anime/manga convention I’ve ever attended. Actually, the first convention I’ve ever attended, but overall, it was a fantastic experience and I would definately be going to more conventions in the future. For those who missed it, Manifest is organised by University clubs in Melbourne and is held yearly at the University of Melbourne. This year it was held on the 23rd-25th September, on the same weekend as the Grand Final in Melbourne – meaning on our trip there we had to duke it out with all the Sydney Swan fans. And this is at 6:45 am in the morning.

Friday
Nothing much happened Friday. It was registration day, and we got our weekend passes. I stared at some cosplayers, and met up with the Oztaku folks from Monash University, but overall didn’t stay there for long. Oztaku is an Australian anthology magazine dedicated to publishing local manga talent, and run by the folks I met at the Manga Symposium in March (chiefly Kenny and Avi). I must say that I’m darn pleased to see a dedicated manga anthology out there, and that the quality of vol4 has greatly improved from vol3. It always thrills me to meet people who are interested in drawing MANGA, as opposed to drawing PIN-UPS, which seems to be the sort of artists many conventions are filled with. Ofcourse, I bought the latest volume of Oztaku.

Saturday
Somehow I ended up in the trader’s hall for the most of this day, because the convention doesn’t have an artist’s alley. This is despite the fact that I’m there to hand out flyers, not to sell anything, so I leeched a corner off one of my friend’s tables. I have NO idea how many flyers for “The Dreaming” I brought with me, but it was definately over 100. Probably 150(?), and over the course of the next 2 days, I only had 10 left at the end of the day. Which is alright – Manifest’s registration only allows a maximum of 2000 attendees (including traders, etc), and I believe there was less people than that.

How exactly do you interest people in manga flyers at a convention anyway? At first I wondered whether I should actively DO something. I wasn’t exactly handing them out to everyone who walks past because theoretically-speaking, you’re only supposed to hand out flyers to people who are interested in the manga – and conventions tend to be fannish places where people buy pin-ups more than manga. Or so I’ve been told. In any case, my favourite bit was talking to the fans about “The Dreaming”, and about working with TokyoPop; it’s always fantastic to see other artists encouraged by what I’m doing and being motivated to try something similar. Nothing is more rewarding than that – both at the “Manga Industry” panel and sitting in the trader’s hall.

That said, I have to give thanks to Ayvahrobby for helping me hand out the flyers – kudos to him for getting people interested!

As for what else I did – plenty. My inner fangirl continually clashed with my need to promote my book throughout the whole weekend. I mentioned earlier that I really enjoyed this convention, and it’s all because of the the fannish behaviour by the attendees. This was the same thing that annoyed the people I attended Manifest with – those who prefer to keep a straight face at conventions were irritated by all the squealing fangirls. Trouble is, I was one of the squealing fangirls – or at least I fit in well with the crazies. Some other manga artists I’ve spoken to were scared or annoyed by the cosplayers and idol contestants. Me, I LOVED the cosplayers and the obsessed Tekken-gamers (There’s a OMGSasuke cosplay!!).

This can’t really be helped. I’ve always taken manga as a serious art form, and can hold my own in a serious discussion – BUT I’ve always been an unabashed fan of popular entertainment. I read alot of weird alternative stuff, but I also love the excellent, squarely mainstream works. This sort of attitude leaks into the manga I do, since I write and draw with the aim of attracting as large an audience as possible. So yes, I love Naruto, and I love all the (good) popular anime shows, AND I love alot of blockbuster video game franchises. Naturally, I would be a screaming fangirl. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t.

Ofcourse I can’t sit in the trader’s hall all day (thanks so much to Katie and Paul). I snuck off to the Tekken 5 tournament, and had a thoroughly good 2 hours watching contestants beat the crap out of each other with the 3D fighting game. I’ve always preferred 2D fighters myself, but watching skilled players fight each other is extremely compelling. Bashing the computer player in Tekken isn’t much fun to watch, but Human VS Human is at another level altogether. The final showdown came to be between a guy dressed very convincingly as Hatake Kakashi, and another one who seemed to be Gai (both from Naruto). They even did a rock-paper-sissors game before their final match – which Kakashi lost. This was also the outcome of the tournament. And we need more girls in video-gaming… I think there was a total of 4 girls in the room – myself, Anne and two contestants.

Sunday
Sunday started off with what appeared to be a giant pink tampon outside the trader’s hall. The pink tampon was engaged in a ferocious hand-to-hand battle with Zazuba (Naruto again), but was defeated and scuttled to the Economics building. It wasn’t until I took a photo of him there that I realised that it was Kirby – though I needed the nametag to tell. Great cosplay, but would have been better if the costume was rounder (and thus more like Kirby).

I then headed off to the Manga Industry Panel, and I met Craig again. Craig is the “creator”, so to speak, of the Monash Manga Library – obsessed cultural anthropologist that he is (sorry, Craig). The Madman representatives were also at the panel, and they revealed some thrilling plans for the future that could spell Great Things for the Australian manga scene! But then it’s supposed to happen in the next couple of months so I won’t spill it here. That said, the panel was great. I need to practice public speaking more – I had a speech that I DIDN’T pratice for prepared, and ended up ad-libbing half of it while wondering whether I should read be reading off the paper all the time. Next time, I should make up my mind whether I want to read off the paper, or whether I just need to write down bullet points.

The fun part is the cosplay competition, which I missed on Saturday. I also missed on Saturday, to my great chagrin, the AMV competition. I like Anime Music Videos ALOT, and was mightily pissed to find out that the auditorium for that competition was full and I was unable to get in. That’s why I ended going to the Tekken tournament instead. So this time I made sure I was able to get into the cosplay competition – luckily I knew people who were ahead of the queue AND knew people amongst the cosplay volunteers. Problem solved.

The winner of the cosplay on Saturday was a friend – Kenny. He’s almost a professional cosplayer, and he cosplayed a moogle at Animania last year. This year he was Totoro on Saturday (I helped roll the Totoro costume at the airport), and Saint Seiya on Sunday. This costume is apparently able to transform into a lion… if he would do a few adjustments to it.

After that, I sat out the Madman Panel, and spent the 2 hours left sitting in the trader’s hall and shopping. I bought Neon Genesis Evangelion vol7, Chrono Crusade vol1, and finally Full Metal Alchemist vol1. Out of those manga, Eva was Eva, Chrono Crusade I hated, but I think I found my new favourite “critical mass popularity” manga with Full Metal Alchemist. I’ve been meaning to get it for ages, but now that I have, I finally understand why it’s so well-loved. Edward Elrick has just rocketed to one of my all-time favourite characters – maybe I’ll see someone cosplay as him at another convention.

That would conclude this con report. Overall, I would say the marketing “effort” for “The Dreaming” was pretty good, considering most people there weren’t even there for manga. Not at a convention with 24/7 showings of anime which I managed to miss ALL of. Still, I’m also attending Animania and Supanova in October, meaning that I’ll be seeing some of the same people again there. Both these cons have larger attendences too, so things are going to be busy in the next few weeks.