Why is it so rare to hear about the other manga?

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Somari

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Even from the JPN fandom.

I can't find anything on most of the manga. No scans, no fanart, and very few Google or Yahoo results other then the standard pedia style ones.

It's not like these manga are rare or expensive either. You can pick them up for a few yen or dollars and find them very easily.

The only non-Special official manga that anyone notices aside from a few comments is DPA and that's only from the English fandom.
 
I have no idea. Granted, Special is very long-running, but so is Pocket Monsters. I know that appeals to a different audience, but I don't know why that audience wouldn't be more vocal, and I can't imagine that there wouldn't be overlap.

Heck, Shigekatsu Ihara on his blog was talking about some DPA fanwork. Special's people wouldn't, even if they look at fanwork, because there'd be just so MUCH.

It's strange. And even in the English fandom, people don't talk about DPA much, and back in the day they didn't talk about Electric Tale or Magical Pokemon Journey. And I still don't know why! The thing that caused the biggest buzz in MPJ discussion was when Viz's catalog said that new boy Pistachio had his eyes on Almond (which was wrong; he had a thing for Hazel) so people were all "omg canon gay" (which...is funny because the series already HAS canon gay) and were disappointed when it didn't pan out that way.
 
Special has almost kinda of dug out a niche as the "official poke-manga",
for whatever reason, I do like it the best myself, but I've seen quite a few people argue for other manga being better...

but one of the reasons the other pokemon manga may not get as much fandom is because they are mostly either really short series' or are gag-manga aimed at younger children. PokeSupe (in recent years) has become a shounen style manga, which is the most popular style for the most series' (i.e. Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece)

its very rare that gag manga and kodomo will ever get more press than a Shounen
 
Iron Mask Marauder said:
I would classify DPA as shonen rather than kodomo. Although it's short compared to Special.
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yeah I thought about this one, and though I haven't actually read it myself, from what I know, it is published in Coro Coro comics, which for the most part is a kids magazine, with mostly non-shounen material (granted Golden Boys was in coro coro, and that was shounen) but it seems like the story would not be serious at most times, and the majority of manga readers aren't looking for only laughs.

not to say they never look for laughs, comedy manga do exist and sell, but comedy manga never make it big. the manga with good stories and art make it big
 
Because most of these stories are one-shots or small series like DPA compared to Special. Special is like the Dragon Ball of Pokemon, they grew up with it and the characters grew up with them, and still are. It doesn't only apply to Pokemon you know, this is how CoroCoro does things. Once they have a popular franchise or something there are TONS of spin-off manga that are made mostly to milk the franchise which is why they don't last long. Then you have ones like DPA and MPJ which actually had a goal other than to make more money, and those stories ended because their stories were wrapped up, I guess.
 
I often wonder this too. I mean, I love Pokemon Adventures as much as the next guy, and I realise that it's one of the longest-running... but wow, there's hardly ANY mention ANYWHERE of any other mangas, even the other ones that have been released in VIZ territory. D:

That was one of the first things I started doing when I joined Bulbapedia - I noticed the wiki is really, really lacking in information on manga that isn't Pokemon Adventures (besides a half-decent DPA section). Even after I've started cleaning it up, it's still not perfect, since it's only based on what I own myself.

Iron Mask Marauder said:
back in the day they didn't talk about Electric Tale or Magical Pokemon Journey.
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I hadn't even HEARD of MPJ until a couple of years ago (like... 2008), when I found a really old copy of #2 at the public library (I eventually snatched lost it). I thought EToP got enough publicity back in the day, though... it was certainly more common among the people I knew as a kid, though Pokemon Adventures was obviously better.
 
pokeslob said:
not to say they never look for laughs, comedy manga do exist and sell, but comedy manga never make it big. the manga with good stories and art make it big
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A lot of slice of lives are comedy based, plus a lot of 4koma are comedy based too, yet they sell like hot cakes.

Plus isn't PokeSpe kodomo too?

The other manga are better than just as good as Special. Even if they're short that's not a very good excuse for nothing on them. I swear I'll need to grow the DPA fanbase myself
 
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Kodomo is more Doraemon and Penguin's Troubles and of stuff. PokeSpe has always been shonen. I'd like to know more about those manga that followed the game smore than Special ever has, like Zensho IIRC.
 
The line between kodomo and shonen can be blurry. Shonen refers to elementary into the late teenager years. Kodomo refers to "children" which can be anything.
 
NeoKING said:
Kodomo is more Doraemon and Penguin's Troubles and of stuff. PokeSpe has always been shonen. I'd like to know more about those manga that followed the game smore than Special ever has, like Zensho IIRC.
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Zensho kinda sucked, the art was very stale...
its like he knew how to draw the humans, but the pokemon looked like he just learned how to draw them, the movement is not realistic (something Pokespe pulled off very well I might add)
and worst of all is that it blows through the main battles in only one or two pages..

on the bright side though they made a funny ditto joke during the safari zone part :smokin:
 
I think one of the reasons is because of that quote Tajiri Satoshi made about Special a dozen years ago. They probably don't feel like any of the other series are worth bothering with since they don't have that same (outdated) seal of approval.

The fact that one of the largest Pokemon sites on the Internet (Serebii.net) completely ignores everything that's not Special doesn't help, either.

I try to do my part, most recently with the adaptation of the Zorro'ark manga, but typing up summaries and scanning / Photoshopping takes a lot of time.
 
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The insistence on referring to Special as "the manga" sure isn't helping much, either.
 
It's like I say, every time someone refers to Special as "THE manga" and aren't specifically talking about Special as a series, God kills a Lapras. And we don't want Pryce to go even FURTHER off the deep end.

Do Japanese fans cling to Tajiri's quote the way the English fandom does?
 
Iron Mask Marauder said:
Do Japanese fans cling to Tajiri's quote the way the English fandom does?
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the only reason people stick to that quote in the english fandom is that it was published in the english volumes and the volumes in america stopped at 7, back when the quote was more fresh -.-

and the reason people call it "THE manga" is because it IS the most popular manga series, as far as pokemon goes, you can't argue this fact.

it may bug you because "OH DP ADVTUR IS TEH BEST EVARRR" but just because you like a different pokemon manga better, doesn't make it more popular.
the same thing goes for Naruto and real manga. Nauto is the most popular, and even though I hate it, its still the most popular
 
Popular != official. Just because Special is the most popular doesn't mean that it's the only one that's "official," or that none of the others are worth looking into. It simply means that it's the most popular. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
Dogasu said:
Popular != official. Just because Special is the most popular doesn't mean that it's the only one that's "official," or that none of the others are worth looking into. It simply means that it's the most popular. Nothing more, nothing less.
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this is true, popular doesn't mean official...
but because of its popularity its sort of taken the "official manga" status among the fanbase

and I do like your website, giving some more exposure to the lesser known series'
 
I wonder if it's not just a matter of the pokemon manga fandom being small to begin with? I've always gotten the impression that in the pokemon fandom in general, the manga have never been as big as the games, anime, or TCG. And what focus the manga do get mainly falls on Special for whatever reason.

Just a hunch, I have nothing to actually back this up with.
 
pokeslob said:
it may bug you because "OH DP ADVTUR IS TEH BEST EVARRR" but just because you like a different pokemon manga better, doesn't make it more popular.
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Did I ever say it did? Did I ever say anything even remotely similar to that?

Moreover, there's a difference between "popular" and "insisting that it's the only one that exists".

And DPA and my liking it have nothing at all to do with this. Kindly leave your own biases about other people's biases out of this.
 
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