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Legendary shojo manga classics get reprints as miniature capsule toys with full-volume contents

Casey Baseel Mar 7, 2024
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Small packages contain a huge dose of girls’ comics history and nostalgia.

This year, two of Japan’s most prominent shojo manga (girls’ comics) anthology magazines are celebrating their 60th anniversary. Well, technically, it’s the 61st anniversary for the biweekly Margaret, which started circulation in 1963, but publisher Shueisha is bundling the celebration for it and its sister publication, Bessatsu Margaret, which began being released monthly one year later.

In honor of the magazines reaching the six-decade mark, Shueisha is reprinting a selection of collected volumes from some of their most storied series, which are some of the most influential and popular shojo manga ever released both within Japan and abroad. But to make things extra special and collectible, these reprints are miniature editions available through Bandai’s Gashapon capsule toy machines.

Each tankobon, as collected manga volumes are called in Japanese, measures a compact 5 centimeters (approximately 2 inches) in length. These aren’t just decretive trinkets though, but legitimate tiny versions of the original works. That means they include removable slip covers, just like full-size books did, and every page’s artwork and dialogue is inside too.

So which series are getting the sixtieth-anniversary salute? The one with the biggest pop cultural legacy is Yoko Kamio’s Hana Yori Dango, which ran in Margaret from 1992 to 2004.

More romantic teen drama and hijinks are waiting inside Kaoru Tada’s Itazura na Kiss (Bessatsu Margaret, 1990-1999)…

…and you can get even more high school romance in Aya Nakahara’s Love Com/Lovely Complex (Bessatsu Margaret, 2001-2007).

Rounding out the lineup are Miyoshi Tamori’s Hatsukare (Margaret, 2003-2006)…

…Mika Yamamori’s Tsubakicho Lonely Planet (Bessatsu Margaret, 2001-2007)…

…and, finally, Masami Nagata’s Renai Catalog (Bessatsu Margaret, 1994-2007).

The manufacturer hasn’t supplied individual page counts for the mini books, but tankobon usually tend to have around 200-250 pages, and with the gashapon versions priced at 500 yen (US$3.40), they’re a pretty good value in terms of how much reading material you’re getting, along with the nostalgic novelty factor. As always with Gashapon, the exact item you’ll get is random, but in this case you can be pretty much sure that whichever series is inside you capsule, you’ll be getting the sort of mixture of romance, tension, and silly laughs that made each of these titles a hit during their publication.

The lineup is on sale now. Gashapon machines can commonly be found at toy, electronics, and hobby shops, and Bandai says that the Margaret/Bessatsu Margaret mini manga can also be found at Gashapon Bandai Official Shops nationwide, the list of which can be found here.

Source, images: PR Times
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