"my name is antonio. my question is : there is a golden age in the manga female wrestling (pure wrestling not lesbian)?"

I know we've talked about this in the Yahoo group before, but for those that may have missed the postings (quite a while ago), I'll offer my personal thoughts here as well. Please note the word "personal" ... I'm no authority on this; just conclusions I've formed based on what I've seen.

The earliest manga featuring a female wrestler within a story, at least of those I have in my collection, dates from 1969. While there may be earlier images than that, I've yet to find them. So, let's say we start there as the "beginning" of a time line.

Moving forward into the '70's, there are publications, mostly the weekly-manga type magazine's, which had a few stories that would include wrestling at some point along the way. Here and there, a female character would show up in the story, but for the most part, the story focused on the male wrestlers. At the same time, in real-life Japan, Western-style pro-wrestling, as a spectator sport, was gaining popularity around the country. This was echoed through the artwork of the manga. The more "everyday" readers may have been watching wrestling, the more the writers and artists were likely to use wrestling as a story line vehicle. As the popularity of the women in the sport grew, more and more manga began to feature the "Joshi" wrestlers in larger doses. By the late 70's and though much of the 80's, the women took their place with the men as per having their own stories devoted to them. This is the period when "Red Eagle Maki" and "Beniko" were published.


















Neither of these stories ever saw publication as books unto themselves, but rather, each were given space in issues of a weekly mag. For the fan to buy an issue, 24 makes the full story, it cost around $3 per week ... that's one "book" for $72! To find the original magazines, you have to be in the right place at the right time, and be willing to shell out a LOT of money ... the few copies of "Red Eagle" I have, I found though a private-company auction (I was up at 3AM, my time, for the final hour of the auction to end in Tokyo) : $125 per issue, sold as individual copies, plus commission and postage; I got 6 of 8. Yeah ... compulsive. The set of "Beniko" magazines (same auction; 22 issue set ... for some reason this story never had it's final 2 chapters published!) , and yes, that IS what the auction highlighted the magazines as being, was sold for $2,750. Add in the commission, and that makes $3000 for an unfinished story in it's original magazines! Told you the collectors in Japan bid this stuff up. At 18 pages per issue, that's $7.50 per page! Tell THAT to the next person that gives you a hard time for collecting this stuff! It's an investment!!

Anyway, back to the main question, the 80's saw the publication of at least four 200+ page GORAKU Comic manga, along with many 150+ page stories from other publishers. The Joshi Puroresu shows in the country's arena's were at their most popular during this time, often out-drawing the men's at the box office. Anime shows started featuring the shows heroines watching, and sometimes taking part in, wrestling, as their favorite lady wrestler would compete against her arch foe in the ring. The idea of women being empowered enough to fight their own battles in life, as in the ring, in a country that still has strong sexual stereotypes, called out to the young women watching the shows ... writers, artists, and publishers saw this and responded with manga after manga, many featuring school-age girls that would join their school's wrestling club and try to balance the struggle of being a sedate Japanese girl with the competitive need to win which most people have to some degree. To say that the manga were all geared to the adolescent crowd would be naive, but even in the ones that would feature the more "comely" wrestlers from this time period, they would rarely venture into the bedroom; if so, it was discretely done and male/female. With the onset of the 90's, things began to change.

Most likely due to the upturn of musical artists (Japan's version of MTV, etc) and movie/TV stars as being the role models for the masses, Joshi wrestling in the real world began to lose their fans, many of the operations have gone out of business at this point. As the influence on the streets began to wane, so, too, did the need for the stories from the publishers. Now, having taped out the main vein of the mine, the publishers, artists and writers had to begin to tailor the stories to the niche readers of their manga. To some, the addition of higher sexual themes, lesbian action, degradation of females, hit the right spot. Manga continue to feature wrestling, but very few treat the characters as athletes competing in the hard life of women making their livings in the professional ring, instead, we find them, more and more, in seedy night clubs ... outcasts, a step above prostitutes. For the one or two pages they will be featured, the artwork is great, but that's all there will be; a side note in the story, much like a police show on TV where the detectives need to find the criminal in the bar and there will be two women mud-wrestling in the background. The genre was being handed over to the hentai crowd. Luckily, there are some bright spots on the horizon.

With the publication this past year of the "Rumble Roses: part 1" manga,













along with the manga and anime version of "Fighting Beauty Wulong", maybe the industry has seen that, even without the sex, there are those of us out here that will buy what they put out. It's really up to the male fans in Japan, I suppose, since we outside of Japan don't even make a dent in sales ... if all they will buy is the hentai, then ...