Super-Cute Broccoli Grows in the U.S.

Based in Los Angeles, Broccoli Books USA is the U.S. subsidiary of Broccoli, a Japanese firm best known for super-cute manga and anime characters and for Gamers, a chain of retail stores in Japan and the U.S. selling a range of J-pop merchandise, from videogames, manga and anime on DVD to t-shirts and cat-ear caps.

by Kai-Ming Cha, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 9/26/2006

Based in Los Angeles, Broccoli Books USA is the U.S. subsidiary of Broccoli, a Japanese firm best known for super-cute manga and anime characters and for Gamers, a chain of retail stores in Japan and the U.S. selling a range of J-pop merchandise, from videogames, manga and anime on DVD to t-shirts and cat-ear caps.

Originally a part of Digital Manga Publishing, another Japanese manga publisher with offices in Los Angeles, Broccoli split from DMP four years ago to form Broccoli U.S.A. Broccoli Books is a small publishing outfit offering a catalogue of books, merchandise and DVDs. It also runs the Anime Gamers retail store in Los Angeles, where most of Broccoli's merchandise inventory is sold. Broccoli Books has a backlist of 11 titles, and plans five to six for 2006 and six to 10 titles for 2007. "We're trying to do as many Broccoli titles as we can," said production department editor and producer Dietrich Soto. Broccoli Books has seven full-time employees plus a pool of interns, freelance translators and rewriters.

Broccoli titles range from the ultra-cute shojo Di Gi Charat to the company’s bestseller, Juvenile Orion, another shojo manga. Broccoli will add two more titles from character designer Koge-Donbo, who created Di Gi Charat. Broccoli also publishes a boys’ love lite series called Until the Full Moon and there may be more yaoi-oriented titles coming from the company in the future.

In Japan, Broccoli's parent company is a content design studio. Broccoli Japan creates characters that are then shopped around to manga publishers and anime studios to develop new series in each medium. A good example is Di Gi Charat, a sugar-sweet cat-eared girl with a sense of adventure, which was originally designed for commercials. Di Gi Charat became so popular in Japan that it sparked an anime series and a manga series.

In the U.S., Broccoli Books publishes Di Gi Charat Theatre, Di Gi Charat Theater: Dejiko’s Adventure (based on the anime series) and Di Gi Charat Theater: Leave It to Piyoko, all from the Di Gi Charat franchise. And there’s a shelf full of merchandise based on the characters, too, including figurines, posters, stationary and art books.

Broccoli Books has its choice of Broccoli Japan-created anime and manga characters. "We have our parent company talk to the publishers. They handle the licensing," Soto said.

Broccoli's parent company has some 20 retail stores called Gamers throughout Japan. In the U.S., the store is called Anime Gamers, and, like the stores in Japan, it sells Broccoli products and other Japanese pop merchandise. Broccoli t-shirts are also sold through Hot Topic, the hip teen retail chain, and Broccoli Books calendars—many featuring non-Broccoli licensed characters such as Trigun, Hellsing and Tenjho Tenge from the anime company Geneon—can be found in bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble.

Once the company began publishing books under its Broccoli Books division, Soto said, merchandise seemed to be the next logical step. It's a progression that works in two ways for the company.

"For titles that aren’t so big, [merchandising] helps with the exposure of the title. If a title is big, it works for exposure of [all] our products as well," he said. Asked if merchandising is a priority, Soto said, "I wouldn't say that it's a priority. We try to focus on everything so that there are equal amounts of manga, merchandise and DVDs."

Most Broccoli anime is distributed in the U.S. through Synchpoint, a U.S. distribution company, and Broccoli Books recently moved its U.S. book distribution from Diamond Books Distributors to PGW. "We just think that PGW could better help us right now," Soto said.

This October will see the wide release of Koge-Donbo’s Yoki Koto Kiku (which was a Borders exclusive over the summer), a manga about triplets who go head to head with their in-laws (and each other) for their brother’s inheritance. Broccoli Books also plans to publish Donbo’s Kon Kon Kokon, a story about a fox-girl that’s currently being serialized in Japan. In 2007 look for the release of Satol Yuiga’s E’s, about an elite group of psychics.

For the holidays this year, Broccoli will release a special-edition DVD of FLCL, a Tokyopop manga that’s notable forbeing more popular in the U.S. than it is in Japan.

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