The lack of reprints is particularly frustrating. I Would love to own Lovely Complex without paying $50 a volume!

I was really into Shonen manga as a middle schooler, I even had a subscription to the Shonen Jump magazine. I've completely flipped and I pretty much only read Shojo now. There is so much good stuff out there that I want to read. But it feels like as Shojo fans, if we want to read anything that's actually good we have to just...be fluent in Japanese.

Word! Aside from new licenses, let's also hope that VIZ decides to bring all of the the early volumes of their successful shojo series back into print for a new generation of readers.

When I complained online about the merge of Romance and Shoujo and that shoujo is so desperately underserved as you put it, I was met with a shounen fan telling me it was my fault for not buying blu rays or figures. Buddy, show me where they're being sold! I can't buy what doesn't exist!

It's so disappointing that Viz hasn't pushed for more shojosei titles. I was a teenager during the Shojo Beat magazine height and would use all of my spare money to get the volumes (and I had a subscription through college). I feel like at the time, with limited accessibility to manga in general, more men were reading these titles too (because all us nerds were reading anything we could get our hands on). People are missing out on a lot of great titles due to perception of shojosei not being worth it and these classic titles being locked behind $100 per book prices because they won't reprint them. You mentioned it too, but I will never understand why manga companies in general aren't including more promotional materials with the printed volumes. Even an art card would get me to buy first prints more since I'm a sucker for freebies. I would think little things like that (and having nice print quality) could help combat piracy. Thanks for going through the history of the brand, here's hoping we get better updates from them at some point.

Animerica…omg, right in the nostalgia 😭 What BLOWS my mind is the absolute refusal to make money. The romance genre is one of the biggest and most consistent money making book markets in the west. Why? Because women read voraciously, women of all ages. Young Adult books are a HUGE market mostly consumed by young women, and the kind of stories in shoujo title are very very similar to those those in the most popular YA series. There’s a path to success very clearly laid out, and Viz and Shoujo Beat have always been like, “…nah.” For why? At this point I figure shoujo fans just need to mobilize our discontent and frustration into some malicious compliance: have series request bombardment months. We pick a series per month, and every day of the month we all send in a request for it. Hopefully that results in an inundation of thousands of daily requests.

Request your Local Libraries purchase Shojo Beat series. Not only is it another purchase, but it may also encourage other people to pick up the manga to try it (including people who normally wouldn't look at this title in a store). This is how I found Yona of the Dawn, Queen's Quality and Snow White with the Red Hair. Mind you, not ALL libraries have the funding to do so (manga are expensive, hard to get through Library distributers, are often high theft items and publishers offer no discounts) but those who do, PLEASE request they order Shojo series you want to see! You can also see if you can get series through interloan. This not only gives TWO different libraries circulation counts, but may suggest to your library that people are interested as well.

BANGERRRRRRRRR I agree a lot with the piracy problem being more of an accessibility problem. As you said, when comparing getting the entire Jump catalog for $2.99 VS having to pay $6-7 per volume for a digital copy of a shoujo title that's no longer easy to find in print, a lot of people just won't do it. And I think Jump+ has added so much popularity onto series due to the easy access around the world. It sucks!! Even if they can't make one app for all of Shojo Beat, they could always focus on an app for just Shueisha shoujo or add some shoujo Shueisha titles to Jump+ or Manga UP. It really just feels like they don't care to invest the same amount of time or money into shoujo.

I really miss Shojo Beat. I collect manga and I'd even enjoy a digital subscription that let me explore new titles.

