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Archives for March 2007

Libre links, and more

March 28, 2007 by

I’m posting late tonight because I had a busy day, but I couldn’t let this go by: Manga Jouhou’s Floating_Sakura contacted Libre and asked what was going on with CPM. (Background here, if you’re coming to the party late.) Amazingly, they answered. Their explanation was that when the Japanese publisher Biblos went bankrupt last year, all the licensing contracts were terminated, but CPM has been going forward anyway. Everyone goes over to Icarus (NSFW!) to comment, and Simon muses about some hypothetical cases.

Naruto slips to number 48 on the USA Today Booklist, which is, inexplicably, dated 12/24/1899. Fullmetal Alchemist slips one notch, to 131.

The shopping news: David Welsh looks over the revamped Borders Rewards program, which doesn’t seem to be as good as the old un-revamped Rewards program. As always, lots of folks show up in comments to compare notes. John Jakala wonders if he could do better.

Mely looks over the week’s comics and has good news about the latest volume of Bleach. The MangaCast gang pick their favorites as well.

At Comics Worth Reading Johanna rounds up reviews of To Terra.

New titles watch: Lillian DP confirms the new Tokyopop titles spotted by MangaCast a couple of days ago. DrMaster announces Chinese Hero and the shipping of Eternal Alice Key Rondo #2—I’m not sure why that would be a big deal, but I’m sure someone will clue me in. Meanwhile, Adam Arnold reveals that Seven Seas’ light novels will be delayed.

Reviews: Jack Tse does a podcast review of vol. 1 of Mushishi and vol. 7 of Beck at MangaCast. Manganews has a bouquet of reviews for us: Floating_Sakura on vol. 2 of 9 Faces of Love, anitra on vol. 1 of Yakitate!! Japan and vol. 1 of Saver, and YoJoey on Digimon Zero Two. Manga Maniac Julie checks out vol. 4 of Yakitate!! Japan and vol. 16 of Boys Over Flowers. Blogcritics’ Bill Sherman reviews vol. 1 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

Vertical integration

March 27, 2007 by

Newsarama’s Michael Lorah interviews Yani Mentzas, Editorial Director of Vertical, which is causing all kinds of excitement since it started publishing manga. Here’s Mentzas on their Tezuka titles:

One of Vertical’s founding ideas was to publish newly translated Tezuka on a regular basis. Tezuka Productions, however, made it very clear to us that we wouldn’t be acquiring any more titles from them until we proved ourselves with Buddha. Thankfully, the series did well, so we were permitted to publish more of the master. In terms of sales, the first volume of Buddha sold roughly the same amount as the first book of the Ring trilogy, the other flagship title of our debut year.

There’s lots more, including the nugget that Vertical will be trying to get into the teen manga market. Can’t get enough? Ed Chavez posts audio of Vertical’s NYCC panel at the MangaCast.

Also at the MangaCast: New titles pop up on Amazon, readers guess the licensor.

Dirk Deppey learns the hard way that if you publish the words “the first…” about anything, someone will come up with an earlier example. In this case it’s the first shounen-ai kiss, referenced yesterday.

Queenie Chan reports on the progress of The Dreaming and posts some more Zelda fan manga.

ChunHyang’s latest Tokyopop Round-Up includes some interesting links, including Stephanie “telophase” Folse’s latest column, Ripping off the classics. And she points out that the Make5Wishes entry pulls in some interesting reactions in comments.

Dark Horse will be publishing Chunchu, which won the 2003 Manhwa of the Year award.

Pata draws some parallels between the popularity of Japanese culture in two different countries. And Chloe notes that pop culture may not be the best lens through which to view a country.

Reviews: Dirk Deppey reviews vol. 1 of To Terra. Dave Ferraro also reviews To Terra at Comics-and-More, and he checks out vol. 3 of Emma as well. Danielle Van Gorder reviews Gravitation EX for Anime on DVD. At the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie checks out vol. 15 of Red River. Connie presents Slightly Biased reviews of vol. 1 of Go Go Heaven, vol. 1 of Ichigenme… The First Class Is Civil Law, vol. 1 of Swan, and vol. 2 of One Thousand and One Nights. At Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 5 of Crimson Hero and vol. 16 of Blade of the Immortal, and Christopher Seama reads vol. 8 of Kekkaishi. Leroy Douresseaux checks out vol. 1 of Banya the Explosive Delivery Man at the Comic Book Bin.

MangaBlogCast is up!

March 27, 2007 by

Head on over to MangaCast for the latest MangaBlogCast, our quick-and-easy digest of the week’s manga news, distilled from the MangaBlog and presented by Jack Tse. Liner notes after the cut.

