After a report from the Consumerist Website about Wal-Mart carrying Yaoi Press' Yaoi Hentai titles in its online store, Wal-Mart apologized and pulled the Yaoi Hentai titles from its Internet emporium. While no major offline news source has picked up on the story yet, this could be the beginning of some negative publicity for a manga genre (yaoi) that was one of the major growth areas in manga sales during 2006.
The Consumerist's report, which was entitled 'Wal-Mart and Target Sell Anime Porn,' was wrong on several levels -- the items cited were not anime, but OEL manga titles written and published in the U.S. Unfortunately if this story does make it to the national press, yaoi will undoubtedly be crudely characterized as 'homosexual porn,' and no notice will be taken of the fact that the primary audience for these books is not gay men, but rather straight young women. The folks at the Consumerist Website seemed more interested in catching Wal-Mart, which promotes a squeaky clean image and even forced record companies to produce bowdlerized disks in order to get distribution in its mega-retail empire, in a hypocritical act rather than in fighting 'pornography.'
The controversy highlights the merchandising arrangement between Wal-Mart's online store and Diamond Comic Distributors, which ICv2 readers first read about in a late December Talk Back comment on the topic from a sharp-eyed retailer (see 'Mark Amoroso of Blackthorn Game Center on Graphic Novels at Wal-Mart'). Diamond is apparently supplying a large number of Diamond Book Distributors' graphic novel titles to Wal-Mart's online operation, including other yaoi and shonen-ai titles from Yaoi Press and Digital Manga; yuri titles; and large numbers of PG and all-ages graphic novels from publishers such as Image, Oni and Marvel.
Watching how this process plays out will be an interesting indicator of the state of the public's perception of manga, and more generally graphic novels, as reflected by the actions of the world's largest retailer. Of particular interest will be whether Wal-Mart treats graphic novels the same as it treats other media. In the meantime, pop culture retailers that carry yaoi titles have one less online competitor for sales of the Yaoi Hentai line.