Archives for August 2008

Erin Finnegan notes that RightStuf is having a big sale on CMX manga, and if you don’t know what to buy, she has some suggestions. My recs: Emma (of course!), Canon, Kiichi and the Magic Books, Oyayubihime Infinity (excellent shoujo past-life story with a quirky cast), Chikyu Misaki, and Presents. I also liked their version of Densha Otoko (Train Man) a lot.

Lissa Pattillo posts a thoughtful essay on sexuality in BL manga at Kurousity. On her blog, Melinda Beasi muses on why she doesn’t care for yaoi.

Gia and Johanna Draper Carlson weigh in with their thoughts on Digital’s new eManga site.

Japanator’s Dale North posts about reading manga in public and gets lots of reaction from commenters.

At Rocket Bomber, Matt Blind lists the top 500 manga (online sales), a summary of manga rankings, online pre-orders, and new releases for the second week of August.

Wow, how things have changed! ANN is launching a column featuring interviews with American manga artists; the first one profiles Lanny Liu.

Queenie Chan writes about SDCC and In Odd We Trust in her latest LJ entry.

Tim Beedle, one of my favorite Toyopop editors, is back freelancing for the company and he’s blogging about Cog, one of the Tokyopop pilots. Tim was one of the few editors there who really got the blogging thing and took the time to do it, so everything he posts is worth a look.

Scott VonSchilling files his Otakon con report at Anime Almanac.

Yoshitoshi ABe is publishing manga via iTunes in 20 countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

News flash: Naruto is popular! And so is Pokemon!

Update your bookmarks: The Industry Babble blog has moved to the Broccoli website. Also, Indie Review has updated their website and added a blog, although there’s no content yet. And here’s a new-ish site that includes anime and manga in the mix, along with games and other comics: The Hachiko. Drop by and take a look.

News from Japan: Summer Comiket has begun, and some guy has been arrested for threatening (on 2chan) to blow the place up. Nodame Cantabile will go on hiatus in October while mangaka Tomoko Ninomiya has her baby. The boxing manga Ring ni Kakero 2, by Saint Seiya creator Masami Kurumada, is entering its final arc.

Reviews: Danielle Leigh finds a manga for every taste in this week’s Manga Before Flowers column at Comic Book Resources. Chris Mautner takes a look at some classic manga titles, Dororo, Cat-Eyed Boy, and Red Colored Elegy, at Panels and Pixels and a handful of newer ones at Blog@Newsarama. Erin F. and her pals dig through a big box of yaoi and discuss their reactions in the YaoiCast podcast at the MangaCast. John Thomas reviews Tokyo Zombie at Mecha Mecha Media. At ANN, Carlo Santos hefts vol. 1 of the collectors edition of Bleach and Casey Brienza reads vol. 1 of Kamichama Karin Chu. Sabrina enjoys the sports manga vol. 1 of Whistle! at Comics Village. Chloe Ferguson explains what makes vol. 5 of Bring it On so great and the team kicks in with some manga minis at PopCultureShock’s Manga Recon blog. Connie has quick takes on vol. 20 of Berserk and vol. 5 of Black Sun, Silver Moon at Slightly Biased Manga. Lissa Pattillo reads Lost Boys at Kuriousity. Julie reviews the BL novel Gentle Cage at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Ferdinand checks out vol. 1 of Seduction More Beautiful Than Love and vol. 1 of The Mysterians at Prospero’s Manga. Emily reviews the Japanese title Hyoko Romantica at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. EvilOmar is a bit late with his midweek manga reviews at About Heroes, but they are as entertaining as ever. Deb Aoki reviews vol. 1 of Sugar Princess: Skating to Win and vol. 1 of Slam Dunk at About.com. Kiara reviews vol. 5 of Lunar Legend Tsukihime at Manga Jouhou. James Fleenor checks out vol. 1 of Ral Ω Grad at Anime Sentinel. Sakura Kiss reads vol. 1 of Oh My God! at The Yaoi Review. Kiki Van De Camp reviews vol. 2 of Fairy Cube and Clive Owen checks out vol. 2 of Rosario + Vampire at Animanga Nation. Erica Friedman posts on vol. 2 of Kannazuki no Miko at Okazu. Jason Van Horn takes a look at vol. 3 of Love Hina at The Hachiko.

Tania del Rio brings us up to date on her work on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and her planned two-volume series for Tokyopop in this interview with Benjamin Ong Pang Kean at Newsarama.

New manga! The MangaCast crew sort through this week’s new releases.

Translators Alethea and Athena Nibley discuss how they decide whether to use the Japanese or the English term at Manga Life. (I didn’t know that Japanese cats say “nyaa” rather than “meow.” I guess I don’t read enough cat manga.)

John Jakala of Sporadic Sequential asked recently whether there are any manga or superhero comics with literary merit; now he posts his readers’ responses, along with a few comments of his own. David Welsh posts his own picks at Precocious Curmudgeon, and readers add more in comments.

The Broccoli folks have put up Chapter 1 of Nui on their Brocomi webcomics site.

Job board: Viz is looking for interns. (Via Japanator.)

