Until the mid-1990s, there were few translated series aimed at female
readers. The crossover appeal of Rumiko
Takahashi’s stories, including Ranma ½ in 1990, Maison Ikkoku in 1993 and the various Rumic World stories appearing in Manga Vizion from 1995 helped Viz, while Oh My Goddess!, first published in
1994, was and continues to be a steady seller for Dark Horse (see pp.175, 156 and 164 for more on these).
Once they had studied the female market in Japan via the work of shōjo manga scholar Matt Thorn, Viz began to target this audience in the US. Short stories by Moto Hagio, Keiko Nishi and Shio Seto made their way into pretty much every available format that Viz was publishing at the time – monthly comic books, inserts in Animerica, serializa- tion in Manga Vizion and graphic novel collections. When Viz started its Pulp monthly anthology for older audiences in 1997, there was a shōjo component to that as well, with Banana Fish (see p.87).
Popular as these early girls’ manga were with American readers, it was the arrival of the Sailor Moon anime via syndication on US TV stations in 1995 that really sparked the shōjo boom.
Sailor Moon may not have crossed over
the Pacific under optimal conditions (licensor DIC eliminated some episodes from the original anime and changed character names and some situations to make it more suitable for the younger audiences traditionally targeted by US cartoon series; it was also often placed in early morning time slots) and only 65 episodes were aired before it was cancelled in 1996, but it was enough to give female audiences a taste of a unique shōjo-style story, one that depicted empowered female characters and had an element of romance built in as well.
It would take a new player to capitalize on the opportunity provided by Sailor Moon, shaking up the industry in the process: Mixx Entertainment, co-founded by Victor Chin, Stuart Levy and Ron Scovil Jr, picked up the licence for the manga by Naoko Takeuchi on which the anime was based and made it the centrepiece of their new manga anthology, Mixxzine, in 1997. Mixx Entertainment would evolve into Tokyopop (see p.235), one of the biggest publishers of manga outside of Japan.
Complementing Sailor Moon as anchor series of Mixxzine was another shōjo title, Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP, and two seinen series, Ice
Blade and Parasyte. This mix of material
appealing to male and female readers wasn’t the only thing that made Mixxzine stand out. While other publishers aimed for cautious growth, introducing what they thought the market and existing fans could bear, Mixxzine simply tried to get itself into as many hands as possible, appearing in comic book racks at newsstands and in bookstores as well as in speciality comics shops.
Believing that few people knew what manga was and that “comics” brought to mind traditional boys’ culture, Levy chose to promote Mixxzine as “motionless picture entertainment”.
Sailor Moon videos sold at Toys “R” Us
included a card offering a free issue of the magazine. More clever marketing ensured that as the first issue of
Mixxzine hit the streets, the Sailor
Moon anime was enjoying a second run
on the cable USA Network.
People who were aware of the series and its previous syndicated incarna- tion, as well as an entirely new audience
of girls that probably would not have
gone to comic book stores, picked up
Mixxzine to see the manga version of the
story. Mixx would continue to push its advantage with the female market, first by offering cheaply priced graphic-novel collections of Sailor Moon and Magic
Knight Rayearth, then announcing the
creation of a dedicated magazine, Smile, to house Sailor Moon and other articles and features aimed at girls.
Viz countered in 1998 by launching
Animerica Extra, a sister publication to
the already established Animerica. This manga anthology aimed directly at the growing US market for shōjo material debuted with Yuu Watase’s Fushigi Yugi (see p.126) as well as the continuation of CLAMP’s X/1999.
Pokémania
At the same time Sailor Moon was helping blaze a trail for shōjo manga titles in the US, 151 collectible creatures available on two videogame cartridges for the Nintendo Game Boy were about to extend the market wide open in another direction. The launch of the Pokémon game in the US in 1998 spawned a generation of children- turned-Pokémon-trainers who simply had to catch all of those creatures,
regardless of the format in which they were packaged – the videogames, the trading card game, the Saturday morning cartoon, the weekday morning cartoon, the weekday afternoon cartoon, the videotapes of all those cartoons, and mounds upon mounds of toys, trinkets and other character-stamped doodads.
Launched on the wave of Pokémania was Viz’s four-part manga The Electric
Tale of Pikachu. The story was predict-
able – Pokémon trainer who wants to become the best in the world meets other trainers with the same goal, battles ensue, lessons are learned, people get helped, epic adventures are embarked upon – but narrative complexity never was a defining trait of the franchise. Big sales were, however: not only was the first issue of The Electric Tale of Pikachu, released in comic-book format, 1998’s top-selling manga, it was also the bestselling comic of that year in any category.