Sure, part of why my generation's nerds still obsess over classic Showa era (1926-1989) manga/anime is, of course, wanting to see the original versions of the shows we grew up watching, your Space Battleship Yamatos and your Gatchamans and your Macrosses. But what any reasonably diligent researcher discovers is that for every anime series exported to America, five or ten didn't make the trip. For every manga that we see in our local Barnes & Noble or Chapters, there are five hundred thousand million zillion that will never be localized. Because let's face it, there aren't enough trees in the world.
Nostalgia notwithstanding, what keeps guys like me keeping on keeping on ranting about this stuff is that every time you turn around there's something new popping up to say "hey, look at me, you didn't even know I existed, here I am!" And that's what I'm ranting about today, Sanrio's Lyrica manga magazine. Yeah, you know, Sanrio, the Hello Kitty people. Sanrio, whose austere yet friendly graphics and cast of round-headed, simplistic characters pressed every button in every little girl brain from Albany to Buenos Aires, from Valdosta to Vladivostok. Although Sanrio head Shintaro Tsujii's first character Strawberry would debut in 1962, Sanrio mainstay Hello Kitty would arrive in 1974 to become the trademark of a company that already owned gift shops, restaurants, film production companies, and a US distribution headquarters.
September 1976 is what we're talking about here, the next stage of Sanrio's world domination strategy, Lyrica's first issue. Best known today as the debut of Osamu Tezuka's Unico, Sanrio's Lyrica strategy wasn't just to crank out a first class manga mag full of Twinkle Little Stars candy ads and comics that would appeal to their core audience of girls 6-12, but to use that magazine as either a stepping stone towards, or a brick hurled through, the metaphorical window of the American comic book market. Hence Lyrica's extensive use of color printing and its Western-style left hand binding, which may be just as confusing to us as it no doubt was to Japanese audiences.
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| art: Yuko Namura |
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| "Time Jump" by Mami Komori |
Wait, what? Flipped manga? Flipped manga published by the Japanese? In the 1970s? Yes sir, all part of Sanrio's attempt to slide into the American comics scene. Don't take my word for it, let Fred Patten tell you what happened. He was there. Long story short; Sanrio was determined to publish comics in America, in spite of the punch-drunk state of the American comic book industry at the time, and in spite of the total lack of a distribution deal or really anywhere to sell a fat, phone-book sized magazine that didn't fit on the comics rack at the drugstore and looked weird on the magazine rack next to Jack & Jill and Boy's Life.
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| product placement |
Me? I got wise to this whole enterprise forty years after the fact, when a stack of Lyricas were rescued from a middle Georgia estate sale by the quick work of the proprietor of the Athens GA comic shop Bizarro Wuxtry. Over the past holiday season these Lyricas were divvied up between myself and actual comic book professionals, proving once again if you're ever anywhere near Athens, Bizarro Wuxtry is worth a stop, that's Bizarro Wuxtry, 225 College Ave, Athens GA.
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| art: Mari Hizuki |
Anyway, above and beyond Sanrio's territorial ambitions, Lyrica is an absolute shoujo manga gold mine. Top artists like Keiko "Toward The Terra" Takemiya, Hideko "Honey Honey" Mizuno, Ryoko Yamagishi, Minori Kimura, Mamio Komori, Izumi Yoko, Akemi "Silver Lions" Matsunae, Terumi "Pooky My Love" Otani, Seika "Posy Pile's Wonderful Day" Nakayama and a host of others brought their "A" game to this magazine, while Osamu Tezuka was in there keeping up with the younger generation and Shotaro Ishinomori's "Fantasy World Jun" expanded consciousnesses for a few issues.
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| Shotaro Ishinomori's "Fantasy World Jun" |
In Lyrica, science fiction mingled with romantic comedy, adaptations of Little Women followed otherworldly fantasy and heart-rending melodrama rubbed girly shoulders with do-it-yourself fashion tips and cozy wintertime recipes, all peppered throughout with ads for various Sanrio character goods ready for this week's allowance.
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| Hideko Mizuno's "Legend" |
Sure, Lyrica exemplfies that peak 70s shoujo style, a stylish assemblage of dinner-plate girl eyes, mounds of tousled Pre-Raphaelite girl hair, and long elephant-flared girl limbs sending billowing clouds of flower petals to drift lazily through the no doubt beautifully scented air. Lyrica is also a bittersweet reminder of what could have been, a messenger from that alternate universe where 70s America got fat chunks of Japanese girl comics alongside their Japanese boy robot cartoons and their gender-neutral Japanese autos and Japanese electronics. Imagine what the success of Lyrica would have meant! Not only would Japanese manga have had an American beachhead a good ten years ahead of schedule, but the sad retreat of American comics away from female readers would have been reversed long before Sailor Moon was even born, even.
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| "Pooky My Love" by Terumi Otani |
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| Noriko Kasuya |
It's a lovely thought, but the harsh truth is that importing Japanese manga may not have even been part of the Sanrio masterplan. Lyrica's American branch secured stacks of work from a score of American comics veterans for their aborted launch, and as the thing never, you know, actually happened, what would have been the final editorial mix is left to speculation.
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| furry comics were invented in Ancient Greece! art by Don Morgan |
Only one piece of Sanrio's proposed Western Lyrica ever saw print; Don Morgan's elegant fantasy Metamorphoses, based on Ovid's epic narrative poem from ancient Greece. Metamorphoses was to be Shintaro Tsujii's own version of Fantasia, a highbrow showcase of awe-inspiring animation and stirring music. Unfortunately, the finished product was none of those things. Metamorphoses would premiere in a disastrous LA test screening and be recut and re-scored for a home video release as Winds Of Change, part of Sanrio's more successful foray into the then booming US home video market.
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| Secrets Behind The Comics |
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| yet another Japanese iteration of "Little Women" |
None of the other commissioned American Lyrica work has surfaced in the subsequent decades, tantalizing researchers such as myself, fascinated at the prospect of an American girls comic. At the time, romance comics were being cancelled left and right, the mystery books were mysteriously dying, and only Harvey Comics, with their parade of simplistic, obsessive-compulsive Richie Riches and Little Dots, was doing anything that approached Sanrio's cutesy minimalism. I believe - and history has proven me right on this one - I believe that when American comics readers are given Japanese manga delivered in an accurate and faithful presentation, they'll read the holy heck out of it.
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| fashion fads for fall femmes |
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| I forgot to wish you all a nice day. Now buy a lamp |
Nevermind the American ambitions, Lyrica only lasted a few years in Japan. The stress of monthly color-manga deadlines saw fewer color and more text pieces. Eventually Lyrica would vanish in March of 1979, one more manga dream extinguished, one less place for Sanrio to advertise Hello Kitty lampshades and Patty & Jimmy chocolates.
But what if Lyrica had prospered in the West? Would we have spent the 80s and 90s surrounded by the anime and manga Europe and Asia enjoyed? Would decades of fan proselytizing, anime club meetups and comic-con video room screenings all have been rendered superfluous by the success of one magazine? Probably not. Let's face it; for all Sanrio's multimedia efforts, the end result was mere memories of magic unicorns and nihilistic rams rammed into the impressionable brains of America's children. Children who grew up surrounded by Hello Kitty and Tuxedo Sam and Kerokerokeroppi and My Melody, who were sometimes mildly obsessed with the weird cartoons their babysitters rented, children who grew to adulthood yet never knew how close they got to a Hello Kitty-powered shoujo manga magazine on their very own newsstands.
-Dave Merrill
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