MediaWorks, Inc. was a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group known for their Dengeki brand magazines and book labels. These included such well-known magazines as Dengeki Daioh, and Dengeki G's Magazine, along with MediaWorks' main light novel publishing imprintDengeki Bunko. The company was merged with ASCII on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. They mainly catered to the Japanese male otaku crowd, covering such topics as anime, light novels, manga, plastic modelling, and visual novels. However, MediaWorks had published three magazines targeted towards females—Comic Sylph, Dengeki Girl's Style, and Character Parfait—but each one was a special edition version of another magazine. MediaWorks ran yearly contests for original novel and manga submissions, such as the light novel Dengeki Novel Prize contest. In addition to publishing printed material, MediaWorks had been involved with the production of other media. They had developed and published visual novels for popular Japanese media franchises where many different forms of media are published for a given series. Such well-known series included , Shakugan no Shana, and Strawberry Marshmallow. MediaWorks had also been involved in the production of anime television and original video animation series.
History
In 1992, Kadokawa Shoten's president Haruki Kadokawa was devoting himself to the movie business, and his younger brother and vice-president of the company, Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, was in charge of magazines the company published. At the same time, Tsuguhiko was the president of Kadokawa's subsidiary Kadokawa Media Office which was in charge of publishing video game magazines like Comptiq, and manga magazines targeted towards the male otaku crowd in Japan centered around "media mix" Japanese series where many different forms of media are published for a given series. Citing differences in the interests of business direction, Tsuguhiko resigned from Kadokawa Shoten to start MediaWorks on October 15, 1992, with a large contingent from Kadokawa Shoten employees joining him. In 1993, due to an influence from the Tokyo Shock Boys, known in Japan as the Dengeki Network, MediaWorks launched a series of magazines under the Dengeki line. These magazines were taken from previous publications that Kadokawa Media Office had published. The new magazines were named Dengeki Super Famicom, Dengeki PC Engine, Dengeki Comic Gao!, the now-defunct Dengeki Oh, and the now-defunct Dengeki Megadrive. Also in 1993, Haruki Kadokawa was arrested for cocaine smuggling and lost his presidency at Kadokawa Shoten, which was soon taken over by Tsuguhiko Kadokawa in addition to his presidency of MediaWorks; MediaWorks was later made a subsidiary of Kadokawa Shoten in 2002. MediaWorks became a member of Kadokawa Group Holdings, and after Enterbrain became a member of the same group, Enterbrain's Famitsu line and MediaWorks' Dengeki line started to compete against each other, especially in terms of presenting information pertaining to bishōjo games. By 2001, MediaWorks specialized in publishing light novels, manga, video games, and magazines pertaining to such media. The company was merged with ASCII on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works.
;Dengeki Comic Grand Prix ;Dengeki hp Tanpenshōsetsu Shō ;Dengeki Taishō
Video games
MediaWorks had been in the business of developing and producing video games of series that have light novels or manga published by MediaWorks. These games were typically visual novels, a genre of adventure games, but some have also been sound novels, which has less attributes of an adventure game than a normal visual novel. The video games produced were ported to the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo DS. Earlier games like Emerald Dragon and Ojōsama Express were ported to the PC Engine, Super Famicom, Sega Saturn, and PlayStation. Other games, like those based on the Shakugan no Shana series, were ported to both the PS2 and DS. A section of MediaWorks known as DS Dengeki Bunko produced sound novels playable on the Nintendo DS based from light novels published under MediaWorks' Dengeki Bunko publishing label. These included: Allison, Baccano!, Inukami!, and Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu.
