How can Gunnm be such a little success?

[MrFaber]

Last time a Gunnm Last Order volume was published in Italy it was october 2011. Pretty normal, we were used to have one every 6 months about, and there was the issue of the change of publisher. I visited the site of Planet Manga (italian distribuition) to see if there was any news about the next volume and Gunnm was gone. There was no mention of the product on the site, no reprint, no old volumes still available and, of course, no more new volumes, and that is pretty annoing.

Rippersanime (life long to Rippersanime!) seems to be the only community who shows intrest in Gunnm's scans on the web.

I learned here that Gunnm is not a success at all in Japan, mostly because the main character has no penis nor magical girl costume...

I found all of this hard to believe.

I'm 34 old now, definately out of target for mangas, but i started to read Gunnm in the early 90's and i still want to know how's gonna end. I still (rarely) try to read some manga but after a few pages i find the story and the characters pretty unintresting and mostly idiotic. I guess that's what happens getting old. Yet there is still some white fly in the crowd. Stories like Ergo Proxy, for istance, or Blame! found me still entusiastic. Gunnm is above all of those.

If it can impress the grown man i am, like it impressed the boy i was in the early 90's how can't it just be considered one of the best operas ever drawn in Japan?

Is the avarage youngsters' taste gone so awry that crap like One Piece or Naruto is a world wide success and a masterpiece like Gunnm is falling into oblivion?

[kuroro86]

I think is becouse of the long time of pause. People move on and is difficult to keep tabs on mangas when y don't know if is when is caming out, or it will ever have and end.

[moooV]

I'm really glad it's not popular, because it hasn't become a part of a mass culture - it remains safely hidden from an intellectual majority, thus not forcing the author to conform to wide public's opinions and wishes, sinking in an abyss of mediocrity and idea vacuum.

Don't popularize it, keep this precious jewel - let it remain an unacknowledged masterpiece, a secret plot against the stupid.

That's why I'm strongly against any kind of a GUNNM movie. Cameron would be a perfect director for it, but I would rather see this movie never made - by any director, as a promise to the future of an intellect posessing part of the humankind.

[Sam]

My case is almost the same as MrFaber except that I'm in france!
You manga taste is pretty good I must say! (it you didn't already, you should try Biomega also from nihei)

But I do not agree with you moooV. You should know already that if a manga is not popular in Japan, well, it will basically be stopped by the editors. Thanks to its success abroad I suppose, Gunnm is still alive, but what if this turns to be different in the futur? Will we know the end of this masterpiece?
If not, I will have to find this post on this forum talking about the end of the video game on PS One and take it as the story Yukito was about to make!

[kuroro86]

My case is almost the same as MrFaber except that I'm in france!
You manga taste is pretty good I must say! (it you didn't already, you should try Biomega also from nihei)

But I do not agree with you moooV. You should know already that if a manga is not popular in Japan, well, it will basically be stopped by the editors. Thanks to its success abroad I suppose, Gunnm is still alive, but what if this turns to be different in the futur? Will we know the end of this masterpiece?
If not, I will have to find this post on this forum talking about the end of the video game on PS One and take it as the story Yukito was about to make!

I perfectly agree with you , But I still find difficult to belive that Alita isn't having a good market shear in Japan. As Sam said if you don't sell in Japan, Editors will be stoped it. I just Hope Yukito doesn't make a fake final like it happend in Alita Battle Angel the first time with "Ascension"

[moooV]

By your logic, it should have been closed and thrown away many years ago. A publishing company should publish only top-grossing products, right?

Then why is it still published and YK is coming up with new phases on a monthly basis? Something is wrong here - with your logic, or with the publisher.

I just Hope Yukito doesn't make a fake final like it happend in Alita Battle Angel the first time with "Ascension"

That's not because of an editor. In one of interviews of YK he said that he has gone through some events, which led him to a mental breakdown for two years, and he won't reveal them. He couldn't draw any more, so he has quickly finished the BAAv9 to drop it off.
He said that it has taken him several years to be able to draw again.
The only clue we have is that a GLO storyline is heavily influenced by these events.

