W.I.T.C.H. Manga Cancelled!

[ShadowBrat]

I had long suspected this as the site on the Disney Japan has vanished for a while now, and it's been almost a year since the last volume was published. Not to mention I hadn't seen it appear on the cover of "Asuka" for some time.

I clung on to hopes that it may have been on hiatus, but could find no info on it whatsoever.

But according to an Editor at Germany's Egmont Ehapa Publishing, they have scrapped their plans to publish a german translated version of the Witch manga, because it has been cancelled after 2 volumes in japan, and they don't plan to pick up an unfinished series.

It was apparantly cancelled because it was unpopular with the readers.

 

[sag_2002]

W.i.t.c.h UNPOPULAR with the readers?

 

[Conan-san]

W.i.t.c.h UNPOPULAR with the readers?

Well, between Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Mermaid Mellody and the endless number of Maho Shojo Sentai manga around, I for one am not supriessed.

 

[Locall]

Just bought the first two episodes on the net...
Lol....now I own the whole collection

Too bad they stopped it tho

 

[Martin]

Just bought the first two episodes on the net...
Lol....now I own the whole collection

Too bad they stopped it tho

Wow! Those are valuable then! Have them insured and lock them up in a private safe in a local bank!

 

[ShadowBrat]

Makes me glad I already own them, wait a couple of years and i'll be mad with the bling bling!

EDIT- oh wait... That would involve me selling my beloved W.I.T.C.H. manga

 

[Gokou Ruri]

I've only seen a few scans of the manga, but it looked like they really changed the art style to resemble the manga Miracle Girls.

 

[ShadowBrat]

I've only seen a few scans of the manga, but it looked like they really changed the art style to resemble the manga Miracle Girls.

Actually, Haruko Iida traveled to Italy to learn how to draw like W.I.T.C.H. at the Walt Disney company Italia.

 

[Martin]

Makes me glad I already own them, wait a couple of years and i'll be mad with the bling bling!

EDIT- oh wait... That would involve me selling my beloved W.I.T.C.H. manga

If you dó consider selling them, do it in the far future on auction at Christie's or Sotheby's.

 

[shoujoaifan]

Never read any of it so I can't comment on quality, but doesn't Japan eat up foreign comics and cartoons, even more so than how other countries eat up Japan's stuff? I know there's been manga adaptions of stuff like Spiderman of all things, but I would imagine they would be eager to read the orinigal W.I.T.C.H. (Unless they were publishing both a manga version and the orinigal traslated?)

Of course, it probably was-

Well, between Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Mermaid Mellody and the endless number of Maho Shojo Sentai manga around, I for one am not supriessed.

-GRANTED I haven't seen any of the cartoon or manga, but it doesn't have an unique enough "hook" to separate itself from generic girl anime/manga. It would be somewhat unique in Europe/US/etc, but most of our girl team shows come from Japan anyway, its not an established genre overhere yet.

Honestly, what is this world coming to when a manga full of girls transforming into hot women wearing skimpy mini-skirts and mid-riffs can't earn enough sales to stay afloat, I tells ya.......

 

[Hordesman]

I think there's a generally preference for imports with the original country's flavor, not an outsider's attempt on one of their own genres. She-Ra proably looks much more exotic than the creations resulting from exposure to at least 20 years of anime dubs.

 

[Prism]

The Japanese are very fond of western animation but I've heard that it's very hard for a western comic to make it over there. Unless it's something by a big publisher like DC or Marvel usually.

 

[Gokou Ruri]

W.I.T.C.H is Itallian, though. =P So a Euro comic.

 

[Ben]

What they said. WITCH is really just a rehash of Sailor Moon, which isn't really popular in Japan anymore anyway.

 

[ShadowBrat]

W.I.T.C.H is Itallian, though. =P So a Euro comic.

Well if were gonna get technical, W.I.T.C.H. being Italian would not make it a "Euro Comic" but rather a "Fumetti".

