Non-AX news roundup

Update your bookmarks: The Beat has moved to spiffy new digs on the Publishers Weekly website.

It wasn’t announced at Anime Expo, but MangaCast has the scoop: Fanfare/Ponent Mon has licensed Shissou Nikki (Disappearance Diary), winner of this year’s Tezuka Award in Japan.

Ed also brings news of new DramaQueen licenses and a new Viz title (good discussion in the comments on this one).

PWCW explains Densha Otoko and why there are three versions being licensed in English. (Which makes me wonder how the poor creator of that fourth Japanese manga must feel—pretty left out, I guess.) Really cool: PWCW includes a link to the BBS postings that the story grew from.

It’s official: Manga is in the dictionary. From the accompanying article:

To make it into the dictionary, a word has to be more than a flash-in-the-pan fad. It needs staying power.

Indeed!

Grovel reviews vol. 3 of Tezuka’s Buddha.

Two manga-lovin’ French teenagers try to run away to Japan, but only get as far as Poland.

David Taylor heard a rumor that Vertical is licensing Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, so he checked it out. It ain’t so, but Vertical has a pretty funny response in their blog:

We would sell a left nut belonging to one of the male Vertical-ites to get Naoki Urasawa on out roster. As of yet, all men chez nous are bi-testicled. I.e. Urasawa is still a Viz author.

Makes me happy to be female, that does! And they had a bit of good news:

We have just acquired the rights (I mean like this morning) to Takeshi Kitano’s (aka Beat Takeshi, aka bad-ass muthah) first and only novel: Shonen (Youth)!