NY Anime Fest Coverage: ICv2 Girls - The Other Half of the Otaku Generation

My coverage of the ICv2 conference held at New York Anime Festival continues with this panel of marketing to girls. I haven’t seen much coverage of this panel posted anywhere - including Anime News Network - so this information hasn’t been beaten to death in the blogosphere yet.

You can listen to the un-edited audio I recorded of the panel here. I hope to clean up the levels later for my podcast.

ICv2: Girls - The Other Half of the Otaku Generation

Moderator:Larissa Faw, Editor of Youth Markets Alert
Panelists: Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Senior Editor of Global Manga at Tokyopop
Elizabeth Kawasaki, Editorial Director of Viz
Nola Thacker, Young Adult Services Librarian and Author
Kurt Hassler, Co-Publisher at Yen Press
Dallas Middaugh, Associate Publisher of Del Rey Manga
Jill Snider, Senior Brand Manager, Funimation

There were three really interesting highlights of this panel:

• Content is king. Yen Press and Viz are of the opinion that good content will sell, no matter what the demographic or direction of the text.
• Tokyopop is backing off from their three-book deals with domestic creators
• Broadcasters refuse to air anime aimed at girls.

The panel kicked off with a manga focus. The manga boom is largely due to Tokyopop placing Sailor Moon graphic novels in Borders and Barnes and Noble in 2000, as Ms. Diaz-Przybyl pointed out. By the late 1990’s American comic book stores were notoriously unfriendly to females, and TP had to reach into bookstores to capture the Sailor Moon demographic. Eight years later the manga section is booming.

Ms. Thacker observed that in her library in Suffolk County girls read manga for boys, and manga brings in the junior high kids who are notorious for not reading any books at all. Ms. Thacker is probably unaware of this, but if you ask Ed Chavez, girls don’t just read Shonen Jump magazine here and in Japan, girls ruined Shonen Jump, which now attempts to appeal to the female audience with thinly veiled uke/seme pairings.

Ms. Faw, the moderator (who could’ve used the microphone more often, by the way), asked the panelist why girls like manga more than guys. Ms. Snider posited that manga is easier to obtain. Mr. Hassler pointed out that Japanese comics have been more diverse historically compared to the boy’s club that is American comics. Ms. Kawasaki theorized that manga storylines are similar to girl-oriented television.

Ms. Snider observed that American comics are trying to capture the girl market most recently with Anita Blake titles and Buffy comics. Ms. Diaz-Przybyl said that women want to see strong female protagonists - we do not, in fact, want to read comics about Spiderman’s girlfriend.

The topic turned to merchandising. Ms. Snider theorized that girls buy a lot of merch. They even buy stuff from amazon.jp when they can’t find it domestically. “Guys are lazy,” she said, “Girls are loyal fans.”

“It’s less of a collector mentality,” Ms. Kawasaki suggested. Ms. Snider backed up this point, saying girls are more shoppers than collectors. We don’t want signed busts of our favorite characters - we want character goods - and lots of them! I agreed completely.

Ms. Faw asked the panelist where manga is going in five years. What followed was the rather strange commentary from Ms. Diaz-Przybyl that the foreignness of reading right-to-left is cutting out a large potential audience. It’s bizarre to hear this from someone at Tokyopop, since they lead the revolution of unflopped manga. Mr. Hassler jumped in to point out the apparent contradiction, but also said that Viz published some non-flipped editions before Tokyopop did.

Mr. Hassler emphasized the importance of content over reading direction. With the Light, the manga about raising an autistic child, has been a run-away hit for Yen Press and is selling better than they ever expected. It is selling very well to non-manga-readers, and none of them are complaining about the text direction.

Ms. Kawasaki also believes that the right-to-left barrier will eventually drop. Ms. Thacker said the readers in her library are accustomed to reading books in both directions.

A member of the audience questioned if Ms. Thacker’s library patrons represented an accurate cross section of America. She said she’s certain it does. Mr. Hassler said that manga sells equally as well in rural and urban areas. Some of the highest volume of manga sales come out of stores in rural Texas, for example. Books A Million is a southern bookstore chain catering to the Bible Belt, but manga sells quite well there. There is even a rumor (not mentioned on the panel) that yaoi sells better at Books A Million than it does elsewhere in the country.

The topic of josei manga came up. According to Mr. Hassler, the josei demographic in the U.S. has not grown up reading manga (except I guess myself, and Ms. Dacey-Tsuei, and perhaps Ms. Diaz-Przybyl). Mr. Hassler pointed out that With the Light is both josei and successful. He said we could wait until teenagers reading shojo grow into the josei demographic, but it is more expedient to find new ways to reach the josei audience.

Calvin Reid from Publisher’s Weekly asked about the success of Tokyopop’s OEL program with girls. Much like what Tokypop’s Jeremy Ross would say on the next panel, Ms. Diaz-Przybyl opened by saying how successful Tokyopop’s OEL titles are, and then explaining Tokyopop’s decision to back away from the program:

“Certainly some of our most successful properties have captured that female readership… particularly Dramacon… The line as a whole, I think, is still struggling, but that’s something we’re working on as we speak… The model that we initially started in terms of three volume series, license it right from the get-go, and we get locked into a contract for three years - that has not necessary proved to be very effective because we’re working with a lot of young artist, who - some are extremely talented, but this is a growing process. They’re learning their craft, as we’re learning how to be better editors. I think that shows in some of the early books. But I mean that’s something you see in Japan as well, but the market is designed to absorb that… I’m looking forward to the next round of books from some of these creators.”

She went on to say Tokyopop is looking at ways to test new artists on a smaller scale. Mr. Ross hinted about this at the following panel as well.

Finally at the very end of the panel, a member of the audience brought up anime. Jill Snider is my new personal hero, since she has pitched anime titles for girls to Lifetime and WE. She’s even talked to the Adult Swim people. Mr. Middaugh brought up his talks with Cartoon Network years ago. Cartoon Network stopped showing Sailor Moon because the reruns did not get good ratings compared to new episodes. While boys watched the same episodes of Dragon Ball Z over and over again, apparently girls did not watch reruns.

Mr. Middaugh also re-iterated something which I have personally heard from Cartoon Network representatives several times: Girls will watch shows intended for boys, but boys avoid girl-oriented shows like the plague. Cartoon Network’s core audience is boys age six to twelve.

Mr. Hassler thinks that broadcasters are of the opinion animation is for boys. Ms. Diaz-Przybyl claimed that proportionally, fewer girl-oriented anime series are produced in Japan.

Ms. Snider said that boys’ shows come with big advertising dollars and toy sales, which make them more attractive. Tween girls barely watch television, and are instead glued to their cell phones. Mr. Hassler hoped some girl-animation would make it onto Sci-Fi channel when their new anime block started, but there was no such luck.

The panelist somehow managed to avoid talking about yaoi.