ABOUT THIS SITE
Author
Favorite Manga/Manhwa| Name | Michelle Bacon |
| Type | Female, D.O.B. February 25, 1978 |
| michelle@michellebacon.com | |
| Location | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
Tangerine Dreams (formerly 'The Tangerine Anime Shoppe') was established in January 1999 to keep a list of my favorite anime and manga series. Ever since Tokyopop licensed Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth way back in 1996, I have been watching the developments at that company and the subsequent growth in shoujo manga published in English.
The market for Japanese manga translated into English started out dominated by male tastes, but in 2002 a switch to marketing manga primarily in graphic novel form and selling it in bookstores made manga more widely available to the general populace. Subsequently, shoujo manga has emerged as the more popular category. It now seems hard to believe that it took until 1997 for the first popular shoujo manga - Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth - to be published in English. Read more about the first big companies to publish girls' manga in the Viz Profile and Tokyopop Profile.
In 2003 I made the focus of this site shoujo manga and anime:
Tangerine Dreams Switches to Shoujo
October 17, 2003 - Tangerine Dreams has been made over to focus on shoujo (girls') anime and manga. I'm finding there are far too many new series to keep up with, which is a nice problem to have! With the expansion in the types of anime and manga and the sheer number of series that get acquired today, it makes sense to focus on one area. I decided it would be best to devote my attention to an area I'm most familiar with and interested in.
Recently I picked up the September 2003 issue of Animerica - the shoujo special. Upon flipping through it, I discovered that there are many more shoujo series here in North America than I had suspected. I realized that I wanted to promote all the awesome girl's manga and anime that are getting published in English. I knew there were plenty of shoujo manga out there, but until I started digging, I thought the number of shoujo anime to be very small. After all, it was only a couple of years ago that Tokyopop started publishing shoujo manga in significant numbers. I didn't think I'd find enough shoujo series to fill up an entire site - but to my delight, there are a lot!
The site has been given a new layout to signal the change in subject matter, and I've scoured the anime and manga companies for any shoujo series they might be hiding. They aren't hiding them anymore - VIZ has a new line of shoujo manga and they're repackaging their existing series with more topical manga covers that are very pretty. CPM is pushing their shoujo romance from Tomoko Taniguchi. Tokyopop keeps acquiring truckloads of obscure and fan-favorite series along with recent Japanese hits. Everybody's going shoujo these days, and they're not ashamed of their girl's manga anymore. That means more choice for everyone!
~ Michelle, October 17, 2003
In conclusion, I would like to credit the following sites for informing me about new and wonderful manga tastes: Emily's Niko-Niko.net, Zahara's Shoujo Manga Page, Strictly Shoujo, AnimeOnDVD's Manga Forum, and Mariela Ortiz's Shoujo Manga in the USA (offline).
The image of the red-haired young woman reading seen on this site is from iStockPhoto.