People who know something about Japanese ACG culture will certainly be familiar with the "Three Major Shonen Manga Magazines". They are Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine, and Elementary School's Weekly Shonen Sunday.
Although the sales of print comic magazines are declining, the status of the three magazines is still difficult to shake. Looking ahead, Naruto, The Voyager, Death, Conan, and other top-notch manga that have been known around the world over the past few decades are all part of it. Looking back, the Ghost Blade, the Seven Great Sins, and the Spell Return Battle that have exploded in recent years have all originated from three magazines. It can be said that the editorial boards of the three magazines, both then and now, are firmly in control of the vane of the entire Japanese ACG culture.
The most prestigious and highest-selling of the three magazines is Weekly Shonen Jump, and the Shueisha behind it has also been a competition in the game circle in recent years. However, as the pressure on the development of the manga business increased, Shueisha also began to seek new points of strength. Shueisha, which once entered the game industry only with IP licensing as its main participation, has finally taken a further step recently.
Today, Shueisha officially announced that it has established a wholly-owned affiliate company " SHUEISHA GAMES " on February 16 this year. In the first batch of disclosed project plans, GameLook also saw the ambition of the old Japanese publishing giant after officially entering the game industry.
The impact of digital comics is obvious, and desserts and dishes go hand in hand
Although the animation and game industries have flourished, manga in black and white is still loved by Japanese otaku for their low acquisition cost and higher creative freedom. However, advances in technology have changed users' access to manga and the landscape of the Japanese manga market.
Previously, GameLook also reported that in the era of a smart phone in every hand, the two major social giants Kakao and Line successfully dominated the Japanese digital comic market with the help of their respective online comic APPS, and the global monthly revenue of the two online comic apps reached an astonishing level of 400 million to 500 million yuan. Although in Japan, there are still many nostalgic parties who are accustomed to reading paper magazines with an eco-friendly paper and ink flavor, it is also true that online manga apps have become popular among Gen Z users.
In such a market situation, although Shueisha, which holds a number of IPs, is not willing to dominate in paper comics, it is difficult to compete with social giants with strong user bases. From the perspective of business model, animation, comics, and light novels in ACGN culture will actually ultimately serve the higher-yield product form of games. Therefore, the establishment of a game company is an inevitable choice for Shueisha.
As early as April 2021, Shueisha had already started implementing a program called the "Shueisha Game Creator Training Camp" to support the projects of independent game creators. Today, the number of registered creators of the program has exceeded 4,000, and more than 10 games, including unpublished works, are participating. Therefore, among the products announced by Shueisha Games, the first to appear is not the top-stream comic game expected by the outside world, but four "dessert" level independent games.
They are the tactical action game Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions (scheduled to be released on NS in the summer of 2022), the Roguelike survival adventure game ハテナの塔 -The Tower of Children- (expected to be released in summer 2022, platform to be determined), the 3D action game ONI (pseudo) (expected to be released in 2022, platform to be determined), and The Japanese cyberpunk game Ukiyo (expected to be released in early 2022-2023, platform to be determined).
After the "dessert", the Shueisha game still served two "hard dishes". The information about one of the products is very vague, and Shueisha only said that it is a multiplayer action competitive game that will be jointly released with major companies in Japan to bring players a new multiplayer combat gameplay, which is currently being developed by major game developers in Japan. Although the other product only has a silhouette picture and a few words, it makes people think.
Famous cartoonist + game manufacturer, DQ successful mode reproduction?
According to Shueisha, this product is a game for smartphone platforms. The character design will be completely original by the famous manga artist of Weekly Shonen Jump, developed by leading studios of major overseas game companies. The game's goal is to promote it globally, with the main target being Japan and other Asian countries.
The silhouette released at the same time contains three male figures, three girl figures, a Lolita image and a cute pet or elf image, and this combination alone reveals a very "Weekly Shonen Jump" flavor.
In order to ensure that they always provide "royal and high-quality stories", the three major juvenile manga magazines have extremely strict entry thresholds, and the current popular products in the otaku circle, such as the scraps, harems and even the content of the edge ball, even if the audience is very wide, will be diverted to the larger and lower threshold comic magazines under the three major publishing houses (for example, Shueisha has "Weekly Young Jump"). Therefore, the people who can stay in the magazine of Weekly Shonen Jump must be the best popular comics that are based on the selling point of the storyline and suitable for readers of different ages and genders.
Therefore, the gender combination in the silhouette is obviously different from the popular beauty girl game, which also implies that this product will return to the Japanese royal style of Weekly Shonen Jump and become a high-quality drama game that can be accepted by all two-dimensional fans. The expression "the character design will be completely original by a famous manga artist" in the official introduction is naturally reminiscent of the story of Akira Toriyama and the Japanese national RPG game "Dragon Quest" (DQ).
