CoroCoro Comic
 | |
| Categories | Kodomo (targeted at elementary school boys) |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| First issue | 1977 |
| Company | Shogakukan |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
CoroCoro Comic (コロコロコミック, KoroKoro Komikku) is a Japanese monthly manga magazine published by Shogakukan, starting in April 15, 1977. Its main target is elementary school aged boys, younger than the readers of shōnen manga. Several of its properties, like Doraemon and the Pokemon series of games have gone on to be cultural phenomena in Japan. It is one of the few Shogakukan publications to use furigana and common punctuation marks in their manga.
The name comes from a phenomime korokoro (ころころ) representing something spherical, fat, or small, because children supposedly like such things. The magazine is A5-sized, about 6 cm (2¼ in) thick, and often more than 800 pages in length, so it is pretty korokoro itself.
The magazine has two sisters: Bessatsu CoroCoro and CoroCoro Ichiban!. Both are bi-monthly.
History
The magazine was launched in 1977 as a magazine for Doraemon, which is one of the most popular manga in Japan. Before then Doraemon had been serialized on 6 magazines of Shogakukan, each magazine is targeted to students of 6 elementary school grades. It collected stories of Doraemon from these magazines.
Tie-ins
CoroCoro regularly promotes toys and video games related to their manga franchises, releasing stories and articles featuring them. Pokémon's big success in Japan owes to this in a way; the Game Boy game Pocket Monsters: Blue was sold exclusively through the magazine at first. Of course, this helped CoroCoro's sales as well. CoroCoro is also often a source of information about upcoming Pokémon games and movies.
Other successful tie-ins include:
- Radio controlled car, Mini 4wd (with Tamiya)
- Famicom (NES), Super Famicom (SNES), and Game Boy (with Nintendo and third parties)
- Beyblade, B-Daman (with Takara)
- Bikkuriman (with Lotte)
Manga
1970s
1980s
1990s
- Ape Escape
- Crash Bandicoot
- Donkey Kong
- Duel Masters
- Fatal Fury Special
- Kirby
- Bakusō Kyōdai Let's & Go!!
- Macross 7
- Ore wa Otoko da! Kunio-kun (manga based Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun)
- Pocket Monsters (Pokémon)
- Street Fighter II V
- Super B-Daman
- Cyborg Kuro-chan
- Speed Racer
- Super Mario-kun
- Tamagotchi
- Wataru
- Zoids
2000s
- Battle B-Daman
- Beyblade
- Bomberman Jetters
- Crash B-Daman
- Croket!
- Denjyarasu Jiisan
- Inazuma Eleven
- Jak x Daxter ~Itachi de Waruika!!~
- Mushiking
- Rockman EXE
- Pokémon Gold & Silver
- Pokémon Diamond & Pearl
- Ratchet & Clank - Gagaga! Ginga no Gakeppuchi Densetsu
- Ryusei no Rockman
- Sonic! Dash & Spin
- I'm Galileo!
- Kirby of the Stars
- Pokémon Platinum (Check for Serebii.Net for info on Platinum )
Rivals
Corocoro has had many rivaling children's magazine in the past, with one of them, Comic Bom Bom, closing down due to declining sales. The current competition includes Kerokero Ace and Pre-Comic Bunbun.