Hentai, Marketing Questions, and a Lost Josei: Some Manga News Links

Sweet Cream and Strawberries cover

Here’s a weird mash-up of two things I enjoy: The Straight Dope discusses manga and anime. Unfortunately, it’s in response to the question, “What’s the deal with Japanese tentacle porn?”, which is something I do not enjoy. Gotta love the phrasing, though: “Why are there so many rapist octopuses living in the Land of the Rising Sun?” The article itself is a balanced explanation of the history and reasons behind hentai, or porn manga.

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber ponders manga marketing, specifically questioning how effective it is in reaching casual fans who may not know to seek out information online. Her favorite idea is in-book advertising, a good idea, but I don’t know how costly/feasible that is. She’s also stumbling against a conundrum: the lower-selling titles need marketing the most, but results are better advertising the well-known books.

Sweet Cream and Strawberries cover

Bless Chris Mautner for following up on a missing manga title from 2006 (!): Sweet Cream and Red Strawberries. He publishes some translated pages from the josei manga by Kiriko Nananan about four single women in Tokyo, based on a preview copy:

The images are taken from a photocopied version of the book sent to me by CPM way back when they initially planned on publishing it. As far as I know, it’s one of the only versions — perhaps the only version — of the book in English to date.

I’d still like to see it, and I second his request for someone to pick it up for English release.



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