First of all, I want to thank all the bloggers who voted for MangaBlog for Best Manga Blog Gold Award in the inaugural Anime Blog Awards. I’m very honored. Congratulations to THAT Anime Blog and the Manga Maniac Cafe, which took the silver and bronze awards, respectively; THAT Anime Blog also won the People’s Choice award. Congrats also to frequent link-ees Zepy (Canned Dogs) and Gia for their silver and bronze awards for Best News Blog. And go check out all the blogs on the list—there’s an interesting variety of talent out there, and I have added several to my RSS feeds.
Speaking of the Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie got her June Previews and has chosen the best of the August manga releases.
Tokyopop watch: ANN reports that Tokyopop is reducing the number of releases in the UK as well as the U.S. And here is an incredibly rosy PR piece (warning: annoying interstitial ad) about Tokyopop signing Big Tent Ent. as its licensing agent. Not only does the press release not mention Tokyopop’s recent troubles, it isn’t even clear on which arm of the newly divided company is involved. At The Anime Almanac, Scott gives a capsule history of Tokyopop and how they got to this point. JP Meyer disputes one of Scott’s points, that Manga Sutra (Futari Ecchi) isn’t available in chain bookstores; he found it in Borders. Omonomono considers the problem of OEL manga and the differences between Fred Gallagher and other global manga creators. (The last three links are via Japanator.)
Alex Woolfson discusses why age ratings are useful for graphic novels, and what the consequences could be of different systems, at Yaoi 911.
Two boys for every girl makes for tiresome shoujo manga, writes Hinano, who backs her argument by citing Vampire Knight, Special A, and the untranslated title Brilliant na Mahou, among others.
The Daily Yomiuru interviews Brigitte Koyama-Richard about her new book, One Thousand Years of Manga.
It’s a Bleach-o-rama at Sporadic Sequential, where John Jakala spots a number of different ways to sample his favorite franchise. But will he join the Bleach customer community?
Jason Thompson will be making several public appearances in Northern California in coming weeks; check his LJ for the schedule.
News from Japan: Gia notes that Japanese readers have snapped up over 1 million copies of vol. 50 of One Piece, according to Oricon.
Reviews: Ed Sizemore reads vol. 1 of Red Angel at Comics Worth Reading. Julie finds vol. 1 of Nephilim entertaining despite a lack of story at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Danielle Van Gorder reads two very different manga, Kiss All the Boys and vol. 21 of Berserk, at Anime on DVD. At Prospero’s Manga, Ferdinand feels the cuteness that is vol. 1 of Kamichama Karin Chu. Kate Dacey checks out vol. 1 of Nephilim at PopCultureShock’s Manga Recon blog.
Wow, that certainly is an annoying interstitial
So, does that mean that all Tokyopop has to do is drop their OEL manga promotion and put their focus back on Japanese Manga, to stay in the game? Also, while i like Gakuen Alice, i really don’t know why tokyopop thinks that this manga is going to be their “second fruits basket”. The anime for it hasn’t even been brought over, which would be a good way to get kids into it. And that’s the other thing, it’s for KIDS. Fruits Basket is soo popular because it is aimed at Teenage girls, the people with part time jobs who can buy it and obesse over who’s cuter, Kyo or Yuki. it doesn’t even kind of have the same audience. that being said, i hope they don’t drop it because nothing has happened so far and there are still so many secrets it’s frustrating.
Congrats on a well-deserved honor, Brigid!
Congrats for winning the best manga blog award. Your blog totally deserves it!! :D