The opening of a brand new English-language manga publisher, BluPetal, was announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, May 21st.
On their official X account, the publisher has greeted fans and further provided an outline of what they can expect from BluPetal.
BluPetal is going to be the ultimate community for those who love stories mostly for women, stories about LGBTQ+ folks, & romance. BluPetal will be giving the BL, TL, Yuri, Shoujosei, & Gei Komi fandoms the full fan experience they deserve.
For the uninitiated, here’s a brief explanation of these genres/demographics. Boys Love refers to works that focus on male/male romantic and/or sexual relationships, while Yuri, or Girls Love, refers to the female/female counterpart. Shoujo and josei manga are series targeted toward young girls and women respectively. TL refers to Teens’ Love, a demographic that’s been on the rise in recent years whereas Gei Komi refers to comics that are targeted toward gay men, one well-known creator being Gengoroh Tagame.
BluPetal also stated that they will not solely focus on releasing manga, but also bringing exclusive merch and building a community around the shared interest. Their team is composed of industry veterans from renowned platforms anime and manga fans are all familiar with, some notable mentions being Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment, and VIZ.
Readers who would like to be notified about the latest news from BluPetal can follow their social media accounts or visit their website blupetal.net and subscribe to their mailing list.
Source: BluPetal’s X (formerly Twitter) account
We’re already up to our necks in Yaoi/Yuri etc. with Yen, Seven Seas and Tokyo Pop injecting a near fatal overdose in the market every month. As with Comic Book distribution in general, you need the big books with big numbers to be able to sell the little ones. The Sublime evergreens aren’t doing the numbers they did a few years ago, and there aren’t really any new contenders jumping in, so my guess is the Yaoi Yuri bubble will burst in the near future. I have yet to see any of the new manga publishers of the last five years make any kind of mark in sales.