Just to start imprint is nearly useless. Many of you may be wondering what is the difference between imprint and serialization. It's generally the same under certain basically Akita Shoten. Serialization is the magazine in runs in. Manga usually runs in magazines weekly, biweekly or monthly etc. Imprint is the the title it's published under like Margaret Comics which covers: The Margaret, Margaret, Besatsu Margaret (Betsuma) and Deluxe Margaret (Margaret Derama). The imprint don't alway share the name like there is Jets Comics but there is to Jets Magazine.

How do you tell the difference between the two?
Generally, the word "comics" at the end, but there are some exceptions, like Shogakukan's Big Comic and Petit Comic. These are the only exception I can think of at the moment. Oh yeah, Kodansha uses KC.

Reprints (Bunko/series was finished by other publisher)
These have no serialization. These were just print by the publisher, they were not printed in mags.

Am I a qualified to tell you this?
Maybe. Anymore questions?

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Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!

Thank you for clearing that up! Maybe have a pinned thread where people could ask things like that? Kind of like "Reference guide" for updaters.

edit: Also with the Biblos bankrupt, currently serializations by Libre and Biblos end up in the same place for instance Be x Boy Gold, I’m not sure about it but maybe separate it with some sort of notification like [L] for Libre or something similar (unless there are plans of solving this more permanently in the future) ?

Last edited by candyloop at 1:48 am, Mar 11 2007

something else: i just stumbled on Diamond Comics registered as Publisher in here, isn't Diamond Comics Shobukan's imprint or i'm missing something? .__.

Nope you are 100% correct and thusly it has been been fixed.

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Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!

Anyone knows details about Seoul Munhwasa? I’m asking because it seems to me that it belong to Seoul Cultural and on korean sites all the series appointed to Munhwasa are in fact appointed to Seoul Cultural. I didn’t manage to find any any coherent info on Seoul Munhwasa itself as publisher, but it seems to me that they are one and the same? Some Italian and German sites refer to Munhwasa as part of the group Seoul Cultural (corp ??) and some other refer to it as if it's one and the same. Could someone clarify this? Thanks.

Bumping this up to make a note that Flower Comics (フラワーコミッ クス ) and Flowers (well actually it's "月刊flowers", monthly flowers, but it's often used as just "flowers" ) are two different things. The first one is an imprint that feature both josei and shoujo manga (it includes works from Betsucomi, Cheese! Sho-Comi, Puchi Comics and Monthly Flowers), while "Monthly Flowers" is a josei magazine. Just because a shoujo manga is published in the Flower Comics it doesn't makes it a josei.

Well, this is what my limited Japanese tell me. Anyone to confirm, deny this?

I think you're right.

The sidebar on the wikipedia page describes Monthly Flowers as 'shoujo', but the text of the article itself clearly states that it's 'josei'. (I assume the sidebar is oversimplifying.)

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More i than choku

Monthly Flowers is shoujo. Or at least, all the manga from it I've read have been shoujo. Okay, I can only recall two right now, Hagoromo Mishin and Machi de Uwasa no Tengu no Ko (both of which were amusingly enough mislabed in the database here), but I'm sure there have been more. The Flower Comics imprint can have a lot of different stuff under it, though.

Not being one to ever be happy about getting my information from one source, even if it is personal experience, I did some extra checking here. And the magazine's "slogan" (I don't know what else to call it) is clearly visible on the home page. 珠玉の少女まん が進化型 sounds pretty inane, if you ask me, but the key bit is 少女まんが, i.e. shoujo manga.

I think I see where you got the josei from in the wikipedia text, but in that kind of context I get the feeling the intent was to write that the target audience is female, not necessarily of any particular age.

(And candyloop, if you want to categorise it further, from my samples I'd have to say it's about as close as you can get to a josei mag while still not technically being one.)

edit: Oh, and how could I forget, Umimachi Diary was in there as well. I personally would be perfectly content in thinking that's josei, if I hadn't already investigated the matter long ago. (Also, if I hadn't seen that it has just as much furigana as those other series. But that's cheating.)

Last edited by pnyxtr at 7:45 am, Aug 6 2009