Archives for March 2007

Here’s the scoop of the day: MangaCast reports that the Japanese publisher Libre is claiming that Central Park Media is publishing its books without authorization:

We wish to make it known that these publications are considered illegal because they have not been authorized by us. It should also be known that the cartoonists and authors are being victimized by this illegal act, and they are very annoyed by it.

The message goes on to say that they are taking “strong action” against CPM, whose BL arm is BeBeautiful. More commentary at Guns, Guys, and Yaoi. On the Yaoi Suki forum (registration required, and you must be over 18), posters are speculating that Libre is just using a scare tactic to get a better deal. Developing…

Also on Yaoi Suki, Jen Parker has a nice primer on Fumi Yoshinaga.

What makes a classic? Robin Brenner has some thoughts at No Flying, No Tights.

Covering the German manga scene, Elae has the latest on Tokyopop and The Wild Side.

Robots Never Sleep takes a look at Eiga ni Ke ga Sanbon! (Three Hairs on a Movie), movie reviews in manga form by Sexy Voice and Robo creator Iou Kuroda.

Down at the Tokyopop blogs, ChunHyang72 rounds up the latest news, including a Technicolor post from Stu Levy himself, and editor Tim Beedle has recommended reading for would-be manga-kas.

Reviews: At Read About Comics, Greg McElhatton enjoys vol. 1 of Mail. AoD’s Matthew Alexander gives vol. 1 of Metamo Kiss a solid B. At Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 2 of La Corda D’Oro, vol. 2 of Kamui, vol. 12 of Mar, vol. 4 of Kaze Hikaru, and the stand-alone yaoi manga Seven. Meanwhile, Christopher Seaman checks out vol. 4 of ES: Eternal Sabbath and Scott Campbell looks over vol. 12 of Eyeshield 21. At the Mangamaniaccafe Julie gives a tepid rating to vol. 1 of Go Go Heaven!! At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie enjoys vol. 7 of Astro Boy and vol. 1 of Saint Seiya but is a little disappointed with vol. 1 of Moon and Sandals. She also finds time to review all five volumes of Les Bijoux.

After the cut: Viz’s press release celebrating the ascent of vol. 13 of Naruto to number 25 on the USA Today Booklist. Yes, as Dirk noted, I am a little late with this. Sorry, busy week. Incidentally, as Heidi points out, this is not a personal best for Naruto; vol. 11 made it to number 21. Also worth a mention, although it’s not in the press release, is that Death Note also made the list, at number 117.

VIZ MEDIA’S NARUTO™ DOES IT AGAIN!
MANGA AT NUMBER 25 ON USA TODAY’S TOP 150 BEST SELLER LIST

Property Continues To Be A Success And Demonstrates Broad Audience Appeal

San Francisco, CA March 19, 2007 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced that the recently released volume 13 of the popular NARUTO™ manga series (rated ‘T’ for Teens), which is published under the company’s SHONEN JUMP™ imprint and also serialized in the monthly SHONEN JUMP magazine (also rated ‘T’ for teens), placed at Number 25 on the USA Today Top 150 Best Seller List through the week of March 11.

The list (available on USA Today’s website at www.usatoday.com) is based on an objective computer analysis of retail sales from 4,700 independent, chain, discount and online booksellers nationwide. In 2004 NARUTO was the first manga title to be featured on the USA Today Top 150 and has placed repeatedly on the list since, most recently in September 2006. The NARUTO brand has become one of VIZ Media’s most viable in terms of sales. The series, by Masashi Kishimoto, depicts the adventures of a young boy who trains to become a ninja, and the series has sold more than 66 million copies in Japan since its 1999 debut. In North America, a massive amount of fan interest continues to drive the success of both the manga and the anime series, seen on Cartoon Network, the Toonami Jetstream web site, and on DVD distributed by VIZ Media.

“The NARUTO brand has proven to be a consistent best seller and demonstrates the continued viability of the manga medium and of this property in particular,” says Liza Coppola, Senior Vice President, Marketing, VIZ Media. “The well developed character and story arcs have captivated a truly wide range of readers and we are pleased to see the action-packed positive storylines find broad appeal. As popularity continues, VIZ Media looks forward to further expanding the NARUTO property with the DVD release of the NARUTO – THE LOST STORY ‘Mission: Protect The Waterfall Village!’ and the next installment of the manga series, Volume 14, both in May!”