But that's beside the point.

Evryone has raised a lot of good points, and braught to light a question that I didn't even think to ask myself, wich is namely "Why was it cancelled?"
And perhaps as someone who has read both volumes (I use the term "Read" a little liberally, as my actual understanding of Japanese is spotty at best) I shall do my best to add some sort of insight.

Some have speculated that Witch failed because it failed to set itself apart from other Magical Girl shows. But if that were true, we would have Magical girl series failing left and right. If anything I belive that Witch Succeded in setting itself apart, and that was the problem.

What a lot of people don't realise is that The Witch Manga is incredibly faithful to the source material. What we need to do is look at this through a Japanese reader's perspective.

Let's take the Spider-Man Manga for example, When it was adapted for Japanese audiences Peter Parker became Yu Komori, typical Japanese High School student who faced typical Japanese High school problems, he didn't do much Webswinging as the buildings were'nt all that tall. Ad the general feel of the series was more of a live action Sentai show than the original comics.

As for the Changes in Witch mainly have to do with how the story is told, some scenes are more drawn out, the pacing is slower, some scenes happen out of sequence, some new scenes are added in for more character interaction, to better reflect the Japanese style of storytelling.

But as Far as the Changes go, they end there.
The Story still takes place in heatherfeild, a typical non-descript European/North American town. No one knows for sure where Heatherfeild is, but one place it is not is Japan. In a sence the japanese reader would feel like he's in a strange environment.

To push that even further we have our 5 protagonists, to us known as Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay-Lin, but to the Japanese readers they are Wiiru, Iruma, Taranee (pronounced Tah-Rah-Nay) Koruneria, and Hai-Rin. Five very obviously foreign girls (Hay-Lin not so much... but still) Wich might make them hard for Japanese girls to Identify with.

And the culture shock dosent end there. Take for example the fact that all the students at Sheffeild don't wear School uniforms, instead of Sailor Suits evryone is dressed in casual clothing. Such a thing post-elementary and pre-university is unheard of in Japan.

Evryone calls each other by the first name, wich is also something the Japanese wouldn't do unless your intimatly close to that person. For example they would find it strange that Cornelia would just call a girl she just met "Will" instead of "Will-San" or even "Vandom-San".
While I'm on that thaught no honorifics are are used at all in the Witch Manga (although I think Will refers to her mom as "Okasan" at one point, but that's a bit of a grey area). Wich is something we never really think about, but the Japanese would just find plain Weird. Normally the girls would be Calling Each other Irma-Chan, Cornelia-Sama, Matt-Kun, etc...

So in the end they probably ended up alienating the target audience And ultimatly caused their downfall.

Of course this is all speculation on my part, I appreciate That they tried to stay as faithful as possible with the Manga version, but in order for it to stay afloat they probably should have made a lot more changes than they did. And then we'd run the risk of it not being The W.I.T.C.H. we know and love anymore.

An interesting side-note, I Noticed that no one had Last Names in the Manga. I guess they thaught that Family names Like "Vandom", "Hale", "Cook" and "Lair" would be to strange for the readers... well... I guess we know how that worked out...

 

[Gokou Ruri]

If they didn't change that much, then why did they honestly rewrite the series at all? They could have just released it in GN format like what Disney is going to do for America so it has 2 or 3 chapters per volumes.

I also heard they prefer their comics to not be in color, though, since it's tradition.

 

[lostrune]

BTW, there's the W.I.T.C.H. manga, and there's the W.I.T.C.H. Italian comics. Is Disney still publishing the translated W.I.T.C.H. Italian comics in Japan?

 

[Ekkostar]

For those who don't know, there's a W.I.T.C.H. graphic novel coming out in May.
WITCH Graphic Novel

 

[Conan-san]

For those who don't know, there's a W.I.T.C.H. graphic novel coming out in May.
WITCH Graphic Novel

;/ question is, will they cut out/Digi-paint over what they did in the books?