I actually won a comic drawing contest in shojo beat when I was in my late teens. They printed a tiny preview of the comic in the magazine and sent me a whole case of strawberry pocky.

colleen hits us with the facts yet again! viz is really out here chomping at the bit to serve their shonen fans new content and leave us shoujo stans in the dust. it's sad because they publish a lot of series i like! (yona, rainbow days, king's beast, prince freya, imakoi)

I was subscribed to Shoujo Beat from the very start (where I got the money from I don't even remember) and that magazine was my EVERYTHING and I haven't experienced anything as great as reading them since. It just perfectly encapsulated everything I had been begging for as a baby nerdy girl. I was finally being told I had a reserved place in the anime/manga world. It introduced me to so many new things like the movie Kamikaze Girls and Japanese fashion trends. I miss that magazine SO MUCH I'm still baffled by how well done it was. The housing crisis impacted my family of course and my issues were lost in all of the shuffling to have somewhere to live and I would pay a King's ransom for all the issues again.

So I'm returning to reading manga for the first time as an adult - but I've spent a couple of years in the otome game fan space and this is such deja vu. "Just buy everything to prove you'd buy the things you actually want us to sell!" "You want [specific thing]? Well, you better buy [totally different thing] to show there's a demand!" "We listed some possible titles we'd like to translate in a poll and [specific thing] won? Hm... we don't know if there's demand for it though... Let's release one of the losers in that poll instead." Utterly infuriating! It sucks that shojo/josei has the same damn issues. 😭

Was into shoujo manga as a teenage and just got back into it last year. VIZ has repeatedly made it clear how little their care about their audience through there words and actions. They don’t plan on making making a digital app for just shoujo only anytime soon. I decided to not sit around to hope that one day they will magically change. Manga that has caught my interest I have been buying in Japanese as I have continued to study the Japanese language. Recently got volume 19 of Queen’s Quality and was actually able to understand the plot twist. Volume 20 in Japanese is coming out on June 26th 2023.

Good god! That editors post still makes my blood boil because it’s such a pain trying to collect physical copies of older series I love. I’m sorry I was a young child living in a third world country when you were publishing all this titles and so I couldn’t buy them. I guess I should have known better, silly me. /s 🙄

Yes this video is everything. I was 11 in 2011-2012 when I got into manga. So at that age my only access to Shoujo Beat was from the public library and my friend who let me borrow volumes her older brother collected. The shoujo beat magazine I had access to was the one in my middle school classroom that I stole because it was gonna be used to be cut up for collages. I obviously had no money to get them and even in my late teens money was low so literally reading online became my only access after awhile. Now I’m 23 and I have a stable income to start my own collection it’s now literally an investment. All of my faves are out of print and I spent $100+ on the last volume for my lovely complex series. It’s disappointing and I find myself becoming bitter.

I genuinely have no idea why they won’t launch a digital SB or like a deluxe SJ sub that includes access to SB titles. Or at the bare minimum, why not do what seven seas does and have that monthly readers survey where readers offer feedback and mention titles they’d love to see licensed? It’s frustrating to see them handle SJ so well, the Sig lines etc but to totally drop the ball on SB.

I loved Shojo Beat. I remember the shock of receiving the last volume of the Shojo Beat magazine. It felt like a slap in the face to get the Shonen Jump magazine after.

I want to continue to support Shojo Beat in its new releases, but almost none of their new licenses (except Neighborhood Love Story) have interested me in my any way. I'm keeping with King's Beast, I'm keeping up with Queen's Quality, but why can't we get any more of these amazing adventure and fantasy titles? I know they're selling well because I can check the volume purchasing statistics online. It seems like a missed opportunity at this point.

On the note of piracy - 90% of the manga I own atm, were ones I read from various hosting sites back in middle school. Why are books written literal centuries ago still in print and readily accessible? Because compelling media doesn't need to be written during a particular time frame. When people like something, they will seek it no matter how much times passes. If a 14 year old in 8th grade loved the sparkly eyes in shoujo manga, it will remain with them until they are able to afford it on their own.

I honestly miss when I was a little kid and Shojo Beat and Shounen Jump magazines were still sold in convenience stores and through scholastics here in Canada. I still remember the time someone lied and got one of my Shounen Jump issues. :,)

I really do think this is one of your best videos yet! Very well-researched, with a lot of great points. It would be nice if Viz took your criticisms to heart. The reprint controversy is one of the most frustrating things that happened. Many shojo manga fans were either very young or not born at all when big series like Basara, Red River, From Far Away, etc were printing, so we weren't able to access those series. Lots of us prefer collecting physical copies, and we shouldn't have to resort to scalpers just to enjoy a great series!