[Burning Angel]

By your logic, it should have been closed and thrown away many years ago. A publishing company should publish only top-grossing products, right?

Then why is it still published and YK is coming up with new phases on a monthly basis? Something is wrong here - with your logic, or with the publisher.

The circunstances behind that is that the GLO manga is being saved due to the overseas market in America and Europe, and it's fanbase there. It's a well known fact.

But Kuroro, Sam, and MrFaber are right. It the sales do drop too low, the publishers will forget the damn manga and scrap it. And I feel sorry for Kishiro, seeing how his work is so underappreciated in his own country.

In fact, the Zott arc was partially an attempt to attract a larger Japanese male market, with it's character design contest, it's more Dragon Ball-like scenarios and fights, the increased protagonism of male caracters (Sechs, Zekka, Toji...), Alita's more cat-like design, and the inclusion of filler arcs and background chapters.

Yes, that's right. The need for a larger fanbase in Japan actually affected the quality and length of the story.

You know what would be great for Gunnm:HFV and Gunnm:LO (and it's sales)? An anime. In fact, James Cameron could produce the damn thing and use his new state-of-the-art digital art technology (such as the used in Avatar), and create the most visually beautiful (and expensive) anime ever... and with the money James made (and will still make) with the Avatar franchise, he can bloody well do it.

[AloneInTokyo]

I'm also dreaming of a HQ anime series. Actually, that's probably the best thing to do to make something which would be commensurate with Kishiro's masterpiece. A movie might not fit that much the complexity of the manga, but a long anime series certainly would. And obviously, such an anime would deserve a great OST.

[MrFaber]

You manga taste is pretty good I must say! (it you didn't already, you should try Biomega also from nihei)

Thank u . I've read Biomega, Noise, Blame2 and all i could lay my hands on from Nihei. I think Blame! is unsurpassed, but Nehei is always a real visionary artist.

[Sergio Nova]

This debate seems pointless to me.

Kishiro changed his publishers without great difficulties. Au contraire, Kodansha and Shueisha had to negotiate the republication of Hyper Future Vision and Last Order (in Japanese market, I mean). Are you sure a title that does not sell deserve all that attention?

You certainly cannot compare Gunnm and titles like Gantz, but that doesn't mean Gunnm does not sell. Symphonic orchestras make money enough to survive, but funk music (music?) certainly sells much more. So what? Are you going to say erudite musicians are starving?

[othergrunty]

This debate seems pointless to me.

Kishiro changed his publishers without great difficulties. Au contraire, Kodansha and Shueisha had to negotiate the republication of Hyper Future Vision and Last Order (in Japanese market, I mean). Are you sure a title that does not sell deserve all that attention?

You certainly cannot compare Gunnm and titles like Gantz, but that doesn't mean Gunnm does not sell. Symphonic orchestras make money enough to survive, but funk music (music?) certainly sells much more. So what? Are you going to say erudite musicians are starving?

Well there is a truth in that. It's hard enough to predict and sometimes understand the western comic market allready. Predicting or analysing the eastern one is even more difficult because of the difference in cultural perspective and buyers market.

[Burning Angel]

This debate seems pointless to me.

Kishiro changed his publishers without great difficulties. Au contraire, Kodansha and Shueisha had to negotiate the republication of Hyper Future Vision and Last Order (in Japanese market, I mean). Are you sure a title that does not sell deserve all that attention?

You certainly cannot compare Gunnm and titles like Gantz, but that doesn't mean Gunnm does not sell. Symphonic orchestras make money enough to survive, but funk music (music?) certainly sells much more. So what? Are you going to say erudite musicians are starving?

Like I said before, even though Gunnm doesn't sell very well in Japan, it more than makes up for it in the international market.

Besides, I'm sure that Kodansha and Shueisha are thinking in the long term. They know that Cameron might still be planning to make the Gunnm film. That would be huge publicity for the manga. I'm sure that if the film hits the cinema, the manga would become more mainstream and it's sells would skyrocket.

BTW... many great artist are poor and do starve while they are alive. It's once they're dead that their art becomes appreciated.