The original DQ was developed in the mid-1980s, when Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball was in full swing. With the mentality of trying it out, Yuji Horii, who was just emerging in the industry at the time, found Akira Toriyama with the mentality of trying it out, and did not expect that the big coffee gladly agreed and personally handled the character art setting of DQ. The later story became a household name, and the pair of "Wang Bang" group maintained close cooperation for more than 30 years, and also made this national IP legend in the Japanese market.
However, Akira Toriyama later confessed that the manga artists of that era had no concept of RPG games, and if he had known that the job would last so long, he would have resolutely refused. In GameLook's view, for the current well-known cartoonists, participating in the setting of Shueisha's blockbuster mobile game is also a difficult decision. This stems not only from the unusually hard work of setting up the game's art in Akiguchi Toriyama, but also because it may be a gamble on the reputation of the manga artists themselves.
An example to be taken is the fiasco of Maeda's shift from game scripts to original anime scripts, which also applies to Shueisha's top manga artists. Cartoonists are just one part of the game, and if word of mouth breaks down in other aspects of the game, they may still be infamous. Therefore, being able to leverage top cartoonists to participate in character design shows that this product should have a good foundation and high capital investment in all aspects.
In addition to speculation about the product itself, the expression "developed by leading studios of major overseas game companies" in the official statement has aroused GameLook's curiosity and conjecture.
Shueisha cooperates with overseas manufacturers, and the probability of Chinese and Korean companies in Tencent is higher
Although the expression of the development team is relatively vague, from the perspective of "the target is mainly Japan and Asian countries", GameLook believes that there is a high probability that European and American game companies can be excluded. European and American game companies have worked very little with Japanese manga IP owners, including Shueisha, and do not have an advantage in developing games that mainly face the Asian cultural circle, so the company that is most likely to meet Shueisha's description should be the game giant in China and South Korea.
Let's start with South Korea. The Korean game market is undoubtedly dominated by 3N (Netmarble, Nexon, NCsoft), of which only Netmarble (Netmarble) has a background of IP cooperation. The company had previously been licensed as a game adaptation of Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine's mainstay Seven Crimes, and launched the adventure RPG mobile game "Seven Crimes: The Battle of Light and Darkness," which is still at the top of the Best-seller lists in Japan and South Korea. At the beginning of this year, Netstone also officially announced the sequel "Seven Great Sins: Origins". As for the cooperation between Reissite and Shueisha, it goes back to the operation of Dragon Ball Online Hanbok more than a decade ago.
In contrast, Tencent is undoubtedly the most profound cooperation between all Chinese and Korean game giants and Shueisha and even the entire Japanese ACG industry. As early as 2013, Tencent Games reached a strategic cooperation with Shueisha and Bandai Games, and obtained the electronic distribution rights of 11 classic manga, including Naruto, Voyager King, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and Gintama, and cooperated with Bandai Games to develop the Naruto OL browser game. Since then, Tencent Games has successively launched mobile games adapted from many famous manga under Shueisha, including Naruto, Saint Seiya, and Full-time Hunter.
On the other hand, Tencent completed the acquisition of a 6.86% stake in the Japanese publishing company Kadokawa Group in November last year, becoming kadokawa's third largest shareholder in one fell swoop, reflecting tencent's emphasis on Nichiren. Although his achievements in the field of manga are not as good as those of Shueisha, Kodansha, and Kokukan, as one of the most important light novel libraries in Japan, Kadokawa Bunko holds the copyright to many top light novels such as Sword Art Online, Life in Another World from Scratch, and Catalogue of Banned Magical Books. At the end of last year, Tencent's "PUBG M" was linked in Japan with Kadokawa's "Melancholy of Ryogu Haruhi".
Obviously, Tencent, which has a lot of ties to Shueisha and even the entire Japanese ACG industry, is most likely to become the "major overseas game company" introduced by Shueisha. From the launch of "White Night Aurora" in the Japanese market to the release rights of "Magic Tower" and "Nikke: Goddess of Victory" in Japan, if it can cooperate with Shueisha later, it will undoubtedly provide Tencent with a good opportunity to create original IP. For Shueisha, Tencent's game development and distribution capabilities are beyond doubt, so in GameLook's view, the probability of Cooperation between Shueisha and Tencent is high.
Of course, before the official announcement, everything was just GameLook's speculation. However, it is a blessing to see more Chinese companies on the international stage of secondary products.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
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