Here in germany we had Daisuki, which was kinda equivalent to shojo beat. We got magazines and later normal published manga volumes. Unfortunately it got cancelled in 2012 , after 9 years releasing the newest shojo titles. Nostalgia kicks hard these days

Editor Nancy has entered the chat. But honestly, it hurts to see the light of one of the titans of my teenagehood hobbies dwindle. I’m happy to see other publishers step up to the plate but still, I crave the good ol’ days of SB. Amazing video, keep it up!

I fell in love with Beauty Pop, Skip beat, full moon wo sagashite, happy hustle high, high school debut, lovely complex. Found them at the city library. Don't even have a bookstore that sells new books in my city anymore. I have to go 40+ miles.

Colleen is on fire in this one! The community reference elicited a real life donkey laugh. It was great. But I find this whole situation very interesting! I’m a fairly diverse reader when it comes to comics so it didn’t really occur to me that shojo has been suffering so much in the past decade. I actually posit that we’re still feeling the effects of the comics code all these years later. The American comic industry used to be incredibly diverse and target all demographics. It featured horror, romance, adventure, detective/crime and of course super heroes. Girls and women were a viable target audience because… they had eyes and could read. After the comics code hit, the restrictions were so tight that essentially all other demographics and genres were obliterated besides superheroes. Without targeted material a lot of female readership (which I argue also impacted future authorship) dried up, with a not inconsiderable number still reading superhero stuff just not as many. The industry seemed to sort of ouroboros from there. Eventually it became an industry that was straight up hostile to the idea of women participating (ignore all the women who were participating despite the hostility like the legendary Vertigo founder Karen Berger among others lol) and I think we still see that today. But the tide is turning. Women read more than men. The vice grip superheroes hold over comics is loosening, and even there I’ve seen so many more marvel/dc comics targeted towards young teen girls because that’s the fastest growing demographic. It’s confusing to me that manga/anime distributors seems to be moving in the opposite direction when having content for girls and women was one of the things that helped them break out as an industry here in the states. I started reading comics in general because of sailor moon not because of the xmen (whom I love dearly, mind you) I have been buying more shojo but this video made me think. I’m buying very very old shojo. I’m chomping at the bit to get a taste of Rose of Versailles (udon), the Poe Clan ( fantagraphics), and Marmalade Boy (seven seas). I’m so interested in the women that pioneered these comics because we’re sort of missing that in western comics. Plus these women were producing some pretty incredible art ngl. Hagio Moto’s art looks like it was made of spider silk, so dainty and flowing. I am reading some new shojo now like Skip and Loafer (seven seas) but a lot of the stuff I think I would have liked when I was younger is stuff like Hanako-san or SpyXFamily which I honestly feel has a heavy slant towards what girls would probably enjoy in manga/comics (death and espionage! Jk I mean the romantic chemistry… and death and espionage) My favorite series in manga have always been shonen/seinen written by women. It does sometimes make me wonder if women with certain styles or sensibilities are discouraged from making shojo/josei manga that might have done so in the past where it was a newer frontier … or if talent is getting poached and packaged for the boys/men demographic… but that’s baseless speculation. Anyway, great video. Sorry for rambling! I just have a lot of passion on the subject. Please cover some dusty old shojo titles in the future! I need y’all to be buying these books so I can get even older dustier shojo released apparently lol!