[Sergio Nova]

Like I said before, even though Gunnm doesn't sell very well in Japan, it more than makes up for it in the international market.

Maybe, but as I said, both HFV and LO are being republished… in Japan.

BTW... many great artist are poor and do starve while they are alive. It's once they're dead that their art becomes appreciated.

Unfortunately, that is true. And Van Gogh is not the only example.

[kuroro86]

BTW... many great artist are poor and do starve while they are alive. It's once they're dead that their art becomes appreciated.

Unfortunately, that is true. And Van Gogh is not the only example.

Let's not exagerate yukito is not rich but even Eiichiro Oda is not rich. There is no point in making yukito a poor artist starving for a few bucks.

[Burning Angel]

Let's not exagerate yukito is not rich but even Eiichiro Oda is not rich. There is no point in making yukito a poor artist starving for a few bucks.

I've never implied that Kishiro was a poor starving artist. I was just answering Mr. Nova. I'm sure that Kishiro is probably living a "confortable" Japanese middle-class life. Although he probably does work between 12-16 hours a day, 6 days a week. By work, I don't only mean creating the manga, but also research, and stuff like that.

Maybe, but as I said, both HFV and LO are being republished… in Japan.

Who knows why? That's Japanese logic for you...

[TankTreads]

I think the lack of popularity has less to do with the themes of the series and more to do with the way manga is serialized in Japan. Each chapter is part of a magazine anthology loaded with chapters from other series, and these magazines have very specific targeted demographics. In other words, the typical manga buyer in Japan (mostly of the school-going teen variety) is going to look at the cover of a manga publication and think one or more of the three following things:

1. Is it cost-effective? Does it have chapters from a lot of different series that I'd like to read?
2. Does it have Furigana for the more complex words? Will I be able to read it at all?
3. Will I look like an idiot or a geezer if I bring this to the counter? What if my friends see me reading it?

GUNNM is a seinen manga. It originally ran in Business Jump, then Ultra Jump, and recently moved from Shueisha to Kodansha's Evening magazine, which are all targeted at adults and feature manga with vocabularies that younger readers literally might not understand (seriously, think of all the technobabble in GUNNM and picture trying to read it as pictograms). They're targeted at salarymen, basically.

Seinen manga are, by their very nature, inherently limited to cult status within the borders of their country of origin, because their targeted demographic consists of people who - though I hate to generalize - often consider themselves too old and too preoccupied with their life's work to read comics. It's mostly in the west where you encounter numbers of adult comic fans that are significant enough to make the prospect of targeting their interests highly profitable instead of only modestly so.

I would say it's analogous to how western comics like DC and Marvel are serialized, but here in the West, your interest in the comic tends to be dictated not by its targeted demographic, but by the character it represents. If you're a Superman fan, you buy Superman comics. If you're a Batman fan, you buy Batman comics. It's actually quite an ingenious marketing ploy, since it tricks people into thinking they have variety and keeps sales broad across the entire spectrum, even though they're all essentially written to the same formula, with the exception of some rare graphic novels with good writing that pop up every now and then. You could say that Yukito Kishiro is to Alan Moore what Masashi Kishimoto is to Jerry Siegel.

Also, the way we learn about and purchase manga is entirely different. Most buyers in the west use word-of-mouth, customer reviews and synopses to determine what to get and what to ignore, and - most of the time - we buy nothing but the whole, collected volumes if we can help it. In Japan, people buy manga because the cover of the magazine it's serialized in screams "this is relevant to you at this stage in your life", and they pretty much only buy the tankobon if it's a series they already like after having read it during its run in a magazine, otherwise they practically wouldn't even know about it. Ask people on the street in Japan what GUNNM is, and only one in a thousand would be able to tell you.

Picture walking into a comic shop and being assaulted with wall after wall of huge magazines with tons of different series in each one. That's Japan. The variety is overwhelming. As soon as you walk through the front door, you fall into a pattern. You buy what's expected of you, and nothing more. You get what has the fewest stinkers instead of grabbing a magazine with one rare gem hidden like a needle in a haystack.

