Sho-jo Manga can be translated directly as "young girls Manga". Most Manga that makes the jump to Anime or the Movie screen in western countries would be classified as "Sho-nen" Manga. The direct translation for "sho-nen" is "blue years" but the expression refers to male teenagers which is most often the target audience for these manga.

There is little gender classification of comics in western countries or at least you don't have the vast number of comics created specifically for a female audience as you do in Japan. What you do have is a female super hero like Wonder Woman, Cat Woman or Bat Girl which girls (and boys) look up to.

Almost all Manga and Anime that is big in western countries comes from male oriented Sho-nen Manga like "Dragon Ball", "Majinga Z", or "Star Blazers". I always wondered why this was so. Some people say that the Sho-jo Manga stories are too simple, revolving around an often clumsy girl impressing and finally getting the guy of her dreams. A friend who researches "Sho-jo" Manga says that she is often faced with the same criticism from researchers or "Sho-nen" manga.

After looking into things a bit myself I found that there has been some expansion for Sho-jo manga. A couple of titles that started as Sho-jo Manga and moved to TV dramas in Japan are "Hataraki-man" and "Hotaru no Hikari". Interestingly enough "Hana yori Dango" became popular in Taiwan first as "Meteor Garden" as drama there which was then re-imported to Japan.

Leave a comment if there is any Sho-jo Manga popular where you are from!

There is usually a lull in preliminaries during January and into February but I want to let you know what has been happening and what is coming up in the near future. If you have been checking out the news reel you will have seen that the Brazil regional rounds in Fortaleze and Rio de Janeiro and the Mexico preliminaries were held in February. The Brazil preliminaries is very developed with about 14 regional rounds leading up to the final preliminary in Sao Paolo to choose the representative for Brazil. This year is the 100th year of immigration from Japan to Brazil so the events are seen as contemporary cultural embodiments of these strong ties. Keep an eye out for regular updates on the Brazil events in the news section!

This year the Shanghai event in July will be the deciding ground for the China representatives. I am hoping to be able to attend the event to give you some direct information on how things go. The event in South Korea is scheduled for early June and Singapore will take place in early July. We may have the French representatives decided on the same weekend at Japan Expo in Paris. I'll try to get you as much information as possible on these events!

Pol who has been an integral part of the WCS event since 2006 stopped by the TVA office for a visit. He plays a big role in translating/organizing for the WCS event and the Manga/Anime event Ficomic - Salon del Manga in Barcelona, Spain. He is currently traveling around Japan, he has lived in Nara for a while and has a lot of friends there. The shirt he is wearing is actually the WCS t-shirt from 2005! I think he's going incognito, he changed his hair color and has some funky new glasses...sweet;)

He has helped out with this blog too, you can see his work here!

This is the second part in the irregular unlimited series on TV Aichi. Every year it seems that event participants think that I am staff at TVA but I am not, just have a lot of friends who work there. I went down for a visit the other day and thought I would take a picture of the Events Department where it all goes down. Looking closely at the picture I took, it looks like a very average office and I guess it really is. During the WCS event a lot of the general meetings with representatives from each country is done on the floor above this one. You can see posters for events that are taking place right now and if you look closely you can see the new head organizer for the event wearing blue mask on right and in front of her the silent but deadly Iwan. For a closer look at Iwan in costume, click here!

After sitting down for tea I asked what they are busiest with now are busy with the Mammoth Flea Market coming up and they are preparing for the preliminary round in South Korea coming up at the start of June. The regional round in Hangzhou is coming up in a week or two as well.

Well the cherry blossom season came and went again this year. The rain held off so the blossoms didn't get washed away early like last year. Still, they are only in full bloom for less than a week so it means that there's only one weekend where you can catch them in their full splendor. I was lucky this year and got a chance to see them 3 times. The picture above is of one of those moments, actually this shot was taken when the blossoms were beyond their peak but thanks to good lighting and poor quality photography they still look amazing.

The preliminaries in Japan have been announced. This year there will be 2 preliminaries in Japan, one in Tokyo and Osaka. The event in Tokyo is coming up pretty soon on May 18th. For those who want to participate the deadline is May 11th. It will take place at the Tokyo Dome City Attractions facility so come down and check it out! For more information click here.

I didn't want to talk much about it because I wasn't sure if the visa was going to come through alright or not. It came through fine and just in time, I will be attending the the Hangzhou, China event this year! Hangzhou is a 3 hour drive from Shanghai and the event there held the final WCS preliminary round for China in 2006 and 2007.

I have never had a chance to see any of the events in China and always wished there was more information on them. What I have heard is the crowds are massive, 300,000 people far outclasses many if not all events around the world in sheer numbers of guests. Last year there were over 50 performance teams with up to 20 performers and performances that went up to a half hour long. I have only heard big things about the event so I am excited to go and actually see it, I will let you know how things go!

I will be accompanying the WCS 2007 German team Anna and Katharina. They will be doing some guest performances and participating in other ways as well. I'm on my way Tuesday morning Japan time so keep checking back!

The flight from Nagoya to Shanghai did't take long at all maybe 2 hours. I was still tired though as I was up late packing and had to catch the train early in the morning at 6:20 to get to the airport. Pudong airport in Shanghai was very big!

2 event staff picked me up at the airport and we started driving to Hangzhou. It is a good 4 hour trip, talking to the staff they say they will make the trip to Shanghai 3 or 4 times a year so you couldn't really call Hangzhou a suburb of Shanghai. We made a pitstop along the way and had lunch then arrived in the city. I was surprised to see how much of a visual precence the event had with banners along the highway as you can see in thee picture above and even statues erected on street corners.

I arrived at the China International Cartoon andd Anime Festival in the late afternoon and caught some of the competitions. The rest of the competitions will take place tomorrow so I'll let you know how things go. Getting to the hotel in the evening I was watching a little TV and was surprised to see a news broadcast about it on one of the major TV stations. The picture above is pretty grainy but you can make out some pointy ears on that fellah. Even in the early stages of the event there is plenty of coverage as you can see.

The second day of preliminaries started today. With a total of 82 teams, as many as 30 participants per team and each presentation running up to thirty minutes (?!?) the best word to describe it is 'big'. 20 teams will move on to the finals tomorrow. With this many great performances and awesome costumes its a shame that so few teams can move on.

I was surprised to see the CICAF staff dragging large ice blocks into the performance hall in the morning, I thought it was to keep some food cold or something. I was wrong, to my surprise it was for a giant cooling device. They had a large 2 square meter steel tub in which they placed the large blocks of ice and on top of that they put a large fan. This blasted air out of the front and created an old school massive air conditioning system. The Japanese staff that before air conditioners were around in Japan they had the same thing, I would imagine that was the case in other countries as well. I was told it was an ecological form of air conditioning and surely it is. A blast from the past! (pun intended, sorry)

I had no idea that Mariko and Choko of Barbara would be in attendance in Hangzhou this year and all 3 of us were surprised because they didn't know I would be there either. Barbara were the Web Japan representatives at WCS2006 and are true veterans of cosplay; Mariko has been at it for 20 years and Choko for 16. Along with the expected photo sessions and signings they acted as judges, presented awards and presented 2 performances on stage. You may remember they included the theme of "hayagae" or "quick (costume) change" in 2006, they continue to be active in presenting the attributes of Japanese cosplay to layers from around the world. In the photo above they hold up a costume which they actually made on stage in a few minutes as a part of their performance.