After five years of writing about comics for Time.com, Andrew Arnold is calling it quits.

Over at Newsarama, Chris Arrant sat down with Viz veep Alvin Lu for a chat about the Viz Signature imprint. Lu, who is both VP of Publishing and Editor-in-Chief, said that “quality and sophistication” are the defining characteristics of the line, rather than any particular reader demographic, although he admitted that the titles so far do skew toward the seinen. He went on to say

it’s the kind of manga that an experienced manga reader would come to and immediately appreciate. It may be the kind of comics that require some education to fully appreciate. To that end, the lineup is selected with the idea of building recognition for the authors as much as the individual titles – many are icons of the manga genre. Tezuka, Umezu, Saito, Urasawa, Inoue: anyone in tune with manga culture understands these are legendary names, ones that will go down in history, and that the works in our Signature line represent these master artists working at the peak of their powers.

He also talks a bit about the way Golgo 13 was put together and the marketing campaign for Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, part of the point of which was to get Urasawa’s name out there, presumably to pave the way for future titles. And it’s nice to hear Lu say that the imprint has been a success so far, and they are looking to add new titles in the future.

MangaCast has happy news for Yotsuba&! fans: volumes 4 and 5 have been spotted on Amazon. Also at the MangaCast: Ed posts audio of the Go!Comi panel at NYCC and the latest doujinshi ratings and new member Pea writes about manga in Indonesia.

Good news for fans of Comics Worth Reading: Johanna has collected all her manga reviews on a single page, Manga Worth Reading.

There’s an interesting rights dispute going on in Korea right now, according to this article in The Hankyoreh: A comics writer named Bang Gyeong-su is suing cartoonist Lee Hyon-se over Internet rights to Bbongjjak, a comic the two worked on together. According to the story, Bang was the writer but received no official credit; the comic was published under Lee’s name, and everyone assumed Bang was just his assistant. When Lee sold the internet rights to a batch of his works, including Bbongjjak, Bang stepped forward and demanded his cut. Other writers are rallying around Bang and demanding a share of earnings from their comics. Lee is the Chairman of the Korean Cartoonists Association, so it’s inevitable that this would be a high-profile case, but it also raises issues of creators’ rights and internet royalties. (Via Blog@Newsarama.)

OK, the writer calls manga “anime novels,” but I gotta love this manga 101 newspaper article because it leads with a woman in her 40s who reads so much manga her bookcases are falling over. Let’s just say that strikes a chord…

The LA Times writes about the Chinese comic Bad Girl.

Reviews: Leroy Douresseaux checks out vol. 1 of Mamotte! Lollipop at the Comic Book Bin. Reviewers at The Star of Malaysia are reading vol. 1 of Mugen Spiral, vols. 1 and 2 of Zombie Powder, and Calling You. Manga maniac Julie reviews vol. 3 of Emma for MangaCast and vol. 1 of Apothecarius Argentum and vol. 5 of Skip Beat for the Mangamaniaccafe. Erica Freidman got snowed in so instead of going to her sister’s wedding, she reviews Scape-God. Here’s her last graf:

The violence quotient is quite high, so if large gouts of blood and beheading don’t appeal, you might want to skip it, same if bathing loli scenes, or random drunken misbehaving desperate lesbians bother you. But then, if that’s true, why are you reading Okazu? ;-)

I think I read it for the drunken misbehaving desperate lesbians, actually.

After the cut, the latest from Dark Horse on their new manga title, MPD-Psycho, written by Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service creator Eiji Otsuka. And DH is promising the original uncut version, which sounds like it will earn its shrink-wrap and 18+ rating. Check it out.

Uncut, uncensored, and until now, unavailable– MPD-Psycho is here!

MPD-Psycho was deemed too shocking for other publishers, with violent images that most thought were too graphic for the American public.

But coming this June, the most-requested manga series in recent memory will be presented uncut and uncensored from Dark Horse Comics. Brace yourself for a dark journey into madness: Eiji Otsuka and Sho-u Tajima’s MPD-Psycho.

Police detective Kobayashi Yousuke’s life is changed forever after a serial killer notices something “special” about the detective. Kobayashi is stable police detective until he witnesses the killer he’s hunting mutilate Kobayashi’s own girlfriend. The event triggers several dormant personalities that push Kobayashi into a complex tempest of deviants and evil forces, ultimately creating a multiple personality detective.