That's why the seinen magazines gather dust. In theory, anyway.

[Burning Angel]

That's why the seinen magazines gather dust. In theory, anyway.

That's an explanation, and I partially agree with it; due to the target audience (adult men with personal lives), it's much more obscure in Japan. In fact, most Seinen manga are more popular in the West than in Japan.

Yet there are still Seinen manga that are (more or less) popular in Japan, such as Black Lagoon, Gantz, or Berserk. And, with the possible exception of Berserk, I consider these mangas to be inferior to Gunnm (inferior, but still very enjoyable mangas in their own right).

And there are other Seinen manga that, while not wildly popular in Japan, are still more popular there than Gunnm, like Hellsing or Elfen Lied.

[MrFaber]

That was an intresting analisys, thank u Tank

[AR-99]

Let's not exagerate yukito is not rich but even Eiichiro Oda is not rich.

Going off topic, but I had to look into this given the popularity of One Piece. The man made ~$24 million from royalties in 2010. If he wasn't rich either him or his agent (s) are morons.

[Erika]

After years and years of manga and anime watching & reading, I do just two series, One is this one, (and I don't care if it takes another 15 years to reach the end of the story) and the other one is blade of the inmortal, which sadly (but for the good) is near the end.

I wish my Gunnm fanatism could support Kishiro forever, but... We need to bring more fans to the series, specially now that we are going to Mars.

[HumanRage]

well, let's take a look at japan numbers : GLO is not in the 2011 overall top 50 at least...



...although there was barely any GLO publication last year, due to change of editor.

not even in 2010 top 50 of authors, lowest was 1.5M. so, no real success at home, because of the female hero and too serious SF (lack of magical school girls).

i guess it's because the whole thing is legendary, that it can't stop from its own weight. The original series forged fond memories for a whole generation of european and american kids (us)

my guess is that kishiro sells 10x more overseas what he sells home... just in France it was more than a million overall copies every year so it would rank him in the top 50 (while a lot of others japmarket-only authors would get out of the international ranking)

that's how you become a legendary niche author in your own country

as for the community, at least there is a raw provider for us, so i would guess it does exist ²

quoting an old post of mine.

Gunnm does have success and gather interest, but from a few "elite" people, those dreaming of technical immortality and space colonization

[solarairhead]

I am not sure if this has already been said. But I read somewhere the real reason Battle Angel isn't doing so well anymore was because of the debacle Kishiro had with his previous publishing company. Half the reason was they wanted him to censor the first series of novels of Battle Angel before Last Order. The other half was that they forced him to make Battle Angel Alita into a more of a shounen-call-out-your-attacks-and-have-naruto-style-fights-where-each-chapter-consists-of-an-entire-fight-scene. In order to compete with famous mangas that do that, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, Fairy Tail, ect ect. This completely robbed Battle Angel of it's charm and flavor that drew so many fans to it. Battle Angel had it's post apocalyptic feel where people, including cyborgs are trying to survive a harsh world. Throw in some advance technology, blood thirsty cannibal bandits, and conspiracies and thats what made Battle Angel so famous in the 90s and early 2000. Come Last Order, And now we got cyborgs fighting like Ninjas, we got super long, overdrawn dramatic explanations of techniques (stopping in the middle of a heated battle to do this, while the opponent stands there like a retard listening.) We got over the top conclusions and unrealistically powerful people (Creating Black Holes with your Palm? Detonating a Nuclear Explosion with your Fist? WTF?!) all the while the beautiful charm that the while GUNNM series has is thrown down the crapper. This is what made so many people lose interest in Battle Angel, imo. It's just a whole lot of stupid. Now that kishiro left that stupid company, I am hoping he will go back to the way Battle Angel was. With the recent chapters, it looks like he is doing just that.

Another reason is what someone said before, its how the manga is commercialized and published. Before it was published as graphic novels now its part of magazines with various other comics. This is another reason battle angel has lost so much popularity. I think Kishiro should just try to save Battle Angel by making it as dark and realistic as it used to it. Thats just me though.