#Shogaku Ichinensei

[retrosofa]

The final chapter of Cutey Honey F by Shinko Kumazaki. Scanned from the February 1998 issue of Shogaku Ichinensei.

Please do not repost without my permission.

[albertonykus]

Doraemon Vol. 1 from The Complete Works of Fujiko F. Fujio

Planning to go through the complete collection of Doraemon manga, so I’ll drop some of my impressions here. These won’t be reviews per se, more haphazard musings and observations.

Although the Doraemon manga has been compiled into multiple print series, The Complete Works of Fujiko F. Fujio is the only one that reprints all of the original stories. The series is organized in an unusual way, intended to replicate the experience of an elementary school student reading the magazines that the manga was originally published in. For example, a Japanese student who started elementary school in 1969 would have read the Shogaku Ichinensei magazine for first graders during that year, then gone on to Shogaku Ninensei for second graders in 1970, and so on. The Doraemon stories in volumes 1–17 of this series are arranged in the sequence that students who began going to school in a particular year would have read them in. Volumes 18–20 compile additional stories that were printed in magazines other than the grade-based titles published by Shogakukan. As a result, the series does not follow a strict chronological order, with stories released during the same year scattered across multiple volumes. Nonetheless, the stories collected in volume 1 are some of the oldest in the Doraemon series, having been originally published between 1969–1974.

What strikes me about early Doraemon stories is that the Doraemon–Nobita dynamic is very different from later depictions in the franchise. Early manga Doraemon is actually something of a bad influence—most notably, when Nobita finds out that his future spouse will be Gian’s sister Jaiko, who he doesn't like, one story has Doraemon encouraging him to insult and hit her so she'll end up disliking him! Meanwhile, Nobita comes across as slightly more virtuous than he usually does later on (as here he often doubts Doraemon's bad advice). It's something of a role reversal from their more familiar interactions.

Doraemon is also much more clueless in early stories. Later Doraemon can be careless and insensitive at times, but early stories play up the “robot from the future doesn't know how things work” angle a lot more. For example, one chapter has Doraemon demanding that an electronics store put Nobita on television, not knowing how television programs are actually made.

Nobita’s relationship with his parents is quite different, too. It's implied that Nobita's misfortunes partly result from being coddled by his parents, which is certainly not the case later on.

Time travel has been a major theme of the series from the beginning, and this volume contains many time travel stories with numerous variations (including the classic storyline of “protagonists traveling back in time to catch a wrongdoer only to find out that they're the ones responsible”).

There aren’t many stories focused on Nobita’s friends, but several chapters have the familiar group of four hanging out and their general roles are established early on: Suneo as a braggart who induces envy in the others, Gian as a bully who picks on the others, and Shizuka... doesn’t get much characterization, but is clearly intended to be Nobita’s love interest. The running gag of Gian forcing everyone else to attend his apparently awful singing recitals is introduced.

Some of the most iconic Doraemon stories in this volume (as determined by my personal experience and biases):

“未来の国からはるばると” (“All the Way from the Future”, 1970): The introductory story where Doraemon arrives from the future and Nobita meets him for the first time. (There are actually six different versions of this narrative, of which three are collected in this volume, but this is the most famous one.)

“おばあちゃんのおもいで” (“Memories of Grandma”, 1970): Nobita travels in back in time to see his grandmother, who passed away when he was in kindergarten. (This story bears the distinction of having had more anime adaptations than any other Doraemon chapter.)

“かげがり” (“Shadow Catching”, 1971): Nobita separates his shadow from himself so it can run errands for him, but the shadow gains sentience and threatens to take his place.

“ロボ子が愛してる” (“Roboko’s Love”, 1971): Doraemon brings Nobita a robot girlfriend who is programmed to love him unconditionally, but she gets jealous easily and has superhuman strength, so things don't end well...

“プロポーズ作戦” (“Operation Proposal”, 1971): Nobita’s parents can’t agree on the circumstances of how they got together, so Doraemon and Nobita travel back in time to see what really happened.

“のび太のおよめさん” (“Nobita’s Bride”, 1972): Nobita travels to the future and finds out that, following Doraemon's arrival, he is now fated to marry Shizuka.

“一生に一度は百点を...” (“Getting 100 Points for Once”, 1973): Doraemon lends Nobita the Computer Pencil, which can automatically solve his homework problems. Nobita is tempted to use it to cheat on an exam.

