Monthly Afternoon


Monthly Afternoon is a Japanese monthly manga anthology published by Kodansha under the Afternoon line of magazines. The first issue was released in December 1986. Afternoon has spawned many successful manga series such as Oh My Goddess!, Genshiken, Blade of the Immortal and Big Windup!. It is part of Kodansha's "1day" series, which also includes the magazines Morning and Evening. A spin-off magazine, named good! Afternoon, started publishing on November 7, 2008.

History

The magazine was founded as a sister to Morning by the same publisher. According to Frederik L. Schodt, stories that did not convince the editors of Morning would often land in Afternoon.
Many of the artists working for the magazine used to publish amateur and were influenced by amateur manga. Sharon Kinsella claims that around half of all series featured in Afternoon between 1994 and 1997 were inspired by aesthetics. She lists Discommunication, Gunsmith Cats, Assembler 0X, Seraphic Feather, Aqua and Oh! My Goddess as examples.
From 1999 until 2002, Afternoon Season Zōkan was published as a quarterly spin-off magazine to Afternoon. After the magazine was suspended, some of its series, like Mushishi and Mokke, were transferred to Afternoon.

Newcomer award

Since 1987, the magazine hands out the newcomer award Afternoon Shiki Shō. In 2000, Kodansha published a selection of winners of the award in a book.

Circulation and demographic

Like with most major manga magazines, the magazine's circulation has been declining since the 1990s:
  • 2004: 144.500
  • 2005: 133.800
  • 2006: 127.400
  • 2007: 119.666
  • 2016: 69.310
In the late 1990s, the magazine's editors guessed that about a third of the readers of the magazine could be called.

Features

Ongoing

There are currently 33 manga titles being serialized in Monthly Afternoon. Out of them, Historie, Wandering Island and Yakuza Fiancé are on hiatus. Nella of the Horizon is serialized on an irregular schedule.
Series titleAuthorPremiered
Asayake RefrainHikari Matsuda
Big Windup!Asa Higuchi
Blue Period Tsubasa Yamaguchi
The Darwin IncidentShun Umezawa
Dead Don't TalkAki Kaneda
Dig ItMaru Yoshida
Fragile Bin Kusamizu and Megumi Saburo
Akira Suga
Heavenly DelusionMasakazu Ishiguro
HellhoundRyōji Minagawa
HistorieHitoshi Iwaaki
Kraken MareIzu and Hagane
Manga LoverKou Fumimura
Medalist Tsurumaikada
MirairaifuraiAo Ameta
Mojiponica!Masaki Andō
Moyashimon+Masayuki Ishikawa
Nella of the HorizonYuki Urushibara
OMOCAT and Nui Konoito
Paris ni Saku ÉtoileZerihan
Poo-NekoMasayuki Kitamichi
Seven Sleeping BeautiesFiok Lee
Skip and LoaferMisaki Takamatsu
Ai Tanaka
The Chronicles of LeendeRei Tasaki and Nezu Usugumo
The Under ThreeShunji Enomoto
Toppu GPKōsuke Fujishima
WandanceCoffee
Wandering IslandKenji Tsuruta
Wave, Listen to Me!Hiroaki Samura
When the Chameleon Flowers BloomShiho Kido
Where Stillness SpeaksAkino Miyabi
Yakuza FiancéAsuka Konishi

Past

1980s