Unfortunately, I don't look to Viz/ Shojo Beat for shojo/josei as much as I do other publishers like Seven Seas. I'm still gonna buy the series that interest me, but it doesn't seem like they want their consumer base to grow. It almost seems like they're giving scraps to keep fans just barely fed. Honestly, I want another publisher to give them real competition to hopefully breath new life into Shojo Beat.

i juuuuust opened the video but i wanted to thank you for making it! if it weren’t for the fact that i still have all of my issues of shojo beat physically in my possession i would think it was a fever dream. i miss it so much

Very informative drop, I especially enjoyed learning the history of Animerica Extra! Great job of giving the facts in a balanced way without going on the offensive. 👏 👏 I won't pretend to know how VIZ operates behind closed doors. But from the outside looking in they seem to be much less interested in shoujo compared to other publishers. And the handling of their social media has been disappointing. For now, I'd love to see the Shojo Beat catalog moved to a digital app. So if VIZ finds their way to this comment section I will pay more for the Jump app if you make that an option!! I'd love to read Yona as soon as new chapters are out! 🙏

Wow, that title you mentioned that could have been an option instead of RK, makes me so sad...it sounds so good! Great video👍🏻 I am always sad to see barely anything coming from shojobeat since I grew up picking up the magazine

Here in Germany our dedicated shojo magazine actually managed to outlive the shonen magazine by years so we had the opposite situation a bit where it could be hard to discover new shonen manga unless you had access to the internet and were able to read English too because of course that's what most fan translations were in. Pretty sure we still have far more female readers and buyers of manga over here so the stuff you can usually buy is more geared towards them. We still get a lot of shonen of course but really more the popular stuff.

“ . . . forbidden love. In more ways than one.” I scream laughed. 😂

It's honestly a shame that Shojo Beat doesn't have a lot of social media. Viz has a big presence online across multiple platforms so I don't think it would take that much effort to try and make a safe space for shojo fans to find new titles. Especially because Viz is very shonen heavy with almost no if any shojo titles being advertised. There's so much potential in reviving the brand for Instagram, especially because Viz also has an Instagram

Thank you for covering this topic! Shojo Beat was a big part of my teenage years and was one of the major things that got me in to art. Also, thank you for pointing out the Shojo Beat Tumblr account. I just pre-ordered the first volume of Ai Yazawa's Neighborhood Story set for release this December. I would have completely missed this otherwise. Thanks!!

I loved getting shojo from the library until I decided I wanted to start collecting only to find out that I had to really save up to get the volumes at scalper prices...looking at you Beauty pop

I need Shojo Beat to step up and reprint the volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends which are near impossible to find 😭 it's the only series from the line I'm collecting physically

watched this early on patreon but watching again ✨️ excellent video as always. i was not aware of the romantic killer controversy at all so that was new to me 😭 it makes me so sad sigh. truly hoping they do better in the future, as they were an integral part of many people's intro to shojo.

This was such a fantastic and informative video! I nodded my head quite often when it came to certain points because many things you shared echo with me too! Great video!!

Thank you for this video, I'm not from the US, so this was very informative! From my outsider perspective I'm not really surprised about how Viz treats shojo. Viz has the monopoly for Jump titles which means they have at least 80% of the best sellers in the market. They don't really have an incentive to diversify their catalog...

this video is so on-point. you referencing the titles that made shoujo beat so big in their time really brought back fond childhood memories... as well as a reminder of what shoujo manga means to me. 🥺 it is baffling to see how disconnected SB is with their consumer base now, even when they have so much amazing material to license. So many missed opportunities that they can still leverage.... it's so frustrating!

Another amazing and informative video colleen! I was so happy you posted about god is telling me to fall in love on your Twitter cause I read what was available online and then bought all 5 of the Japanese volumes! I hope viz listens to its consumers and licenses more shoujo series! Especially newer ones! I feel like they’re falling extremely behind other publishers bc of their lack of trying when it comes to shoujo. They could also do a monthly survey for shoujo beat like seven seas does!

I remember slowly buying vampire knight volumes as they released( and fell behind all the time) because I had to rely on money from my parents. I was only 13 or 14 years old back then. I also didn't have access to bookstores so my only way to get manga was through wal mart, bookfairs, and birthday presents. It was part of the reason i only had volume 2 of anima for the longest time.