[supermura]

Hashimoto Daiki for Shogaku Ichinensei Magazine (December 2024 Issue)

[mahounomanga]

Mahou no Ruby-chan

Today we're looking at the third in a trio of magical girl manga created by Midori Shimura. For context on what these are and who created them, please refer to my posts on the first two.

Mahou no Ruby-chan ran for a total of six chapters in Shogaku Ichinensei from the April 1973 issue to the September 1973 issue. With a run of only six months in a magazine for first graders, it should come as no surprise that this series hasn't left much of a mark. What's unfortunate; however, is that I haven't found much of anything else about the manga itself, like, at all. I haven't dug up any plot details, and I couldn't even find a single picture of the main character.

And if Mahou no Ruby-chan were just a manga, the story would more or less end here on a dour note. But like Mahou no Enzeru-chan, this little series got merch. More specifically, a brief audio drama of Mahou no Ruby-chan was released on a vinyl record, and the kind folks at Ric Mania have uploaded the whole thing on YouTube.

My Japanese listening comprehension is rather poor, so take this with a grain of salt, but what I can glean from this is that Ruby-chan is a tiny, energetic witch from a magical forest in a magical country on a magical star. She lives with her mother and father, as well as her nanny (who is a black cat if I'm understanding correctly). Ruby is friends with the animals of the forest and she uses her magic to try to help her family, but at times these efforts backfire and hijinks ensue. She befriends a boy named Goro who she tells about her magic, and naturally he ends up getting roped into her shenanigans as well.

Two things about all of this are interesting to me in relation to contemporaneous magical girl anime. One is that Ruby casts spells with a tongue-twisting magical catchphrase that I'm not even going to try to transcribe. These were quite common among magical girls of old, such as Sally the Witch, Himitsu no Akko-chan, and Chappy the Witch. They would even show up in slightly later witchy magical girl shows like Ojamajo Doremi, while magical girl warriors a la Pretty Moon have historically favored English word salad for their incantations.

The other noteworthy detail about the audio version specifically is the cast. Most of the voice actors here have also done voice work in a handful of magical girl anime. The narrator is Yoshiko Ohta a.k.a. the original voice of Atsuko Kagami in Himitsu no Akko-chan and the voice of Akko's mother in the 80s reboot. Ruby herself is voiced by Yoneko Matsukane whose only other magical girl involvement appears to be a bit part in episode 6 of Cutie Honey. The cast also features a number of Mahou no Mako-chan alumni, with Hiroko Maruyama, Akira Kamiya, and Isao Sakuma (who voiced Taro, Senkichi, and Akira respectively in Mako-chan) voicing the nanny, Goro, and Ruby's papa respectively in Ruby-chan. Nearest I can tell, the only other magical girl project Sakuma has been involved in was Esper Mami, where he voiced a couple of bit parts. Maruyama and Kamiya on the other hand are MVPs of classic magical girl anime. Hiroko Maruyama played supporting roles in Himitsu no Akko-chan, Majokko Megu-chan, Pastel Yumi, Sweet Mint, and Hana no Mahoutsukai Mary Bell. Akira Kamiya has a couple small roles in magical girl anime of the 70s, as Jun in Miracle Girl Limit-chan and Kinsaburo in Majokko Tickle, but his most notable roles in the genre wouldn't come until the 1990s. This man is the voice of Professor Tomoe in Sailor Moon S (i.e. Sailor Moon's most popular season) and Professor Kisaragi in the 1997 shoujo reboot of Cutie Honey, titled Cutey Honey F. And as if that wasn't enough, he's also a famous voice actor just in general, with his best known role being Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star.

Getting back to the manga side of things (inasmuch as it's possible to do so), Mahou no Ruby-chan would be Midori Shimura's third magical girl manga, but it would not be her last, as she was also tasked with adapting Limit-chan and Megu-chan to manga. Shimura's career as a mangaka was brief, lasting only from 1971 to 1975. In that time, she penned 11 manga, FIVE of which were magical girl. That is the highest ratio of magical girl titles to non-magical-girl titles we'll see on Mahou no Manga for quite some time, possibly ever.

At the risk of getting too sentimental, researching Midori Shimura's work and her contributions to the magical girl genre have really put into perspective why I'm doing this project in the first place. It would be fun to give my two cents on magical girl stuff people already know and like, but it ultimately feels more worthwhile to excavate the ones people probably don't know about, even if I don't always feel like the most qualified person to do it. I can only hope to give Chalk-chan, Enzeru-chan, Ruby-chan, and others like them a fraction of the recognition they deserve.

