News
Shōgaku Gonensei, Shōgaku Rokunensei, ChuChu to End (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The Japanese publisher Shogakukan has announced on Monday that it will end the school learning magazines Shōgaku Gonensei (pictured right) and Shōgaku Rokunensei (pictured left), as well as the Shōjo Comic magazines for their long-term prospects.
Among the manga that Shōgaku Gonensei and Shōgaku Rokunensei serialized publishes the Pokémon and Heaven's Will manga in North America.
Shogakukan launched its Shōgaku magazines in 1922, the same year that the company itself was founded. (Shogakukan literally means "elementary school building.") At their peak in April (the start of the school year) of 1973, Shōgaku Gonensei printed 635,000 copies, and Shōgaku Rokunensei printed 460,000 copies. In recent years, the circulations of both magazines have fallen into the range of 50,000 to 60,000 copies. Shogakukan's four magazines aimed at younger elementary school students—Shōgaku Ichinensei (Elementary First-Grader) through Shōgaku Yonnensei (Elementary Fourth-Grader)—will continue to be published.
ChuChu launched as a spinoff from Ciao and Shōjo Comic magazine's editorial departments in August of 2008. ChuChu was revamped into a monthly magazine in its January 2006 issue in December of 2005. It had a print run of 180,000 at its launch, but it has been hovering around 50,000 copies recently.
Thank you to dormcat for the news tip.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun via Saigo Tsūchō, Sankei Shimbun
Update: More background information added.
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