Doujinshi Shop Toranoana Closing Stores Around Japan

The COVID-19 crisis has impacted us all, but some industries have had a harder time dealing with the stresses brought on by the virus than others. While companies related to restaurants, hospitality and tourism had massive challenges during the crisis, companies that were already digitally focused and serving customers through the Internet — like J-List and JAST USA — were able to manage much better. (It turns out that when you force people to stay home then give them stimulus money, many will buy naughty products from Japan.) One industry that’s been under more pressure than most has been doujinshi shops like Toranoana.

Famous Doujinshi Shop Toranoana Closing More Stores

The news hit yesterday that Toranoana, the doujinshi shop that everyone loves to visit when in Akihabara, was closing several more stores around Japan, specifically their shops in Sapporo and Hiroshima. The company’s major competitor is Melon Books, who has also been closing shops in the Kanto region of Japan. Toranoana has just nine shops left, including their flagship building in Akiba.

The COVID-19 crisis has not been kind to Japan’s doujin industry. The combination of the cancellation of fan events like the Comic Market coupled with lockdowns that kept customers from coming in to browse for new offerings from their favorite artists, has made things difficult for the chain. While new doujinshi have been steadily flowing in from doujin circles, often dedicated to the “Air Comiket” (since the real Comiket has been been cancelled), it’s a difficult environment for a large brick-and-mortar retailer like Toranoana.

Another ongoing problem for physical doujinshi retailers is the popularity of digital download sales, which are harder for the company to capture. While foreign fans are less likely to pay for digital downloads of doujinshi, Japanese fans happily support digital sales. This is good for artists (who can replace income lost from physical doujinshi sales with digital payments from digital distributors), but not good for retailers of physical doujinshi.

One small benefit of the crisis has been the new trend of doujin circles re-issuing their past books in compiled “omnibus” form, allowing fans to pick up 4-5 doujinshi that were formerly published separately in thicker, complete volumes. We have a lot of these omnibus doujinshi in stock on J-List.

Toranoana was founded in July 1996, just a few months before J-List, and rode the wave of popularity that was exploding in the wake of 1995’s Evangelion, which saw a flowering of 18+ doujinshi culture the likes of which had never been seen before.

Remember that J-List is dedicated to helping you get all the awesome doujinshi you could want, with both Japanese language doujins which we regularly restock on our site, as well as through our sister company J18 Publishing, which releases officially licenced hentai doujinshi by top artists which are fully translated and uncensored. Thanks for supporting Japan’s doujinshi world!

Article source: OneCall2

As usual, our sister company J18 Publishing is working hard to keep you supplied with awesome translated + uncensored hentai doujinshi, and we’ve got two new titles for you this month, both from artist Hyocoro. Enjoy the two AMNERO: Reinforced Human books we’ve got for you. They’re in stock in San Diego now!