For love of god I WASNT ALIVE THEN!?AND IF I WAS I WOULD BE AN INFANT

Just watched this video btw and wanted to share some thoughts. I 100% agree that the Shojo Beat imprint/brand is on a general decline from its former glory. Excluding some of its more popular titles lately from already established and popular series, like Yona of the Dawn and Snow White with the Red Hair and reprinting the popular Nana, it is falling behind in comparison to hotter titles from other publishers. And overall, Viz Media is far more interested in showcasing its popular shounen jump titles, especially with multiple reprints and high demand due to sheer popularity and anime adaptatione exposure, with Shojo Beat getting put on the wayside sadly. Especially since its manga getting anime adaptations has been pretty much lacking to non existant. I think right now, book publishers are dealing with a paper shortage overall that hasn't been completely fixed, leading to only focusing on publishing the hot titles that will get a return on investment. Its why being on the NYT best selling list or topping weekly, monthly, or annual book rankings is so important. And why people sharing books on social media, like Tiktok or virtual book clubs, helps spread the word of popular titles through word of mouth. Because of this, Shojo Beat needs to be more with the times and kinda go through a whole entire change of mindset when it comes to its audience. They need to advocate and support their books and series with the youth to promote sales, they also need to see what series that people actually want to read (Seven Seas does this spectacularly through their Google Forms and surveys they send every month, leading to highly popular series from them), and have a better understanding of what are the popular series in Japan and try to push them forward a bit more. As whether we like it or not, book publishing is a business, and what matters the most is not only reputation, but how well books sell as sales and profit are the main indicators of success. Along with making accessibility easier as otherwise, fans will turn to piracy to meet their needs. I do like some Shojo Beat titles as some are true classics and masterpieces, but recently, I have lost interest in some of their recent aquisitions. And generally, even with anime being morely geared towards a male demongraphic, women really really like anime, and that is reflected in the whole interest in manga collection, and reading romance webtoons being super popular lately. So, Shojo Beat needs to understand their market and audience better and tap into it for better sales.

I fucking looooved Shojo Beat magazine! So many good stories and good articles recommending music artists that became lifelong favorites. They stopped publishing and sent me Shonen Jump instead 😑. But I gave them to my friend who was very excited about them so it kinda worked out.

That brief part about buying Skip Beat individually for $470, and I'm thinking about how RightStuf was having a sale a few months ago on the 3-in-1's, including the then upcoming 15th one so I just ordered them all, basically getting 45 volumes of the series for like $175. That is still a lot more than the $3 a month I pay for the Shonen Jump app.

Omg thank you for this video! Legit i remember being SO JEALOUS of my friends whose parents let them subscribe to the SB magazine! I was poor so y'know that didn't happen! I did end up, over the years, with manga from every one of these imprints on my shelf due to my secondhand buying (thank u half price book stores) It is kinda crazy to think about, I think the bulk of the shojo/josei series i collect that are anywhere close to current are a mix of seven seas and kodansha? I am a pretty slow collector due to circumstances so I'm still trying to collect the SB titles Natsuyuu, Takane&Hana, and My Love Mix-Up! (The former and latter of which seem to still be going in NA at least--Natsuyuu might be forever tho lol) I won't lie if there was an app to access their library of shojosei titles (include both the SB and Viz Shojo imprint titles!!!) I would easily pay double what i do for Shonen Jump every month just because accessibility to titles for this demographic is ridiculous if you don't wanna 🏴‍☠️. Incredibly true that it's an issue of convenience, not price. Again thank you!

I was so sad when Shojo Beat magazine was discontinued. 😭

I feel like a lot of smaller publishing companies, like seven seas, are more willing to pick up shojosei titles. For some reason Viz doesn't see the value in the demographic/genre. I guess due to the astronomical success of their shonen action titles. But it seems like smaller companies have noticed that they can't easily compete with them through shonen action so they've started to pay attention to more "niche" audiences. Seven seas is the one I'm most familiar with because I read danmei (Chinese BL) but it seems like they chose to pick up the genre (danmei) as they noticed a fervent fanbase hungry for content. I hope they do this with shojosei as well, and with them picking up don't say mystery/ don't call it mystery maybe they will/are. Especially because selling to these more "niche" groups has shown them success. This could be the massive wakeup call Viz needs cuz they clearly have access to some of the most popular shojosei series in Japan, but they don't choose to publish them.