Earning praise for its consistently shocking plotlines and Sho-u Tajima’s clean, arresting art style, MPD-Psycho is the manga event of the decade. The title was rated the eighth most wanted Japanese series in U.S. fan polls and has sold more than four million copies in Japan.

MPD-Psycho is written by novelist and manga visionary Eiji Otsuka, author of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, with sleek, stylish art from Sho-u Tajima. MPD-Psycho comes shrink-wrapped and carries an 18+ content advisory.

The trade paperback arrives on sale June 6 and retails for $10.95. Prepare for gory!

ISBN-10: 1-59307-770-X

ISBN-13: 978-1-59307-770-9

Squeezed in between Pi Day, the Ides of March, and St. Patrick’s Day is… March 16. A little break from all the festivity.

At PopCultureShock, Erin provides the Definitive Guide to the End of Kare Kano. Check it out even if you haven’t read the manga; her comic alone makes it worthwhile. (Her complaint about the freetalk sections would apply to pretty much every manga ever written.)

While everyone else is complaining about publishers dropping series before they are done, John Jakala takes the positive approach and compiles a list of completed series worth reading.

Ed takes a look at uniform manga at the MangaCast.

Manganews translates an article about the growing success of doujinshi. They also report (on the main page, no permalink) that Kodansha has forbidden secondary uses of their characters.

ICv2 has a little more info on Viz’s new shoujo titles, Fall in Love Like a Comic (Manga Mitaina Koi Shitai) and Sand Chronicles (Suna Dokei).

Tangognat’s manga giveaway is still going on, and she’s throwing in some bonus items.

Over in Japan, Kekkaishi has won the Shogakukan manga award.

Reviews: At the BasuGasuBakuhatsu Anime Blog, Hung checks out vol. 3 of Death Note. Connie at Slightly Biased Manga enjoys vol. 6 of Astro Boy more than the previous volumes. At Shuchaku East, Chloe discovers a useful relic from the 1980s, Japan Inc. Scott Campbell reviews vol. 4 of D. Gray-Man for Active Anime. Vol. 3 of Beauty Pop is on the menu at the Mangamaniaccafe. At Okazu, Erica reviews a Japanese yuri anthology, vol. 1 of Gokigenyou. AoD’s Danielle van Gorder checks out a one-shot from DMP, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Moon and Sandals. Prospero’s Manga reviewer Miranda really likes vol. 2 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and Ferdinand turns in brief reviews of vols. 1 and 2 of Genshiken and vols. 4 and 5 of Pastel. Jessica Severs reviews vol. 1 of Wild Adapter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. At Eye on Comics, Don MacPherson reviews Red String.

Here’s the story of the day: 11 Japanese artists are suing the owners of a website that hosted scanned-in manga. ComiPress picks up the story from the Japanese papers. Plaintiffs in the suit, which is asking for 22 million yen in damages, include Nagai Go (Devilman), Saitou Takao (Golgo 13), and Inoue Takehiko (Slam Dunk). This civil suit is the latest development in a case that began last year with the arrests of the three men shortly after their website switched from a free to a paid model. They had only taken in 2 million yen at the time of the raid. Back in 2006, one of the proprietors of the website, Muramoto Toraji, tried to explain:

“To promote the manga cafe, we showed 1 or 2 pages of each title, but I thought if we were going to get caught infringing copyrights anyway, let’s show all of them. I thought we could pay the copyright fees later.”

At the time they were arrested, they had scanned in 17,000 volumes.

Simon Jones comments on the latest market news in Japan; his take: the market isn’t shrinking, it’s spreading into different media. (Link is, as always, NSFW.)

At the MangaCast, Ed comments on the latest manga news and shows off the latest yaoi offerings from 801, while new member Julie (of Mangamaniaccafe fame) checks in with a list of her favorites.

Reviews: Active Anime’s Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 3 of Oh My Goddess! and the stand-alone book The Day I Became a Butterfly. Down at the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie checks out vol. 1 of Vampire Knight. Connie reluctantly reads volumes 4 and 5 of Astro Boy at Slightly Biased Manga. And at Let’s You and Him Fight, Jones gives his take on Banya: The Explosive Deliveryman.