NYAF08: Kitty Media
Mmm, delicious 18+ manga. I just got a look at the yuri title Maka-Maka (the original Japanese copy) while Frank Pannone told me about the production values– the English version is going to look exactly like the Japanese, complete with the obi covers and the chapter pages and stuff…it’s going to be gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. AND amazingly hot to boot. Really looking forward to that one.
And the crowd adamantly demands the yaoi coverage first…apparently BL is doing very well for Kitty and promises that there’ll be at least one yaoi book every month next year from Kitty. They’re working on getting more stuff from Crimson Spell creator Ayano Yamane, and they’re going to have Fujoshi Rumi volume 3 out probably in January.
There are no new titles to announce (although there are dozens of things in negotiation), so we’re moving in to q&a. There’s nothing new to say about Winter Cicada, and they haven’t done any light novels…they’re hesitant because they pretty much just have him doing all of the books, so adding light novels would be fairly intensive.
Any chance of pushing bara (basically yaoi but with buff dudes)? Probably not, that’s not what the majority of BL fans want. Moving on to Maka-Maka the full-color yuri series. The books are actually going to be $20 each, but the Japanese manga are much more expensive too (¥1200 versus the usual ¥400– we’re paying 2x the norm, rather than 3x, and the production quality is SUPER high on these).
I asked about how many porn stores sell their hentai or BL manga and whatnot, and apparently it’s pretty difficult to get them to go for it because it’s difficult to convince them of the price point (as compared to anime DVDs which they’ve sort of gotten the hang of).
Are they trying to get the license to Antique Bakery? He says if he’s in negotiation on something, or is thinking of going into negotiation on something, he can’t talk about it at all…so he can’t talk about the Antique Bakery anime yet. They’re also considering doing BL games.
How likely are you to get older yaoi? He likes a lot of classic manga but it’s hard to work on those titles when there are always newer titles to work on. Apparently Pannone wanted to make a kitty boy logo for the BL books from Kitty Media but apparently he lost that fight because they wanted to keep the kitty girl logo going.
They have done some OEL, by which we mean Incubus, but apparently it’s hard to convince the boss, though it’s always possible.
How about the history of Kitty Media’s yaoi? They started with Fake, although it’s not technically a yaoi, really more of an implied BL thing, then they moved on to Level C. They did well enough to warrant getting more and then eventually yaoi just exploded.
What sells more, yaoi or yuri? Well, Maka-Maka is his first yuri book, so we’ll see! Though he expects it not to do as well as Skyscapers of Oz (his best-selling book, interestingly) because of the higher price point but they’ll be getting more regular tankobon-style yuri in the future, so we’ll see…ask again in a year.
Ohhh man, he was just talking about sort of the history of yuri in the US and he mentioned a title named Chirality, which I completely remember…it came in a grab bag I got when I was entirely underage for such a book, I’m sure. It was also very, very weird, as I recall. Sorry, just had to go on that little odd nostalgia trip.
A question on Japanese censorship vs American censorship…the only censorship Pannone really does is when he ups the ages of *cough* 16(-or-so)-year-olds to 18-year-olds, and there are some titles that he just wouldn’t ever do (*cough* Boku no Pico), but he doesn’t really censor anything. Meanwhile in Japan, they’re censoring things less and less, slowly but surely.
How do the target audiences compare? In the U.S. the audience is probably a bit broader than in Japan, which will be discussed more in the yaoi/yuri panel that’s coming next (I probably won’t be liveblogging that; it’s unlikely to have news and it’s really more just because I’m interested in it). But all kinds of people talk to him about yaoi, including even mothers who buy stuff for their underage daughters (talk about cool moms).
And we’ve moved on to the item giveaways, so I’m off!
Tags: kitty-media, maka maka, media-blasters, nyaf08
September 26th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Do you think you could ask him if MB/Kitty is going to release volume 3 of Dog Style anytime in the near future? I’m so looking forward to it.
September 26th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Chiralty was published in American comic book format long ago by CPM, and its been out of print for a long time. I read the story myself a long time ago. Its a cross between “gender bender” and yuri. I think CPM may have lost licensing to Chiralty since it hasn’t been published for over five years.
September 27th, 2008 at 8:15 am
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