CULTURE: Manga Bookstore Report - Tsutaya Shibuya November 2022

What’s hot in manga right now? Visiting a great manga shop!

While many bookstores in Japan don’t really allow you to take photos inside, the tourist-centric Tsutaya Bookstore in Shibuya didn’t seem to mind us snapping photos… which is good news for you, dear reader, because it has one of the best-curated manga selections of any bookstore in Tokyo! Let’s take a walk through Tsutaya Bookstore’s Manga Floor!

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Walking out of Shibuya station in Tokyo at the Hachiko Square exit, where the famously loyal dog has an oft-visited statue, you will see the famous Shibuya Scramble Crossing! Every blogger takes a video or selfie here, we will spare you ours, but right across the scramble is the Q-Front building, which houses Tsutaya Bookstore. It also has that famous Starbucks on the second floor, which is a great spot for people-watching. But we will be ignoring the caffeine and people watching for now, and taking the escalator down one flight to B1, the manga floor.

The escalator will dump you right into the shojo and BL manga area, and that’s where our adventure begins! One of the things that this Tsutaya does really well is build displays of unique, interesting, and especially hot manga properties. I originally fell in love with this Tsutaya because they always had a shelving unit dedicated to the manga of Taiyo Matsumoto. While they no longer do (sensei's output has slowed quite a bit), they do have some very cool displays that I can’t wait to show you.

Speaking of which, and this will happen a lot while you’re manga shopping, I have no idea what this property above is. None at all. Feel free to let us know in the comments.

The shojo section, like much of the rest of the store, is broken up by publisher, then by magazine where the manga was originally serialized. It encourages a kind of reader identification with manga, similar to “I’m a DC Comics Collector” or “I’m a Marvel Comics collector” in the west. If you like one comic series from Margaret, or Flower Comics, you might like other stories published in this magazine. Featured and popular titles will be displayed face out, or face-up on the shelves sticking out, allowing for easier browsing. Those drawers at the bottom hold extra copies so that shelves can be quickly restocked.

Facing the shojo shelves are the boys love manga shelves. The BL category is a huge sales driver in manga, and this Tsutaya store is really well curated with lots of face-out titles to entice customers. Along the top shelf, you can also see a display of interior art:

This is from the series Hosaka-san and Miyoshi-kun, a two volume manga series by Beriko Scarlett. It’s currently unlicensed in English.

[Deb:] Although that’s not to say that there’s their work isn’t available in English — SuBLime Manga has three Scarlett Beriko titles in English, including ‘yakuza rom-com’ Jealousy, along with high school comedy Jackass and another yakuza odd-couple romance, Fourth Generation Head: Tatsuyuki Oyamato.

This sort of display is usually created in conjunction with the publisher or artist, to provide interior pages to display. This also has a special color illustration signed by the artist! I wonder what happens to those after they take down the display…?

Rounding the corner we end up in the Square Enix manga section. This includes titles from their magazines like GanGan. Gotta be honest, I don’t recognize any of these titles. Perhaps I haven’t been perusing the English Square Enix website enough?

[Deb:] I spy historical adventure The Apothecary Diaries by Natsu Hyuuga and Nekokurage on display at the bottom right. It’s available in English in print and digital, including on Square Enix’s Manga Up app.

Speaking of artwork, you’ll see lots of “gift artwork” dotted around Shibuya Tsutaya, because this is honestly the favorite shop of a LOT of manga-ka. This illustration comes courtesy of Tsuyuki Yuruco, from her BL manga series Shares, also not in English. However, her fascinating manga short story anthology Strange is available in Italian from the nice folks at Bao Publishing, and I’d really love to see it in English one day. If any of the ‘cooler’ publishers are reading this, please license Strange.

Maybe this would be a good title for a future MSX release? Hmm.

Alright, diversions aside, lets get back to the bookstore!

While we were in Japan, Mangasplaining featured author panpanya (we did an episode on their book An Invitation from a Crab) had a new book released, and it was displayed VERY prominently in the bookstore, alongside a selection of their previous works. The new book is called Model Town and hopefully we’ll get in in English one day!

