Have you been feeling like the trendy Shojo offerings aren’t your cup of tea (e.g. A sign of affection, In the Clear Moonlit Dusk, etc)? Chances are, you just don’t vibe with the style of story that is coming out of Dessert Magazine. Instead, you need to look at other magazines to find stories that fit the vibe you want.
Often times, if you want to find manga similar to what you liked previously, your best bet is to look at other works by the same author (many classic authors are still active and publishing new stories!). However, another great way to discover new titles that fit your interests/mood is through specific manga magazines, which tend to sub-specialize in certain themes/topics/styles generally (there will always be certain titles that are exceptions too of course). I wanted to put together this small beginner’s guide (along with the Magazine cover photo collection) to indicate the tone/style of story coming out of different major Shojo and Josei manga magazines to help readers navigate finding titles they want to read.
A little bit of everything magazines:
Hana to Yume
Lala
Betsuhana (Bessatsu Hana to Yume)
Flowers
Be-Love
Action/fantasy/sci-fi-oriented magazines:
Asuka
Mystery Bonita
Wings
Lala dx
Aria
Princess
Comic Avarus
Nemuki+ :horror
Halloween :horror
B’s Log-Comic: your one stop shop for some pretty decent isekai and villainess manga
Comic Itan
Comic Zero-sum
Comic Tatan: grittier titles with some nostalgia titles thrown in
Horror M: horror
Comic Gene (they’ve called themselves “shonen for girls”, so do with that what you will)
Slice-of-life/coming of age/Drama/Romance-focused magazines:
Betsuma: romance-heavy
Dessert: Romance-heavy
Margaret: romance-heavy
Betsucomi: more mixed between SOL, romance, and fantasy
Betsufure (Bessatsu Friend)
Sho-comi: this is where you’ll find spicier MLs and romances, along with more diverse stories with fantasy, action, etc
Cheese!: Another location of spicier (non-smut) romance titles with a more diverse array of settings
Melody: has some nice non-romance options
Kiss
Hatsu Kiss
Feel Young: tends to have a lot of non-romance options
Petit Comic
You
Young You
Cookie
Shojo magazines for Younger elementary/early middle school girls:
Nakayoshi (has skewed older as of late and can trend spicier than expected)
Ribon
Ciao
(I don’t speak any Japanese, so I have relied on Google translate and anglophone resources to compile this list and thus may have missed certain nuances).
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As someone who grew up reading mostly American comics I find it super interesting that manga collecting seems to be more about collecting trades and hardcovers. Like, I think it would be cooler to get the weekly Schonen Jump (or whoever is publishing your favorite manga). Personally, I’d much rather have the 1st printing of a Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comic than any trade, hardcover, artist edition, etc.
I think its more about practicality. The magazine prints use super cheap paper, have multiple titles and are only printed in japanese.
The magazines aren't meant for collections and won't last as long as the paperback volumes.
The magazines also have multiple titles, anywhere from 20-40 pages per series depending on the publication. It might be great to collect Weekly Shonen Jump if you like most or all of the currently running series but if you only like a handful you're just wasting space.
Another thing is that even for 1 series you'd have to collect several times more magazines to own a whole series, since their is only one chapter per magazine, while volumes collect multiple chapters. Why buy the 214 WSJ magazines for Jujutsu Kaisen when you could just buy the 22 print volumes.
On top of that you'd have to figure out a way to import something and for most of us on this sub, we can't read japanese.
Just makes more sense to buy collected volumes and save space and money then buy imported magazines in a language I can't read
Magazines are such an unappealing way to read a series. They take up an insane amount of space to actually complete a series that way, they're full of a bunch of other titles you may have no interest in, and a small fraction of English manga releases come out in a magazine format over here.
Look at how much shelf space a collection of One Piece trade paperbacks takes up. Now separate each volume into, what, 6 to 8 thick magazines? Think of how many magazines you'd have to pull out and sift through just to read the same content as one single volume trade. " It came out here first. " isn't really a valuable asset to 99.9% of manga readers.
Hello everyone,
I was wondering where it is possible to find old Japanese manga magazines.
In particular, I’m looking for comicomi #11 (1988) and animal house #10 (1989). Those are supposed to be 1st appereances of berserk/Guts.
I looked on ebay but didnt find anything.
I would be interested also innlooking at old shonen jukp and shonen magazine issues for similar purposes (first naruto, first bleach, etc…)
Thanks a lot for youe help !
I looked at the Top 5 best selling manga magazines via the Japanese Magazine Publisher’s Association. Here are the stats.
5. - Big Comic Original - 265,500 copies a month.
Big Comic Original is the Sister magazine to Shogakukan’s Seinen magazine “Big Comic” And yet it sells more than it.
Not a whole lot of known series to us westerners it’s known for always having a cat or dog on the cover.
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4. Weekly Young Jump - 274,167 copies monthly
Young Jump is Shueisha’s Seinen magazine and has been going since 1979.
It’s got such series as Oshi No Ko, Kingdom, and Dogsred
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3. CoroCoro Comic - 333,333 copies monthly
This is a manga magazine for young children. Dare I say it’s THE kids magazine. Every copy comes with goodies, prizes, anything a snot nosed brat would love
It features series such as the Mario manga, Doraemon, and Bayblade
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2. Weekly Shonen Magazine - 370,083 copies monthly
Now we got the big boy. WSM has been around since the 1950s and was the original big shot before you know who took over. Still a very popular magazine even today.
It currently has series such as Blue Lock, and Gachiakuta
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Weekly Shonen Jump - 1,176,667 copies monthly
And here you thought this was gonna be a close race. Is it really surprising? good old WSJ has been dominating the manga space for the last 40 years and they still are to this day.
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I think it’s very clear that despite volume sales being less then yesteryear for a lot of comics. It’s telling that the physical magazine has THAT MUCH more copies in circulation than anyone else.
That much mass popularity is why even the lower selling series in jump sell better than half the series in WSM. Despite it being the 2nd biggest magazine out right now.