[sonicmangaparadise]

First Grade - 1992 - 05 - Chapter - 01

[vedj-f-bekuesu]

Ew. 

From the July ‘93 edition of Shogaku Ichinensei

Source: AbelMunizJr [Twitter]

[wariofranchisefanblog]

An original Mario and Wario story, with notable Super Mario Land 2 elements, from Shogaku Ichinensei 1993-04.

[wifepeach]

Here’s some absolutely adorable and official, princess Peach ! It’s from a Japanese magazine called Shogaku Ichinensei.

[mandarake-en]

Coming to the #Mandarake Zenbu 100 Big Web Auction Shogaku Ichinensei 1965 (S40) 04 - Vintage Magazine Special Feature Shogaku Ichinensei / Shogaku Ninensei https://t.co/E0L3vtt2Bo https://t.co/nY8dunKNuH Mandarake Twitter: http://twitter.com/mandarake_en Mandarake Facebook: http://facebook.com/mandarake (Automated Tumblr Post)

[hotwaterandmilk]

Hurricane Honey becomes Cutey Honey in a series of panels from Kumazaki Shinko’s Cutey Honey Flash manga adaptation. Art scanned from my collection of Shogaku Ichinensei clippings.

[retrosofa]

There is so much beautiful Honey artwork out there, just waiting to found! This scan is from the November 1997 issue of Shogaku Ichinensei. It highlights episode 26.

Please do not repost! 

[crazy-pot-pourri]

[Manga] Melmo - I bonbon magici di Lilly di Osamu Tezuka

[Manga] Melmo – I bonbon magici di Lilly di Osamu Tezuka

Titolo originale: ふしぎなメルモ Fushigi na Merumo

Genere: commedia, drammatico

Target: shōjo

Storia: Osamu Tezuka

Disegni: Osamu Tezuka

Prima serializzazione: da settembre 1970 ad aprile 1972 sulla rivista Shogaku-Ichinensei

Casa editrice: Shogakukan

Status: conclusa

Volumi: 1

Disponibilità italiana: volume unico edito da Jpop

(more…)

[otakunews01]

La revista para niños Shogaku Ninensei finaliza su publicación.

Solo la revista Shogaku Ichinensei permanecerá en la misma linea de revistas para niños de escuela primaria.

Shogakukan anuncio con la edición de noviembre de su revista Shogaku Ninensei el primero de octubre que terminará la publicación de la revista debido a su baja circulación. La edición final de la revista será edición combinada de febrero y marzo del 2017, a la venta en diciembre del 2016 en Japón. 

La revista es parte de una serie de revistas dirigidas a niños de primaria llamadas colectivamente "Shogakukan no Gakunen Betsu Gakushuu Zasshi", que cuenta con una revista para cada uno de los seis grados de primaria. La linea de revistas comenzó con Shogaku Gonensei y Shogaku Rokunensei, apuntando a niños de quinto y sexto grado de primaria, respectivamente. Ambas revistas fueron lanzadas en 1922, el mismo año que la editorial Shogakukan fue fundada. La revista Shogaku Ninensei (para niños de segundo de primaria) fue lanzada en 1925.

En 1973, la revista Shogaku Sannensei tenía 1.02 millones de copias en circulación. Desde entonces, las circulaciones de las revistas han declinado a un rango de decenas de miles. La revistas Shogaku Gonensei y Shogaku Rokunensei finalizaron su publicación en 2010, y las revistas Shogaku Yonensei (para niños de cuarto grado) y Shogaku Sannensei (para niños de quinto grado) fueron canceladas en 2012. Con la revista Shogaku Ninensei finalizando también su publicación, solo la revista Shogaku Ichinensei, orientada a niños de primer grado de primaria, permanece en la linea de revistas original. 

Algunos títulos de Manga que fueron publicados en la revista Shogaku Ninensei incluyen Asari-chan de Mayumi Muroyama, Kaitou! Pokémon V de Miho Asada, Inazuma Eleven Go de Tetsuhiro Koshita, GoGo Tamagochi de Yasuko Sugiki, Jewelpet de Mako Morie, Hana Kappa de Tadashi Akiyama y Sayori Abe, y Pokémon 4-Koma Daihyakka de Takahiro Yamashita.

[fehyesvintagemanga]

Tani Yukiko -- Akai Hana Shiroi Hana

1967/Shogaku Ichinensei

[sonicmangaparadise]

First Grade - 1992 - 10 - Chapter - 06

[sonicmangaparadise]

First Grade - 1993 - 03 - Chapter - 11