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Top Shoujo News of 2016

December 30, 2016

Cardcaptor Sakura was popular when I was growing up. So I’m sure this year’s news of a new manga, new anime, and new merchandise goodies made lots of fans nostalgic and anticipate the many releases in store for them. That’s why we couldn’t pass up on Cardcaptor Sakura news.

Cardcaptor Sakura is getting a new short story in a future issue of Kodansha’s Nakayoshi magazine. There will also be a new art book released March 24.
Good Smile Company will be releasing a Cardcaptor Sakura figure in honor of the company’s 15th anniversary and the manga’s 20th anniversary.
Cardcaptor Sakura is getting a sequel manga series which will launch in the July issue of Kodansha’s Nakayoshi magazine. It will be set when Sakura starts her first year of junior high school.
New Cardcaptor Sakura anime announced.

Uta No Prince Sama is a popular idol franchise that seems like it will never end. The show, which features handsome students trying to make it as idols, has several games, merchandise, and anime. I included it on this list because of the news announcements were an exciting time for fans of the franchise. New games, new idols, a new anime.

The fourth season of the anime was announced (and is now airing).
The original Uta no Prince Sama otome games were released on PSP, and were being ported to the PS Vita.
Broccoli announced Uta no Prince Sama Dolce Vita, a new game title featuring 11 new idols.

There were a lot of manga to live-action announcements this year and even more still to come. Here’s a post highlighting the upcoming year, which will include titles like:

Dansui
Anonymous Noise
Daytime Shooting Star
Obereru Knife
Kimi wa Pet
P to JK &
Kyou no Kira-Kun

We can’t leave out the new partnership between Funimation and Crunchyroll. The partnership brings several of Funimation’s subtitled content to Crunchyroll. In addition to Crunchyroll streaming Funimation’s subtitled content, the partner ship also includes Funimation handling Crunchyroll’s home video titles.

Pied Piper, Inc, won its challenge to raise money to release Skip Beat on DVD and Blu-ray. The Kickstarter campaign reached its goal of $224,536.

B-Project

This year was also the year of male idol anime announcements. Male idol projects not based on games or manga got a chance to steal some spotlight in the anime realm. Those included B-Project and IDOLiSH7.

Period Cube

Otome game announcements were plenty this year as well. Unfortunately, outside of Period Cube ~Shackles of Amadeus~, we have no idea of when the other games will be released. Nonetheless, Aksys is also bringing Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~, Collar × Malice, and Bad Apple Wars to English fans in 2017.

Otomate, the publisher of the games Aksys acquires, also announced that they would publisher several Japanese games in 2017, includinging a new game for iOS and Android.

Kodansha announced it would bring more than 750 volumes of its English-translated manga to Kadokawa’s Bookwalker Global store, giving fans another way to get their manga fix.

You might have heard of an anime called Yuri on Ice!!!!!? Yeah, this one was popular with shoujo fans and fujoshi. The amount of fans it garnered this past anime season is in the hundreds of thousands range, including current professional skaters. The season ended with an announcement of another season, which was big news in and of itself. Also announced around the same time was the attendance of the director Sayo Yamamoto, co-creator Mitsurou Kubo, and character designer / chief animation director Tadashi Hiramatsu to attend a United States anime convention – AnimeFest.

The amount of new shoujo and josei manga licensed for 2017 is less than last year. The publisher with the most new titles is currently Kodansha. You can look forward to some good series debuting in 2017, though, including:

Waiting for Spring
Queen’s Quality
Vampire Knight Memories
Anonymous Noise
Dreamin’ Sun &
Frau Faust

3 Comments

Thanks for the summary of 2016 top shojo news 🙂
“There will also be a new art book released March 24.”
Do you happen to know if there’s a pre-order link for this art book? Thanks in advance.
Happy 2017 to Heart of Manga writers and families.

badzphoto Dec 31, 2016
- ah, it seems that I misunderstood. The art book was released March 24, 2016 and not 2017. Wishful thinking of my part 🙂
  
  badzphoto Dec 31, 2016
  - Happy 2017 to you, too!
    
    We will keep you up to date on CCS news. I wouldn’t doubt there will be some collected art after the manga and anime run!
    
    Laura Jan 01, 2017