Hard times for BeBeautiful
Libre home page
MangaCast’s summary
Simon Jones offers his two cents, with backup in comments from Ed Chavez
Bonus link: Yaoi Suki sums up all the known facts, with a timeline

Charts time
Diamond sales numbers
Top 100 GNs for February
USA Today top 150 books

Retail therapy
Borders posts $73.6 million loss
Changes in strategy result
Borders readers notice bigger GN sections

Digital Distribution Update
Gentosha to release online manga in 7 languages
Manga magazine for cell phones

Manga for fun or profit

The first kiss

March 26, 2007 by

The sound you just heard is Dirk Deppey smacking himself upside the head as he realizes he missed the first kiss in the history of BL. He makes up for leaving it out of the Shoujo Manga issue of TCJ by posting it at Journalista, so go check it out.

Dirk also discovered that the avant-garde comic Garo is being digitized for cell phone and internet.

A Korean newspaper worries that Japanese pop culture is taking over Korea. This leads to some interesting numbers:

All this enthusiasm has sent prices for rights soaring. It now costs some W30-100 million (US$1=W938) for a novel and W10-70 million for a manga, depending on the reputation of the artist or work. Industry insiders say that is nearly double what they cost in late 2005. “Just in 2002, it was possible to buy a good Japanese work for as little as W5 million if we did well in negotiations,” says KimJongHak Production. “But prices for Japanese works are skyrocketing as broadcasters and producers compete.”

At the same time, there is more manhwa than ever out there, although it’s not always marketed as such.

OT but worth a peek: What happens when you let one of the Same Hat guys decorate the office.

ComiPress has bad news for fans of Hayate the Combat Butler: Manga-ka Kenjirou Hata seems to have injured his right hand. Also: Chinese students take Death Note a little too literally.

Blogging from Japan, where he is trying to break into the manga industry, Spiderman Loves Mary Jane artist Takeshi Miyazawa posts some cover sketches.

Reviews: At the MangaCast, Mangamaniac Julie reviews vol. 1 of Shakugan no Shana and Readilbert checks out three books, vol. 5 of Natural, vol. 5 of Hana Kimi, and vol. 10 of Harukanaru. At Active Anime, Christopher Seaman reviews vol. 3 of Zombie Powder and Holly Ellingwood checks out vol. 9 of Hana Kimi. Leroy Duresseaux checks out vol. 1 of The Gentlemen’s Alliance -Cross- for the Comic Book Bin. And it’s a different kind of March Madness at PopCultureShock, where Erin F. reviews a whole slew of titles.

News from Japan

March 25, 2007 by

Jordan Marks of Yaoi Suki has put together everything we know about the CPM/Libre situation, including a timeline, some factlets that had escaped notice so far, and some considered commentary. And Shizuki from Broccoli spotted John and Masumi O’Donnell at the Tokyo Animation Fair: they were first in line at registration.

Here are a couple of links about manga that haven’t been licensed yet. Robots Never Sleep writes about Little Forest, a slice-of-life manga about grow-your-own eating. At MangaCast, Jarred Pine is starting a new feature estimating the odds of different manga getting licensed; his first pick is Detroit Metal City. At Completely Futile, Adam Stephanides has been reading a series by Shiriagari Kotobuki. No review yet, but he has posted some links. And Erica Friedman reviews the yuri manga Zettai Roman.

Paul Gravett takes a look at global manga in the UK. (Via Precocious Curmudgeon.)

Ed Chavez passes along some rumors of new Viz titles.

Katherine Dacey-Tsuei spots a newcomer on the Tokyopop site: Del Rey is posting a preview of Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes on Tokyospace. Katherine asks the question that should be on everybody’s minds:

is Del Rey now obliged to pimp the poetic musings of DJ Milky on its home page?

… but she adds that given Tokyopop’s demographics, it’s a shrewd move on Del Rey’s part.

Yaoi Press is looking for manga that hasn’t been published in English yet—and they’re willing to pay! There are lots of conditions, though, so read the whole entry. (Via Yaoi Suki.)

At Manga Talk, Akemi has an essay on anime archetypes that will also seem familiar to manga readers.

Reviews: At the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie checks out vol. 2 of Recast and vol. 2 of Real/Fake Princess. Active Anime’s Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 6 of Aishiteruze Baby and vol. 3 of Kamui. Julie Rosato reviews vol. 3 of Only the Ring Finger Knows (the novel) for AoD. Connie whittles down the stack quite a bit at Slightly Biased Manga, with reviews of volumes 9, 10, 11, and 12 of Tsubasa, Lost World, volumes 1 and 2 of Chicago, and Wild Com. John Thomas at Mecha Mecha Media really likes vol. 1 of Shaman Warrior. At the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Wilma Jandoc reviews three manga with a touch of the supernatural: Genju no Seiza, Platinum Garden, and Mugen Spiral. At the Star of Malaysia, Cheeky Monkey reviews vol. 2 of Emma and Max Loh looks over One Piece Color Walk.

