As the year 2024 comes to a close, let’s take a look back at the changes in the Monthly Corocoro Comic magazine (月刊コロコロコミック) over the last year. The magazine releases a new issue around the 15th of every month. For this recap, we will look at the numbered issues for 2024, which would span between December 2023 and November 2024 for release dates.
Corocoro is a unique magazine in that it features many comedy and gag-focused series along with some more traditional “action/battle” manga. The other very unique aspect is that there are many manga series that are based on existing IPs (intellectual properties). Frequently these some from videogames and card games as licensed properties, but in more recent years has expanded to YouTubers and virtual personalities. If we sort all of the series in the magazine into these categories, we can have a good visualization of the current breakdown of the magazine.
By a just the numbers count, the manga in the “licensed properties” still remains the driving factor in the magazine with 21 different series released in 2024. However, this category also had the biggest turn-over and had 5 series conclude throughout 2024. In particular many of these were early in the year including some long standing popular gaming series with Fortnite and Ninjala. By the end of 2024, there is now only 16 series in this category. Hyper Yo-Yo Accel was one series that was popular enough with its original oneshot that it was made into a full series starting at the end of the year. Additionally the new Shadow the Hedgehog manga made a big splash to time with the upcoming third Sonic movie, especially with fans outside of Japan, even though no official English translation is available yet.
In terms of manga in the “original story” category, the Black Channel and Fate Rewinder series continue to be some of Corocoro‘s strongest titles. Along with the new action titles of Hyper Yo-Yo Accel and Shadow the Hedgehog, there was a lack of new original action stories being added to the magazine as a result. Within the comedy category, two titles from the online Weekly Corocoro have been making frequent releases in the print magazine as part of a special serialization. It’s unclear how long those titles will be in the print magazine, so we have noted them as a special serialization has they have appeared in multiple issues and not just a single one-off. Puniru is a Cute Slime, one of the earliest hits in Weekly Corocoro also has an anime series currently airing in Japan to allow for some cross-promotion with that. The long running I’m the One Who is Normal-kun is now moving to Weekly Corocoro with a time skip and continuing the with the same title.
Corocoro continues to try and find new titles with the Miracoro extra bundled with some print issues. While not listed on this chart, this includes a large collection of new oneshots and print editions of new series in Weekly Corocoro. This cross-promotion between the print magazine, Miracoro, and Weekly Corocoro appears to be a strong method for adapting the the long standing brand across mediums and release timing. In particular for Weekly Corocoro, the website received a much needed refresh and now has even more titles than before. Some of these titles have also become quite popular on the service, which could lead to more special serializations in the print magazine in the future.
Overall, the year 2024 was very strong for Corocoro. While the beginning was a bit shocking with some previously popular titles ending, the boost Weekly Corocoro is providing along with other strong on-going titles like Beyblade X is showing that the magazine is willing to adapt and continue to expand its reach into 2025.
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