Ahhh this era of shojo beat. What a time. I used to borrow like 10 vols a week and binge through them till my next library visit. And to this day a good portion of my collection are some old school shojo beat series as well as current ones. Hoping they license more new series in the future.

Great video, nodding along hardcore at these points. The one thing that struck me that was left out is that when talking about accessibility via subscriptions service apps, there are much more licensing issues that arise from Shojo Beat trying to have an app than Shonen Jump. Shonen Jump is a worldwide brand run by Shueisha; Shojo Beat is a Viz-only imprint that stitches together selections from several shojo magazines run by different publishers in Japan (which are under the same umbrella publishing group, but still function as separate publishers). The app for Shonen Jump was pushed and developed initially by Shueisha. Would the parent companies let Shojo Beat do something similar, or are we in a behind-the-scenes Four Shojo Stories situation? While it makes sense that Viz wanted to have an imprint for shojo that mirrors its shonen one, it feels like it's really just tying their hands more than anything. (Obviously, would LOVE a shojo manga subscription app, merely saying that unfortunately the publishing industry as a whole has plenty of outdated/not-consumer-friendly licensing practices that make things difficult, which is what I strongly assume is happening here. I still buy and love plenty of Shojo Beat titles on the regular.)

Where is Colleen's Oscar for the library bathroom scene?! But seriously, the history of shoujo manga in America needs more in-depth analysis like this. Thanks Colleen for educating us on the unnecessarily complex licensing history of shoujo manga in the US a la Shoujo Beat and Viz Media.

I wonder if the continued supply chain issues for print manga/comics in general would contribute to us never getting a reprint. I would even be ok if they reprinted them into omnibus additions in most cases, as long as they included color pages of each of the original covers.

I just love your videos so much and i really appreciate the fact that you talk about classic shoujo titles that have been forgotten by many! Shoujo is my favorite genre and seeing you talk about it and spreading information on it is amazing!! I will never get over my love for series like kamisama kiss, dengeki daisy, ao haru ride or nana that represent the classic shoujo genre! Also this video was so informative and i learned alot of things about shoujo that i had never heard of before

Was into the magazine as a preteen and was devastated when it ceased publication after the financial crisis of 2008. Still, Viz Media is still doing good work bringing Kaichou wa Maid-sana among other good shoujo titles to western audiences

Another banger. That tumblr post is wild, I was buying shoujo beat manga as a pre teen/teenager (I am thirty now) and obviously was limited cash wise but I also lived in the Welsh countryside so in order to get to the one store that had manga it was an hour on the bus to the nearest town. I have a few first volumes from back then that were the only volumes I could get from that series and now it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to get the rest. Blaming the fans is wild. I collect a variety but one thing I collect is BL and it’s kind of nuts that BL which seems more niche is easier to collect and more abundant than shoujo now when it used to be the opposite. They are so slow on the reprints too which definitely make money like the nana reprints, some people dropped big money to get it that could have been spent on many more volumes. So much stuff that I am buying second hand that money could have been in their pockets. It’s like they blame us but we are all screaming take my money!

Would be cool to maybe one day get a video on other English publishers and how they have been handling shoujo manga as of late.

I really wish shojo beat would get more magical girl manga currently they only have Phantom Thief Jeanne,Full Moon o Sagashite (magical idol) and Ultra Maniac(witch from another world on earth)

Great overview of the SB imprint, and thanks for recapping some of their recent controversies (the Romantic Killer one still ticks me off)! One small correction, though: Viz's Flower Comics imprint wasn't named after Flowers magazine. It was named after Shogakukan's shojo imprint, Flower Comics. Shogakukan has published all of its shojo titles under the FC imprint since the 1970s (regardless of whether a manga was serialized in Betsucomi or Cheese!, etc.). Josei manga, too (though nowadays their josei titles are published under the Flower Comics Alpha imprint). EDIT: Oh, I see the Flowers magazine thing comes from an old ANN column. Guess I should send my comment to the author, lol.

