Gossip Girl Manga?
Gossip Girl, a nighttime drama that airs on The CW (WGN) that is like 90210, yet every one is super rich, famous, snobby and more scandalous. If we take the out the rich snobbery, it would be like every many other High School centered manga. Drama- boy loves girl, boy loves lots of girls, girl loves boy, and girl loves lots of boys, friendship failures, cheating, jealousy, realizations, loving, first times…. And the list continues.
Admittedly, when I first saw the announcement for it from Yen Press, I though to myself, “What were they thinking turning this trashy novel and TV show into a manga?!” Yet the more I contemplated it, the more I realized after watching a few episodes of the show, and reading half of the first novel, that it is not unlike other Josei/Shoujo manga on the shelves.
The official announcement from Yen Press is as follows: “NEW YORK, DECEMBER 2, 2009 – Yen Press has announced that it will publish a manga adaptation of Cecily von Ziegesar’s New York Times bestselling series, GOSSIP GIRL, about the lives of girls at an elite New York City private high school. GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY will be serialized monthly in the YEN PLUS manga anthology, starting with the January 2010 issue.
Unlike other manga adaptations that Yen Press has undertaken in the past, GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY will be an original re-imagination of the girls’ senior year focusing on the lives of Blair and Vanessa, written and illustrated by HyeKyung Baek….”
The exclusive five page preview on MTV’s Splash Page is pretty. The drawing is fashionable and clean. Bishounen’s abound. (girls typically look beautiful, even the ugly ones, in most manga). As far as the storyline, there isn’t much to go on in the five page “preview”.
Is this a new way to get the new, scene-kid-otakus interested in buying more manga? In my last post, I touched upon adapting a new model and growing with the otaku community, and interestingly enough, though this may not work with older and more critical fans of manga, it could perhaps work with the new fan.
The Twilight graphic novel will also be published by Yen Press(as announced by Entertainment Weekly). Twilight, as most of us know, has an enormous fan base. Those fans will most likely pick up the manga, and maybe, just maybe, manga by other authors and publishers.
The new otaku who totes around Twilight and Gossip Girl novels, while listening to Lady Gaga, Lady Antebellum, Jay Z and Saves the Day, sporting skinny jeans, eyeliner and guyliner, while reading manga? Could be, I guess we’ll wait and see…
