Otaku Culture and the Virtuality of Immaterial Labor in Maurício de Sousa’s Turma da Mônica Jovem

Abstract

In his history of children’s comics in Brazil, Waldomiro Vergueiro describes Maurício de Sousa as the “Disney Brasileiro.”¹ When De Sousa first started producing comics for a mass audience in the 1960s, the products of the Walt Disney Company held a position of seemingly unassailable dominance in the comics industry in Brazil. Despite the popularity of Ziraldo Alves Pinto’s revival of Monteiro Lobato’s one-footed prankster Pererê, it was Disney characters such as Tio Patinhas (Uncle Scrooge) who sold the most magazines. According to Vergueiro’s account, it was only by playing Disney at its own game that Maurício (as his company is affectionately known) could start to challenge its dominance. The formula that Maurício established based its mode of production on that of Disney and developed a series of characters who, despite certain “Brazilian” characteristics, had a broad appeal rooted in an idealized view of childhood. The most successful and popular character was Mônica, an assertive girl with prominent front teeth whom Maurício based on his daughter. So successful was this approach that, by the 1980s, the Mônica brand held a position of dominance in the Brazilian children’s comics market comparable to that of Disney in the 1960s. It is clearly this successful process of emulation that lies behind the decision of Maurício de Sousa Produções in 2008 to produce the new teen comic, Turma da Mônica Jovem, in what is described proudly on the front cover of each edition as “estilo mangá.” The narratives revolve around the antics of a teenage version of Turma da Mônica [“Monica’s Gang”] in which the gang are just as likely to be fighting intergalactic battles as dealing with the everyday challenges of middle class urban Brazilian youth.