 

[Monkey12]

Well if were gonna get technical, W.I.T.C.H. being Italian would not make it a "Euro Comic" but rather a "Fumetti".

But that's beside the point.

Evryone has raised a lot of good points, and braught to light a question that I didn't even think to ask myself, wich is namely "Why was it cancelled?"
And perhaps as someone who has read both volumes (I use the term "Read" a little liberally, as my actual understanding of Japanese is spotty at best) I shall do my best to add some sort of insight.

Some have speculated that Witch failed because it failed to set itself apart from other Magical Girl shows. But if that were true, we would have Magical girl series failing left and right. If anything I belive that Witch Succeded in setting itself apart, and that was the problem.

What a lot of people don't realise is that The Witch Manga is incredibly faithful to the source material. What we need to do is look at this through a Japanese reader's perspective.

Let's take the Spider-Man Manga for example, When it was adapted for Japanese audiences Peter Parker became Yu Komori, typical Japanese High School student who faced typical Japanese High school problems, he didn't do much Webswinging as the buildings were'nt all that tall. Ad the general feel of the series was more of a live action Sentai show than the original comics.

As for the Changes in Witch mainly have to do with how the story is told, some scenes are more drawn out, the pacing is slower, some scenes happen out of sequence, some new scenes are added in for more character interaction, to better reflect the Japanese style of storytelling.

But as Far as the Changes go, they end there.
The Story still takes place in heatherfeild, a typical non-descript European/North American town. No one knows for sure where Heatherfeild is, but one place it is not is Japan. In a sence the japanese reader would feel like he's in a strange environment.

To push that even further we have our 5 protagonists, to us known as Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay-Lin, but to the Japanese readers they are Wiiru, Iruma, Taranee (pronounced Tah-Rah-Nay) Koruneria, and Hai-Rin. Five very obviously foreign girls (Hay-Lin not so much... but still) Wich might make them hard for Japanese girls to Identify with.

And the culture shock dosent end there. Take for example the fact that all the students at Sheffeild don't wear School uniforms, instead of Sailor Suits evryone is dressed in casual clothing. Such a thing post-elementary and pre-university is unheard of in Japan.

Evryone calls each other by the first name, wich is also something the Japanese wouldn't do unless your intimatly close to that person. For example they would find it strange that Cornelia would just call a girl she just met "Will" instead of "Will-San" or even "Vandom-San".
While I'm on that thaught no honorifics are are used at all in the Witch Manga (although I think Will refers to her mom as "Okasan" at one point, but that's a bit of a grey area). Wich is something we never really think about, but the Japanese would just find plain Weird. Normally the girls would be Calling Each other Irma-Chan, Cornelia-Sama, Matt-Kun, etc...

So in the end they probably ended up alienating the target audience And ultimatly caused their downfall.

Of course this is all speculation on my part, I appreciate That they tried to stay as faithful as possible with the Manga version, but in order for it to stay afloat they probably should have made a lot more changes than they did. And then we'd run the risk of it not being The W.I.T.C.H. we know and love anymore.

An interesting side-note, I Noticed that no one had Last Names in the Manga. I guess they thaught that Family names Like "Vandom", "Hale", "Cook" and "Lair" would be to strange for the readers... well... I guess we know how that worked out...

Then how do explain the many popular anime series, such as One Peice,Outlaw Star, Slayers,Hunter x Hunter,Cyboorg 009, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Record of Locroos War, that have no or very little Japanese culture in them. I think the main reason of it failing in Japan is because W.I.T.C.H almost has no originality compared to the other magical girl shows in Japan. I, mean, come on, the plot has been done 14 gallion times over and over again and adds nothing new to it. I think the fact that the characters weren't Japanese had very little with the unpopularity in Japan. It's just W.I.T.C.H. mainly uses the main animes cliches over and over with nothing new.