Media Franchises and Merchandising

Ōgon Bat

For several years after the end of WWII, kamishibai (a traditional Japanese style of storytelling with pictures) was the dominant form of media for engaging children’s attention. In Shōnen Ōja [Boy King] (Shueisha, 1947), Soji Yamakawa translated a kamishibai street performance into an illustrated story—something in between a manga and a novel. When this book proved to be a hit, Shueisha launched “Omoshiro Book,” the predecessor to the Weekly Shōnen Jump manga magazine. In a similar vein, the popular kamishibai street performance of Ōgon Bat [Golden Bat] (Meimeisha [later to become Shonengahosha], 1947) was first translated into an illustrated story by Koji Kata, then transformed into a manga book by Takeo Nagamatsu. Kamishibai street performances disappeared with the advent of television, and illustrated stories were overtaken by manga. But the method of creating hits by transforming existing killer content from the dominant media of the era into publications would be repeated from then on in the manga business. 

Gekkō Kamen

TV shows based on manga (live action adaptations with special effects, period dramas, etc.) and manga adaptations of TV shows are said to have begun around 1957. For example, the wildly popular TV show Gekkō Kamen [Moonlight Mask] (broadcast from 1957) was adapted into manga by Kyuji Inoue and Jiro Kuwata, among others. Other examples from around the same time are Akadō Suzunosuke (Shonengahosha, 1954), a popular manga that spread to radio, film, and television, as well as Maboroshi Tantei [Phantom Detective] (Shonengahosha, 1957) and Shōnen Jet [The Jet Boy] (Kodansha, 1959), which had tie-ins with TV shows. Further, in 1960, manga series linked to Weekly Shōnen Magazine such as Mach Sanshirō (Kodansha, 1960) and Kaiketsu Harimao [Amazing Harimao] (Kodansha, 1960) appeared on radio and television and actively expanded into media franchises. 

Astro Boy

The manga Astro Boy (Kobunsha, 1952), serialized from 1952, is the original work behind Japan’s first domestically-produced anime which was broadcast beginning in 1963. It is also the first example of a series adopting a business model in which its sponsor—Meiji Seika (a snack food company)—sold related products, and its production company—Mushi Production—received royalties (Meiji Seika also thoroughly expelled pirated products from the market). 

Freebie culture

Manga magazines in Japan after WWII, especially manga magazines marketed to a young age demographic, often came with a free gift or supplement (called furoku in Japanese) related to the manga contained in the issue. It was common for people to subscribe to these magazines simply because of the appeal of the freebies they offered. This phenomenon is exemplified by the freebie culture created by the manga magazine Ribon in the 1980s, which later spawned multiple research books on the topic, including Tasogaredoki ni Mitsuketa Mono: Ribon no Furoku to Sono Jidai [What I Found in Twilight Times: Ribon’s Free Gifts and That Era] by Eiji Otsuka (Ohta Publishing Co., 1991) and Ribon Furoku: The Secret of Kawaii (Shueisha, 2018), a mook (a cross between a magazine and a book) by Shueisha. 
Freebie culture declined after the 1980s, but it has continued to live on today in manga magazines with free gifts such as CoroCoro Comic and Ciao that are popular among children. 

 Game Center Arashi

Following kamishibai and television, video games emerged in the late 1970s to the 1980s as the dominant form of media to capture the hearts of children and young people. Mitsuru Sugaya’s Game Center Arashi (Shogakukan, 1979) is a representative example of early manga that attempted the difficult task of adapting gameplay into manga. In the 1980s, CoroCoro Comic, the medium in which the series was published, built a business model that operated on three interconnected components: manga, graphs (article content pages), and events. This created several manga-derived fads in the realms of hobbies and anime and even influenced the business model of the Shōnen Jump manga magazine. Game Center Arashi is significant as one of the works that inspired the establishment of this three-part model. 

The Five Star Stories

Mamoru Nagano, the mechanical designer behind TV anime series such as Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (broadcast from 1985), began his own series in 1986 titled The Five Star Stories (Kadokawa Shoten, 1986) in the magazine Newtype. He managed the rights to the series through his own company, forbidding the development of cheap, mass-produced spin-off products and only allowing limited merchandising of garage kits (models assembled by the consumer and produced in small quantities) and other products. By featuring robots with bold designs that inspired and challenged model-building hobbyists, Nagano, a model-builder himself, contributed greatly to garage kit culture and the maturity and growth of the market. 

 The Prince of Tennis

Back in 1974, Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles (Shueisha, 1972) was adapted for the stage by the Takarazuka Revue. This served as a catalyst for later musical adaptations of manga such as Mitsuru Adachi’s Touch (Shogakukan, 1981) and Masami Kurumada’s Saint Seiya (Shueisha, 1986). However, the manga The Prince of Tennis (Shueisha, 1999), which was serialized from 1999 in Weekly Shōnen Jump and adapted into a musical in 2003, deserves particular attention. This series triggered a huge, ongoing movement that drew attention to so-called “2.5D” stage productions. 

Ōsama Game

Ōsama Game [King Game] (Futabasha, 2011) was serialized by Nobuaki Kanazawa on Mobage Town, a mobile-only social network previously operated by DeNA (the novel was later transferred to the online novel-publishing website Everystar), converted into a book by Futabasha, and then adapted into a manga. Since the mid-2010s, there have been many instances in which novels posted on online novel-publishing websites such as Shosetsuka ni Naro (lit., “Let’s Become a Novelist”) are adapted into manga that then sell more copies than the book version of the novel. Ōsama Game is a pioneering example of such internet-derived works.