Wow, the amount of research that went into making this! This is top notch journalism/essayism. (tnx omnibros for the introduction)

lmao omg, I realize this is a joke but any bookseller will tell you that poop on the sales floor isn't unheard of. 🤣

I love your vids so much. You have reminded me of so many memories of a lot of these titles while adding on new ones for me to find! I wish though you added a list (like in the description or in a pinned comment) with all the titles you mention in these videos. I have a hard time finding when you mention the titles sometimes after I finish the video (because I respect you enough to finish the video first) . Just a thought! 😁😁

I just started to read Crimson Hero after finding the first 4 volumes at my local bookstore and fell in love with it! So of course I went on a little trip through wiki and such trying to find the rest of them, only to learn that if was never completed :( Im going to continue to try and pick them up, hoping they might finish the series on day... along with the rest cancelled that year

Thank you for making this video, I've been wondering the same thing regarding shoujo beat

First!!!! Edit: great video as always!! Super informative and insightful. I'm not from the US so I didn't know much of this but I can relate to the struggle to find good and new shoujo titles and it makes me sad that I usually end up reading them online and in another language. It's also sad when you compare the shonen/seinen catalog of the publishing companies against their shoujo/josei.

What a great and interesting video. Great job Colleen!

i used to subscribe to shoujo beat magazine in middle school and it brought me so much happiness as a kid. i was so sad when my parents had to cancel the magazine. this video brought me so much nostalgia ❤

Ah, Four Shoujo Stories. I remember that (and hearing about the copyright dust-up later).

I remember my mother buying me these from the local grocery store then eventually caving into a subscription. I had them all. My favorite was Godchild and Vampire Knight.

you mentioning futari de koi aahh shoujo jesus you give me hope 😭 😭

Good news! I've heard that Red River will be getting a reprint as an omnibus series; the first volume comes out in October and I can't wait. :>

I absolutely love your videos that educate me 🙇🏻‍♂️ I hope this video sparks conversation & positive change :)

The bathroom joke hit a little too close to home. 😅 I have Crohn's disease and it has caused me to have accidents. I'm not an old person either - I was only diagnosed a few years ago at age 17.

15:33 this video is the first I’ve heard of shoujo beat as a magazine and I’ve literally owned shoujo beat manga volumes

Accessibility is such a drag. Especially with crazy eBay prices lol I’m glad you threw that in there

I was in high school during the peak time when Shojo Beat was popular for a brief moment and I had memories of seeing the magazine in my local Barnes and Noble. Not just with the manga but when VIZ Media had a few anime under the Shojo Beat label. They let most of their anime license expire, having licensed by other anime companies in later years and the only anime that has a Shojo Beat label to this day is Vampire Knight. Its really sad and disappointing on how Shojo Beat has been treated over the past decade

You should do a video on Del Ray Manga. I'm honestly still pissed that they had the last volume of Ghost Hunt translated and set to release, and they just simply didn't release it when they sold their company and their licenses. The assholes that have the license of Ghost Hunt refuse to release the last volume nor the 3 extra volumes that were released a couple of years back now.

I still have my box of around four years of Shojo Beats and NewtypeUSA magazines! 🥰

The editor note is so mean it reads so much like bullying

the way you unlocked memories when you mentioned dengeki daisy

I also grew up on shoujo beat’s releases but honestly at this point I don’t care who publishes them as long as they get published. We got seven seas etc who are doing a pretty good job. Although these days I’m more into the Korean manhwas so I’m collecting their prints mostly. I do wish shoujo beat had a subscription based app like shounen jump tho.

