Ask John: What Is A Doujinshi?

Question:
What is a Doujinshi? Is it like Manga? Do you have any Final Fantasy 8 Doujinshi?

Answer:
Doujinshi is the Japanese term for fan-produced manga comics. Because Japan has a somewhat more relaxed attitude toward copyright protection, most anime creators and production studios tolerate fans producing and selling home-made comics that use established characters. Many creators actually consider doujinshi a form of praise. Titles like Final Fantasy or Tenchi Muyo that have many doujinshi incarnations merely prove that these titles are popular enough to lead many fans to draw their own comics staring these characters. Many of today’s most famous anime creators, in fact, got their start as doujinshi artists, and some creators, like Kenichi Sonoda and Nobuteru Yuuki still release their own doujinshi books. While many doujinshi are simply new stories or side-stories thought-up and drawn by fans, a large number of doujinshi focus on placing famous anime characters in sexual situations, ranging from risque nudity to intense, hard-core pornography. Virtually every anime show and video game you can name has at least one doujinshi in existence. Since doujinshi are fan-produced books, they usually have a relatively small print-run and are typically more expensive than manga published by professional companies. Largely for this reason, AnimeNation does not commonly stock doujinshi books. AnimeNation carries several professionally bound volumes of adult doujinshi anthologies. The Paradise Lost and Angelic Impact series are collections of Evangelion doujinshi. The Lunatic Party series collects numerous Sailormoon doujinshi into keep-sake books.