Cami's Commentary! #3 - LuluzinhaTeen
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With the success of mangas and animes here in the west in the 2000s, the famous brazilian comic series Turma da Monica decided to release their own manga edition, aging up the characters to focus more on the teen demographic. A year later, in 2009, Labareda Design and Ediouro (publisher) got together to see if they could make money off this whole ''teen manga'' thing, giving birth to Luluzinha Teen, a teen manga adaptation of the famous american comics of Little Lulu. Unfortunately, because of financial problems, the series started getting published every two months (instead of being a monthly series), until it ended at its 65th volume, in 2015.
This ''manga'' series, although it was not as good as it could've been, holds a big place in my heart. I still remember being in 4th grade, looking in the comic section of my school's library with a friend of mine, when one day we saw the 43rd volume: LuluzinhaTeen Amor & rock'n'roll, which was a collab with the rock band CW7. We had never heard of this series before, and the band? Who even were these people? So we searched them up, tried finding more info on the series and that was pretty much it. Then the pandemic came up, she moved and changed schools, and we pretty much forgot about the comic... (we kinda became fans of the band though, although the fandom was pretty much dead, so that wasn't forgotten lol)
Honestly, I don't even remember why I remembered this comic earlier this year, but thank God I did lol, since I was able to find some scans online of this series I'd been wanting to read for such a long time. I still haven't finished it though, and most likely never will, since 4(?) volumes are technically lost media: 62, 63, 64 and 65. There have been yet no signs of scans of them, but they do exist (I've seen 62 and 65, separately, being sold in comic lots online). It's sad how they're SO hard to find, and especially 65, since it is literally what ends this long series.
Still on the topic of lost media, it's really sad how both luluzinhateen.com and bandaloki.com, websites made to promote and interact with fans, while also holding contests like ''send us your oc and we might add them to one of our stories'', and containing interviews with several celebrities like Pitty, CW7, Banda Cine, and others, will forever be lost. There is no sign of the websites anywhere, not even on the Wayback Machine, and the only actual proof it exists is them being promoted in the series itself.
Anyways, back onto not so depressing pieces of info, this series started out pretty well. Each volume was an episode in a season, and each season had 4 episodes. Each season focused on a different main problem going on, introducing us to several characters and interesting plot points, until suddenly, season 4 was over. It was really weird, since it kinda ended on a cliffhanger, and then the next volume, 17, completely ignored that. They did kinda explain to us later what had happened, but dude??? It kinda sucked. From 17 on, they started doing individual stories for each volume, which honestly wasn't really good for character development, but it got worse in the (thankfully very few) volumes where they tried squeezing TWO stories in one comic. That absolutely sucked ass. Thankfully, it went back to normal, and they occasionally released volumes that had two parts, which made the stories a bit more fleshed out and interesting.
As I mentioned earlier, they started having some financial issues, which most likely explains how in some volumes the artstyle suddenly changes mid story, and also explains why it became a bimonthly comic. We also can't ignore its sudden end, and how most of us in this dead fandom probably never got to actually see it (though from what I've heard, it's pretty much Lulu deciding to travel the world with her grandma and saying goodbye to her friends because of that). Good things don't last that long, and with the company struggling, it was pretty obvious it was going to end soon. R.I.P. LuluzinhaTeen and R.I.P. The fandom...
Literally, when I searched up ''Luluzinha Teen'' here on Tumblr, I found two posts from OVER 10 YEARS AGO. Like wtf??? I also love how one of them still uses(d) the Pitty illustration from the first volume as her profile picture. Like, slay <3
Also, slay <3 to whoever uploaded all* the scans to the blogspot website. I hope both sides of their pillow remain cold during the night <3
It's almost midnight by the time I'm writing this and I really need to get some sleep, so tomorrow I'll talk more about the characters (and their changes in comparison to the original material). Stay tuned, folks ☆
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time! ☆