Review: Emma

March 24, 2007 by

Emma, vols. 1-3
by Kaoru Mori
Rated Teen Plus
CMX, $9.99

Kaoru Mori’s lovingly detailed upstairs-downstairs story of a rich man and a maid who fall in love in Victorian England is a joy to read, although it gets off to a slow start. The first volume is worth reading for the art and settings alone, but it’s the second that got me hooked—that’s when the characters really blossomed and the story started to pull me in. And don’t be put off by the demure covers: These books are full of drama and surprises.

The first volume starts with a Victorian take on that shoujo manga cliché, the girl bumping into the boy. William Jones, scion of a wealthy merchant family, stops to visit his old governess and manages to step up to the door just as the maid, Emma, opens it—right into his face.

William is immediately smitten with Emma, and she with him, but Mori doesn’t show enough of their love affair at first for it to be convincing. They chat briefly, they go for a walk, William buys Emma a gift—and then suddenly the dancing girls arrive, along with William’s friend from India, Hakim, and the story goes careening off in another direction altogether. Mori starts to show off her artistic chops here, with wonderfully detailed drawings of Hakim, his elephants, and his exotic entourage, but William’s reaction just makes him seem blander than ever. And Emma, who is naturally reserved, doesn’t do much to encourage him.

Although the plot stalls a bit, there is still plenty going on. Hakim’s hijinks—and his infatuation with Emma—are entertaining, and Mori has fun depicting dinner parties, evenings at the club, and assorted outings. The side characters are great, not just the irrepressible Hakim but also Emma’s employer, Kelly Stownall, a severe but kind former governess, and William’s bratty siblings. And Mori lavishes as much attention on the crusty handyman and his pals at the pub as she does on the high society types at the dinner parties.

The story really gets moving in volume 2, when we start to learn the characters’ backstories and Emma and William have their first date. When Kelly dies and Emma sets out on her own, Mori begins to explore her characters’ personalities in greater depth. The scenes of Emma cleaning Kelly’s house for the last time are a masterpiece of wordless emotion, and even Hakim, who has been played for laughs up till now, shows a new sharpness. William still seems like a dolt, but in volume 3, he reacts to his family’s disapproval with some interesting changes. Meanwhile, Emma shows her spine and some unexpected skills when she gets a new position with a family of German immigrants, and the plot begins to get more complicated.

Mori really enjoys her period settings, and she sets her scenes in a variety of places: A lending library, a bustling train station, a boating party in the woods, the Crystal Palace. Sometimes these period scenes slow down the action, but they are always fun to read. My favorite parts are the ones where Mori peeks downstairs and shows the cooks flying around the kitchen or the maids going about their duties.

Mori’s panels seem old-fashioned: small, rectangular, with very few bleeds and splash pages. She nonetheless manages to use shapes and sizes expressively, often ending a scene with one or two full-width horizontal panels that pull back to a panoramic view. She also uses horizontal panels to pause the action for a moment, indicating a brief encounter or showing a detail, like an oar dipping into water, that sets the mood.

Although her panels are small, Mori does not shy away from detail, and this visual richness helps make the story interesting. In the first volume, the interiors seem too sparse and clean to be Victorian—this was an era that loved clutter—but Mori soon gives in to her fascination with elaborate costumes, place settings, and period pieces like the Crystal Palace. While she clearly loves details, she does a good job of modulating the backgrounds to fit the mood—lots of detail for a busy party or kitchen scene, simpler scenes for quiet moments.

It seems churlish to mention this, as it doesn’t detract from the story, but there are a few bloopers. In the first volume, William gets a model airplane, which wouldn’t have existed in 1885, and a bystander looking at the elephants asks “Is it Picadilly Circus come to town?” Picadilly Circus is a traffic intersection, not a place to see clowns and elephants. Mori did study the era extensively, and in the later volumes she brought in a consultant to ensure that the series is historically accurate. While the English adaptation is also pretty good, it was a bit jarring to see a Victorian woman named “Kelly,” which would never have been used as a first name in those days.

While Mori does a good job of drawing distinct characters with obvious personalities, for some reason a lot of the young men in this book look alike to me. Blonde, big-eyed, clad in dark suits, they are so interchangeable that some sequences, like the one where William overhears a conversation about Emma in his club, are confusing at first—it took a while for me to figure out that the man talking about Emma was not William but a stranger.

CMX put some extra effort into this series, with a nicer grade of newsprint and an attractive textured matte cover. Each volume has a three-page extra comic by Mori, where she talks about her Anglophilia and its consequences. The cover and spine designs are lovely, but like all CMX books these volumes feel a bit thin, and some color pages would have been nice. And while the original probably didn’t have them, I would have liked some endnotes about the period details, such as the Crystal Palace.

These are minor quibbles, though. Emma is escapist reading in the best upstairs-downstairs tradition, a book you can get lost in because it creates a world of its own.

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