MediaWorks (publisher)

MediaWorks, Inc.

Native name	株式会社メディアワークス
Founded	October 15, 1992; 31 years ago (October 15, 1992)
Defunct	March 31, 2008 (March 31, 2008)
Fate	Merged with ASCII Corporation
Successor	ASCII Media Works
Headquarters	Chiyoda, Tokyo
Number of locations	Japan
Website	www.mediaworks.co.jp

MediaWorks, Inc. (株式会社メディアワークス, Kabushiki-gaisha MediaWākusu) was a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group known for their Dengeki (電撃, meaning electric shock) 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 imprint Dengeki Bunko. The company was merged with ASCII on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works.^[1][2] 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 Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl, Shakugan no Shana, and Strawberry Marshmallow. MediaWorks had also been involved in the production of anime television and original video animation series.