[Deb:] In the meantime, check out panpanya’s latest release from Denpa, Guyabano Holiday, about their trip to the Philippines to hunt down the tropical fruit mentioned in the title.

Speaking of manga we don’t have in English, here we have the new series Banban Banban Ban Vampire, a comedy BL manga about a vampire working in an old school bathhouse in Japan and the pure virgin son of the bathhouse owners. You can google it to read more about it, it seems intensely untranslatable due to uh, cultural differences, but oh man, do the Tsutaya staff seemingly love it. Maybe it’s hilarious?

Flanking that title to our right is recent Mangasplaining pick MOB PSYCHO 100 by ONE, another favourite (and getting a TON of great play thanks to the third season of. the anime, now streaming on Crunchyroll. I think I spy a REIGEN one-shot, I wonder if we’ll be getting that in English?

To the right of that is a massive display of Takehiko Inoue’s popular basketball manga series, Slam Dunk. Now this photo was shot before the new feature film version of the anime was released in theaters (and the attendant merch had been released), so in addition to the beautiful new editions of the manga, and that gorgeous photo-book of the last installment of Slam Dunk that was illustrated on chalk boards (for real, more on that when we eventually cover Slam Dunk or REAL), there’s also the replica-edition of Weekly Shonen Jump, featuring the first installment of Slam Dunk from back in the 1980s!

Moving along we have a display for another massively popular shonen series, Jujutsu Kaisen. In addition to the manga, the displays also include related material like other manga by the creators, art books, and more. Browsing a well-stocked manga shop like Tsutaya is a great way to find unique titles or rarities by creators!

[Deb:] Needless to say, Jujutsu Kaisen can be read in print and digital from Shonen Jump / VIZ Media, or via Shueisha’s Manga Plus app.

Another great display is dedicated to the incredible mangaka Q Hayashida! We covered her newest title DAI DARK on the podcast, although we also talked a LOT about her previous series Dorohedoro. This display goes the extra mile by featuring not just all of the volumes of those two manga series, but also a cool Dorohedoro figure, art books from the Dorohedoro anime, and even an original painting by Hayashida-sensei!

Here’s a closer look:

It’s so amazing to walk into a bookstore and get to see ORIGINAL PAINTINGS by the creators who made the works! Amazing. Er, sorry for my reflection in the painting.

Sometimes the staff goes ALL OUT on a display, like this very sparkly display for Land of the Lustrous. Printed signs, hand-written signs, and then a beautiful foil painting. This series is very-much a favourite in Japan.

[Deb:] This beautiful series about a band of genderless gem warriors trying to protect their world from mysterious boddhisatva-type invaders is on my short list for future Mangasplaining reads. Get a taste of Land of the Lustrous by checking out a free preview of chapter 1 on Kodansha’s website or the anime, now streaming on Amazon Prime.

ZATCH BELL is coming back, that’s weird! Like a sequel manga series is coming, and I think there’s been rumblings of an anime? Anyway, ZATCH BELL fans, your time has come again, and Tsutaya has your back.

That one felt… very… sponsored. No hand-written signs there.

[Deb:] Zatch Bell, a Shonen Sunday series about a teens teaming up with super-powered mystical beings was originally published in English by VIZ Media, but is currently out of print. This particular series has an interesting backstory, as far as its publishing history. Originally serialized in Shonen Sunday from 2001 - 2007 and compiled in 33 volumes, Zatch Bell and Raiku parted ways with publisher Shogakukan after a controversy/lawsuit revolving around allegations that the publisher mishandled/misplaced his original artwork. He jumped to Kodansha, where they republished Zatch Bell, and his subsequent series, Animal Land.

This new version of Zatch Bell is published by Makoto Raiku’s own publishing venture, Birgdin Bird Group. The story about how Raiku opted to re-launch Zatch Bell through his own publishing company is one we may dig into at a later date, but go check out this bio page for more about what he’s up to now.

Here’s a fuller zoom-out of that set of display bays, which includes Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (a display that has been in this Tsutaya for as long as I’ve been visiting it), the aforementioned ZATCH BELL, and then a display of “Love Com” Herione manga, which is to say romantic comedy manga with good heroines, maybe? That’s a neat way of putting a whole bunch of shojo (and girl-friendly) comics in the main display area!