That “since you have been gone” scared me😂. Thank you for the hard work in research

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal YT Channel just released a 6 minute video on "The Economics of Barnes & Noble" and what is in highest demand in their bookstores today? DING DING DING! Manga (and Romance books, thank you ladies) is acting as Atlas to their industry. Consumers just can't get enough. It is insane to me that as manga is gobbling up more and more square footage in stores (taking over Western comic/graphic novel sections, music, and movie sections), Shojo Beat (and other publishers) isn't pulling a media blitz to push their product. Or building on the trend of pushing old titles in hot new packaging as "Collector" or "Deluxe" editions. There seems to be a definite disconnect between the Viz Shojo/Shonen branch, not withstanding their shojo audience. The cherry on top is the unsavory interactions Shojo Beat has with their fans (if only my parents did the nasty earlier, if only child labor laws weren't a thing, if only I had a time machine). Take a page from Barnes & Noble's revamp of their in-store experience, listen to the customer base.

Imagine being a female mangaka that changed the shoujo industry a few decades ago for the better only for this to be the future...

On the note of furoku- we did get a cute calander once in Shojo Beat! I loved that little thing and kept it on display for years

Colleen, This is your old friend Jacob’s brother Nick. glad to find out you’re thriving and growing on youtube. This was randomly recommended to me in the youtube algorithm! Loved the video and excited to see your future recommendations!

I love this video, and have rewatched it so much! Would you ever do a similar video on other publishers like Tokyopop or Kodansha and their history of producing shojo in English?

I still have all the old copies of Shojo Beat I had as a teenager, including their final print volume. I bought them monthly with my allowance :)

They actually did give out gifts in some issues like stickers and calendars post cards nothing substantial but it was always exciting when they did I would buy it in the store every month until the middle of the recession then unfortunately had to sell the majority of my manga to a local video bookstore I did keep one series and still have it today

Surely somewhere I still have the dvd I got in an issue of Shojo Beat with the first episode of Full Moon on it. That was one of the few times they included an extra goodie.

I was devastated the day shoujo beat sent me my letter that they were discontinuing. Mostly because I had JUST ended my subscription with Shonen jump and instead of shoujo beat refunding me the last few months of my subscription, they tacked it onto lengthening my Shonen jump subscription. At the time, it felt like they were taking away the thing I loved and force feeding me more of the thing I had grown bored with. I really miss shoujo beat.

I am not sure why Viz doesn't reprint old series. They must know that their old Shojo Beat series are extremely sought after and only avaliable on the second hand market. Do they not want want money? As well, there is no excuse there is not a Shojo Beat app. They wonder why their series doesn't sell as well as their Shonen counterparts, when they make it as inaccessible as possible. I wish they would get it together

i think of shojo manga. i think of imprint call Daisuki or manga twister Daisuki is monthly jump shojo manga magazine in Germany, by Carlsen Comics (February 2003 to June 2012) and Manga Twister its was Bi-Monthly shojo/ shonen by Egmont Manga and Anime ( only did sunday manga ) from 2003 -2006

Hell yeah, more Colleen

I was a Shonen Jump & Shojo Beat subscriber from 2002-ish till they both ended their runs. Shojo Beat magazine did have a few of issues with freebies (memo pads, sticker sheets, desk calendar, and a couple postcards).

I really really like "God is telling me to fall in love" but Its been almost a year since an update on a chapter. So many unanswered questions to the story!!

Fantastic video, thanks for all the research! I'm also an older manga fan and read through copies of Shojo Beat magazine as a kid, but lots of little details here I never knew! I didn't realize Viz Shojo isolated from Shojo Beat - I thought it was all the same and they just updated the logo :o

I remember when the Shojo Beat Magazine was cancelled and VIZ rolled everyone to Shonen Jump to finish any subscriptions :< I still have a few copies of the SB Magazines to this day

Now I kind of see why shojo beat has such a bad rep on twitter. Responding to a user request by calling them a thief.

I'm an American comics and Shonen kid, but I learned a lot from this! Great info and delivery.