What is with JManga and all these terrifying Harlequins?

[snarp]

Who thought it was a good idea to make a shitload of Harlequin manga in the first place? Why does it comprise like 3/4 of the josei catalog? Does anyone under the age of sixty even read Harlequins? It just seems like a huge demographic mismatch.



(those facebook like boxes)

Look at these awful titles:

The Italian Playboy's Secret Son

Sale or Return Bride

The Italian's Passionate Revenge (oh, no! Same Italian?)

The Sheikh's Reluctant Bride

The Sheikh's Contract Bride (the sheikh is keeping busy)

The Billionaire's Virgin Mistress

Married By Mistake! (okay, yeah, that sounds like a manga)

Purchased For Revenge (that, too)

The Forced Bride (this fucking genre, my god)

Cowboys, Babies, and Shotgun Vows (well that sounds crazy fucking romantic)

The Italian's Token Wife (you know it is exactly this sort of behavior that got you guys stuck with Silvio Berlusconi for like nine years)

The Billionaire Boss's Forbidden Mistress (no one forbids the Billionaire Boss! Mistresses, that is. No one forbids him mistresses.)

Pregnant by the Millionaire (she should have held out for the billionaire)

Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded (or maybe whoever this guy is)

The Sheikh's Ransomed Bride (geez sheikh how many of those do you even need)

The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride (new nationality here, so this story must be completely different from every single one of the others)

The Millionaire's Pregnant Mistress (is this the same as that other millionaire-baby one but retitled? No, it looks like it's different.)

A Date With a Billionaire (she gets a look at his cell phone while he's in the bathroom and the address book is just "virgin one," "pregnant one," "forbidden one," so she walks out and calls up the cowboy. The cowboy is such a good listener.)

Mistress Bought and Paid For (goddamn we are purchasing a lot of fucking women in these stories, what the hell is wrong with Harlequin)

To Marry a Stranger (the stranger has an eyepatch, so yeah this is basically a manga, sure)

Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! (the scandal is that the baby is a reincarnated vengeful alien ghost, right? Because it's manga. Right?)

Claiming His Pregnant Wife (this sounds like a tagline given to a murder by an awful local news station)

Public Wife, Private Mistress (that's generally how it works yeah)

Traded to the Sheikh (I'll bet it was the Spanish Duke initiating this arrangement, I never trusted that guy)

The Billionaire's Secret Baby (oh we all know the billionaire sucks at keeping secrets)

A Wife in Time (I'm unfortunately pretty sure that this isn't about time travel, how are these even manga)

Princess of Convenience (that doesn't even make sense)

The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed IV - An Officer and a Princess (oh god so someone felt there needed to be three other manga about the royalty of someplace called Stanbury getting married over and fucking over? I bet there are white horses with frilly tack involved.)

Wife By Agreement (well, that's a pleasant first)

The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed II - The Blacksheep Prince's Bride (there's supposed to be a space in "black sheep" you terrible prince)

The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed III - Code Name: Prince ("dude that is the shittiest codename" "look do you want to have a goddamn frilly horse wedding or not")

To Woo a Wife (this is really fucking progressive for these things)

The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed I - The Expectant Princess ("i am expecting to give birth to a secret fucking agent")

Billionaire Bachelors: Stone (maybe the billionaire bachelors are like, elementally-themed, and they're a team of chosen warriors who fight evil together? Because it's manga.)

In The Arms of the Sheikh ("oh baby i have three or four wives already" "that is so hot")

The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal ("oh baby i want to surgically alter your vulva to be more symmetrical, and also marry you maybe" "no i am going to go see if the sheikh's got any spots open")

Million Dollar Men II - Millionaire Husband (these guys are the Monthly GFantasy knockoff of the Billionaire Bachelors)

Million Dollar Men III - The Millionaire's Secret Wish ("man i wish i was a billionaire bachelor, they have that cool elemental thing going on and takahiro sakurai voices one of them in the anime")

Million Dollar Men I - Expecting the Boss's Baby (there are three dudes on the cover of this one, I'm confident that it's mpreg and not just an establishing shot of this crappy hero team together)

Angus's Lost Lady (gonna pretend this is about some cows)

Daniel and Daughter (uh)

Comments

[inkstone]

I can't believe I'm about to say this but based on those titles, those are books from the Harlequin Presents line which is Harlequin's most popular line! (I know.) They're particularly huge internationally. I seem to recall the Harlequin manga being popular overseas -- I mean, there has to be some profit somewhere. Otherwise why keep making the adaptations?

[estara]

I read romance ^^ and I'm below 60 (not by much, 45 this year). I don't much read Harlequin category romance but there are a few authors I enjoy even in those lines (I just think 150 pages is not enough to fully develop a romance, I prefer the 300 page single titles, which Harlequin also publishes).

What you have here are a lot of older (80s to 2000) category romance titles from one certain line - and a lot of times it's like candy wish fulfilment and exotic for the Japanese ladies, I'm fairly sure. Interestingly enough there are even some original Japanese manga in the Harlequin vein - those are the ones that don't have US/UK author names attached.

In the way of JManga Josei I have heard good things about Pride (can't buy it as I'm German) and myself have enjoyed Madame Joker and Urameshiya.

[torachan]

What I find amusing is that these are English books which were translated into Japanese and then mangafied, and then the manga was translated back into English. It's like that babelfish game.

[(Anonymous)]

I read them and I'm 16 and I luv them. There great romance mangas.