[Deb:] We keep threatening to talk about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure on Mangasplaining. and maybe we will someday— but in the meantime, go check it out in English from VIZ Media.

Next to that, it’s a massive double-bay display of Tokyo Revengers! Manga, art books, custom header display, and a TON of original artwork! Plus a signing-board by series creator Ken Wakui! That’s pretty cool. I think these are replicas rather than originals, but I couldn’t tell at a glance.

[Deb:] Tokyo Revengers is another manga series with an interesting publishing history. This time-travel/teen gangsters tale is currently one of Kodansha’s most popular shonen manga series, with over 30 volumes out in Japanese. Kodansha has published almost all the volumes digitally in English, but the print version of the series is being published as 2-in-1 omnibus editions by Seven Seas. No one has really explained why, but I’d imagine it has something to do with the gangsters using a Buddhist manji cross on their uniforms, a symbol that later got appropriated by…. well, the Nazi Party in Germany. Yeah. Localization is… complicated. BBC Culture has more background on this history of the manji symbol.

I had never heard of this manga, After God, by creator Sumi Eno, but according to the internet this has been serialized online (legally!) on the Comikey website! It’s about different Gods invading (and wrecking) Japan. Anyway the art looks kinda badass, and it enters the annals of lots of different and interesting manga that are digital-only these days. Anyway, you can read the first five chapters for free at the link above.

Aw yeah, you know what this is! It’s the manga responsible for our second-most popular episode of all time! You can listen to our episode on Tatsuya Endo’s SPY X FAMILY and see what we thought, but since there’s a massive display here and this is the anime hit of 2022, well, uh, it probably doesn’t matter what we thought of it exactly, you’re gonna be aware of it anyway. But we did really like it, it’s a great series, and a fun episode and show notes. :)

This display of Satoru Nii’s Windbreaker caught me by surprise, I’d never heard of the series but apparently it’s being released as a digital-first title by Kodansha.

[Deb:] This one’s an up-and-coming shonen title, about a town dealing with gang turf wars, but the peace is kept by a gang of good-hearted delinquents. It’s a lot of fun — go check it out!

As for the other half of the display, I have no idea what’s going on there. Sorry!

This series, Yano-Kun’s Ordinary Days by Yui Tamura, is absolutely somebody’s favorite. It’s just got a guy who’s beat to shit on the cover, and it’a about a nervous type-A personality girl who makes it her project to take care of him. Being released by Kodansha in Japan, it surprisingly DOESN’T have an English digital-first edition coming from Kodansha USA. If you’re the exact kind of reader who wants to find out why this boy is covered in bruises and you want to take care of him, well, now you know who to email.

Also, did you hear? There’s a new volume of Hunter X Hunter. And it’s started serialization again. And if you DIDN’T hear about it, don’t worry, Tsutaya has you covered.

Imagine this display at a Barnes & Noble somewhere. Unreal. Every Tik-Tokker would need to make a pilgrimage there to Fortnite dance in front of it.

[Deb:] While we were in Japan, there was a huge retrospective exhibit of Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho art by Yoshihiro Togashi at Mori Art Center in Roppongi. It’s still up through early January 2023, so if you’re in Tokyo, go check it out!

Oh, speaking of which:

I recorded a video for our Instagram/Tik Tok walking through the ‘new releases’ display and the manga magazines! I wanted to try some different content. Could obviously be a BIT stronger (and shorter) but let us know what you think!

So that brings us to the cash desk and the the last little display, We are [Manga] Lovers. And I gotta say, I absolutely believe that 100%, the Tsutaya Bookstore Manga Floor in Shibuya shows the medium a lot of love. Not only is it well-stocked with manga (though the manga forest at Kinokuniya Shinjuku is even BETTER stocked, more on that in a future post), but the displays are well put-together, there’s lots of signage and recommendations, and it’s pretty spacious too. It’s just a pleasure to browse manga there, and I highly recommend making a stop there on your way to take your own selfie at the Shibuya Scramble, or the Hachiko statue.

Or hey,

You can use the photo-taking spot inside the Tsutaya if you want to too!

(I have no idea what this manga or anime is.)

See you in Shibuya!