Ok. Uh... I haven't really introduced myself yet. So let's start with that. I'm RelativelySaneCultist (know also as That One) and I'd say I'm a pretty big fan of the Bo-bobo series... And, uh...
Yeah.
Alright, that's done!
Now for the actual blog. It's nothing special really, I've just been doing some research on the distribution of the Bo-bobo series in America (because why not). And, If you don't know much about it, well... How do I put this... It was TERRIBLE. Like, really really bad. "What was so bad about it?" You (probably) say? (maybe??)
Well, in late 2005, when the run of the original Bo-bobo manga in Japan's 'Weekly Shonen Jump' ended, Viz Media (a North American publishing company) released a one-shot style manga book. This book contained Volumes 9 and 10 of the original manga. Yeah, alright. I mean, they had to start somewhere.
Then about 2 years later, in 2007, they began publishing the series in the monthly english 'Shonen Jump' from 2007 to 2009. During that, in 2008 they released Volume 1- Er, "Volume 1" of the Bo-bobo manga, though it actually contained chapter 11. ...This is where things start getting pretty iffy.
When they were asked about why they didn't start with the actual Volume 1, they stated it was because of some of the questionable content in the earlier parts of the series. Now, I think I know what they were talking about. In the earlier parts of manga, there was a few more lewd, violent, and riske' jokes than what the rest of the series had. For example, there was the manga's version of Killalino who wore his duck underwear (Takashi) as actual underwear, and also the whole of the Gunkan Arch had quite a few of what one could consider the series' more questionable jokes. ... Alright? So I guess they didn't want to offend the 7 to 10-year-olds who they assumed would be the only ones reading it. I mean, Bo-bobo's a weird series to begin with, so of course selling Japan's wacky, bizzarro style of humor isn't going to go super well in America already, so marketing it towards children is what they thought would be the best course of action... but still. (also, funny thing about them avoiding Killalino and his "dundies", because in Viz Media's "Volume 1", guess what makes a guest appearance in the form of Don Patch and Bo-bobo's ballerina tutus in the first page of the first chapter ;V)
Anyway, they then went on to release 4 more mis-numbered Volumes with a couple of months in between each. "Volume 5" (or Volume 15) was released in 2010. ... Then they stopped. Why did they stop? Possibly because it wasn't selling. Why wasn't it selling? Well, I mean there's the obvious "it's too weird for the average American manga consumer", but I think it also had to do with Viz Media having zero faith in it to begin with. From all that I've seen, its only form of advertisment was the anime running on Cartoon Network's Toonami block at the time, which wasn't much.
So the manga was a failure in America. Alright then. But, while that did poorly, the Bo-bobo anime found a lot more success, garnering quite the cult following. In fact that's what got me into the series, too! But as for the anime's distribution outside of TV... Oh boy, did it have a rough time. But this is long enough as it is (especially for a first blog post), so I'll cover that next time. Untill then, hope you all enjoyed!
(haha, I should stop pretending that I have an audience -_-)