mynisepanda - Tumblr blog

mynisepanda · 2 months ago

Text

214 notes · View notes

mynisepanda · 2 months ago

Text

happy pride month hypsters <3

824 notes · View notes

mynisepanda · 2 months ago

Text

20 days of Hypmic; day 2 - fave division

data jingie

538 notes · View notes

mynisepanda · 2 months ago

Text

did kakashi do like. anything as a hokage

36K notes · View notes

mynisepanda · 2 months ago

Text

BL Visual Novel Magazines throughout the years

Earlier this year, BL game magazine Cool-B announced that they were change their publishing schedule from bi-monthly to quarterly publication (after initially tweeting that the magazine would end publication, which has now been deleted), which made me think about how there are not that many magazines anymore that exclusively focuses on BL visual novel content. This used to different, as there were a lot of magazines in the early 2000s which published the latest information about BL visual novels that were released back then. In this blog post I created a small list of the magazines I've been collecting throughout the years and what kind of information they used to publish. Some titles might be missing, as every now and then I also find new magazines I've never heard of before, but I thought it would be interesting to write a little bit about each of them because I like collecting them!

First of all, even though these magazines are referred to as "BL game magazines" some of them also publish information about new mobile games, otome games, and other joseimuke content (media aimed at a female audience), however most articles in these magazines focus on BL games, and the characters on the covers of the magazine are also from BL media. Nowadays the only magazine that focuses on BL visual novel content is Cool-B, but in the early 2000s there used to be a lot more of these magazines. Some of them continued publication for a long time, while others only published a few issues before ending publication.

Game Pierce (GAMEピアス) Published by a company that simply called themselves "Magazine Magazine" (Later Sun Publishing and JUNET) the first issue of Game Pierce was published in February 2002, and was therefore probably the first BL visual novel magazine. Unlike some other magazines, this one exclusively focused on BL games and didn't combine it with otome or other joseimuke content. Though if you're wondering who the characters on the cover of the magazine are, they're actually not characters from a BL game, but original characters created by Kojima Natsuki. Later, some of these BL characters would appear in some of their manga like GP Gakuen (GP学園). Even though almost all of the covers featured Kojima Natsuki's characters, the back of the magazine did promote specific BL games that were popular at the time. Game Pierce existed for quite a while and ended up publishing 21 issues in total. There was also a version of the magazine called Comic Game Pierce which combined BL manga and BL game content, as well as Boy's Pierce which has been around since 1997 and still exists today, which publishes BL manga.

B's Log The next magazine is B's Log (or B's-Log), which was originally published by Enterbrain before they merged with Kadokawa in 2013. This magazine still publishes new issues even now, but the content they focus on has gradually changed throughout the years. The first issue of B's Log was released in March 2002, shortly after the first issue of the previously mentioned Game Pierce. From early 2002 until late 2004, the magazine mostly published information about BL and otome games, but later they gradually started focusing on more general joseimuke content. As far as I'm aware, the last time a BL game was on the cover was the December 2009 issue, which featured the game STEALl! by Spray. It's not like the magazine completely stopped publishing information about BL games after this though, as they'd publish articles about the sequel of Tennenouji's Luckydog1 (Luckydog1 +badegg), and Karin Chatnoir's BL game Omega Vampire in 2016. Unlike most other BL visual novel magazines, B's Log didn't publish any CGs from 18+ scenes, though of course they would still mention the age rating.

Game Darling (ゲーム・ダーリン) The first issue of the next magazine, Game Darling, was published in July 2002. The publisher is KTC (also known as KILL TIME COMMUNICATION), who mostly published game-related magazines in the late 1990s. However, I am pretty sure publication ended after only two issues, as I can't seem to find anything else published after this. Even though the other magazines that were released around this time were printed in full color, this magazine was printed in black and white, kind of resembling a manga (the size of the magazine was also small). This magazine also only focused on BL games, though they did publish some interesting articles about BL game fandom culture, for example characters from non-BL games that were often shipped together (like Ace Attorney and the Metal Gear series). Something that was also kind of funny to me is that they also published articles in which they recommended computers that would be able to run visual novels smoothly, once again reminding me that I was reading an article published in 2002.

Blueberry Published by Softbank Publishing, this magazine was supposed to be the sister magazine of erogame magazine Raspberry but as far as I know, only one volume of it exists, which was published in April 2003. I was able to find a copy of it eventually, but I think it's definitely one of the lesser-known magazines, especially since only one issue of it exists. It also came with a CD which a lot of magazines used to have as well, which would usually contain trial versions of games, opening movies and other promotional materials such as wallpapers. Compared to Blueberry, I think Raspberry was doing a bit better, as it looks like they published at least 17 different issues between early 2002 and late 2004.

Be x Boy This is technically a BL manga magazine, but since they did feature BL games on their covers sometimes, I think it's fair to mention them as well. Be x Boy was a monthly BL manga magazine which published its first issue in 1993. The publisher used to publish various other BL-related magazines as well, which focused on light novels, adult manga, short stories and more. From what I could find online, the original publisher, Biblos, went bankrupt in 2006, but these days the magazine still exists as a BL manga magazine and is now published by Libre.

Binetsu Ouji (微熱王子) This magazine was originally published by Studio DNA (these days Ichijinsha), and would eventually become another magazine called Cool-B in 2005, after its acquisition by Ohzora Publishing. Its first issue was released in July 2002. Even while looking at the oldest issues, the lay-out and design closely resembled Cool-B. Other than publishing information about otome and BL games, they also featured statistics showing which games were popular at the time. Even nowadays, this is still something Cool-B publishes in every issue. Binetsu Ouji and Cool-B allowed adult content, which is possibly why BL game creators would slowly start promoting their games in magazines like this rather than B's Log.

Cool-B As mentioned above, in 2005 Binetsu Ouji was taken over by Ohzora Publishing and relaunched as Cool-B, which is the only BL game magazine that still exists these days and is also the one that has been around for the longest time, as it currently has 115 issues. Earlier this year, they did kind of scare their fans by announcing that they would end publication after releasing 2 final magazine issues that same year, but this tweet was quickly deleted after some game creators mentioned that they would contact the staff and talk to them. Eventually, they announced a change in publication schedule and some slight changes to the magazine. Until earliy 2024, Cool-B has always been a bi-monthly magazine, but their future releases will be quarterly.

Cool-B Kiwame Last month the first issue of Cool-B Kiwame was released, which is a new version of the magazine that seems to exclusively feature BL game content, and the size is also a bit bigger than the original magazine. I'm happy that they could find a way to continue publishing the magazine, as this is usually where BL visual novel creators publish news about their latest games, as well as interviews and extra art. Something new they started recently is that they publish articles about a specific topic in which they ask for both fan opinions and commentary from the game developers. In this first issue of Cool-B Kiwame, the theme was "The worst, most horrible and best bad endings" and I had a lot of fun reading what endings fans submitted and what the creators of these games had to say about this! Therefore, even though the number of new BL visual novels is small nowadays, the magazine still found a way to continue publication.