Reviews: If you like your reviews in podcast form, head over to Anime Pulse, where the Manga Pulse team discusses MPD-Psycho and Me and the Devil Blues. Lissa Pattillo reads vol. 10 of Cantarella at Kuriousity. Patricia Beard reviews vol. 1 of Croquis Pop on Mania, formerly AoD. Ken Haley is not too impressed with vols. 1 and 2 of Dorothea at PopCultureShock’s Manga Recon blog. John Thomas checks out vol. 2 of Translucent at Comics Village. New at Manga Life: David Rasmussen on vol. 2 of Gun Blaze West, Joy Kim on vols. 11 and 12 of xxxHoLiC, and Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vol. 2 of B.O.D.Y. and vols. 11 and 12 of Nana. Julie reads vol. 1 of Oh My God! at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Erica Friedman enjoys vol. 1 of S.S. Astro at Okazu. Japanator’s Zac Bentz reviews vol. 1 of Cat-Eyed Boy.

Digital’s eManga.com site is nicely designed, with pleasing pastel tones and not too much clutter, but can it deliver the goods?

The site is only in beta right now, so things may change. They are starting off with six yaoi titles (well, that’s their bread and butter) and four “Let’s Draw Manga” books, and to get you started, all the drawing books plus the yaoi title L’Etoile Solitaire are offered as free samples. It looks like there’s no way to buy points right now, so if you aren’t one of the first 100 readers, reading anything else is likely to be a challenge.

I find their manga reader a little fussy. It offers two viewing options, full-page or panel-by-panel. The problem with the full-page view is that on my 15″ monitor the lines are crinkly, the screen tones show significant (and disturbing) moire, and the lettering is hard to read. If I blow it up to full size it looks much better, but I have to scroll through to read it. You scroll by clicking and dragging, which is easy to learn but a bit tiresome to do. The panel-by-panel alternative highlights one panel at a time and moves you through the book in the correct order; it’s even sophisticated enough to show you half of a panel and then unroll to the full panel at the next click. If you’re reading on a small screen, that may be the better choice, although obviously you lose the impact of the full-page composition. On a bigger screen, the full-page view should be just the ticket.

I use the Safari browser, which is unique to Macs, so I always figure if something works for me it’s fully optimized. Alas, one of the keyboard shortcuts (typing F to toggle between page view and panel-by-panel view) didn’t seem to work for me. Keep trying, Digital IT guys!

Overall, the reader is a little more complicated than standard manga readers (which usually just let you turn pages), but it does allow some options. It reminded me a bit of the Marvel reader, although I only have limited experience with that.

It will be interesting to see how Digital handles the payment side of the site. Prices are discreetly omitted right now, as is how exactly the payments will be set up.

Another question is whether Digital plans to put books on the site before they release the print editions, or whether they will only offer online-only titles. And what the degree of explicitness will be: Right now, all the yaoi titles are from the June line, with none from the more explicit 801 imprint.

This looks like a good bet if it’s managed right. Yaoi readers are voracious and enthusiastic, but it remains to be seen whether digital distribution will give them the same satisfaction as paper.

Digital Manga has jumped headfirst into the web manga world with a new site, emanga.com, that will put entire volumes of manga online. The model looks like it’s similar to Netcomics: readers pay (in points) to read a volume online for a limited time; if they “rent” the volume again, though, they will get unlimited reads.

The first 100 readers to regster get 400 points, so go check it out now; I’ll review it in a little while. Full PR below the cut.

DIGITAL MANGA INC LAUNCHES ONLINE MANGA SITE

(Los Angeles, August 12, 2008) – Digital Manga Inc, one of the industry’s most unconventional and innovative companies, is pleased to announce the launch of emanga.com Beta – the industry’s first publisher sponsored manga rental site. “We are pretty excited,” explains marketing manager Rachel Livingston. “Everyone asks if we do digital comics since our name is Digital Manga. I can finally say yes!”

At emanga.com, customers can view sample pages for free or view the entire book by paying for a time-based rental. “All content available through eManga is streamed to your computer through Adobe Flash player,” explains Director of Operations Miguel Balauag, “You can trade eManga points to rent titles for a limited amount of time. If you later decide to rent the same title again, it will be automatically upgraded to an “unlimited” rental, which does not have time restrictions.” The emanga.com site features a unique manga viewer that allows readers to view single pages, double page spreads, or each individual panel. In some cases, readers will be able to press play and have the panels scroll automatically for a hands free experience. “We are trying to get some of the people in the office to do voiceovers for a few of the titles,” teases Production Manager Wendy Lee. “With the player, the possibilities are endless!”

The site will be in beta testing for the next month. Readers are invited to take a look at the free samples currently available on the site – including L’ Étoile Solitaire by Yuno Ogami – and email us at support@emanga.com with any comments or feedback. The first 100 readers to register will receive 400 free points with which to purchase additional content.

Kai-Ming Cha and Erin Finnegan cover Otakon in this week’s PWCW, and I talk to Tokyopop marketing director Marco Pavia about those cancellation lists that are making the rounds of the internets; Marco says the lists don’t mean anything as things are still in flux. Chris Butcher responds by posting a list of books that won’t be published this fall. This isn’t necessarily a contradiction, as Marco’s whole point is that many of these books will be rescheduled once rights are negotiated. In the PWCW article I also talked to him about some of the new titles due out soon and the trend toward thicker volumes, which is quite obvious this month. (Image is of the Otakon mascots.)

Kai-Ming neatly summarizes the issues raised by the yaoi boom in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, which is obviously aimed at folks who don’t read a lot of manga.

The Comics Structuralist takes a look at trends in global manga publishing.

David Welsh has some tough decisions to make regarding this week’s new comics. At The Yaoi Review, Sakura Kiss is looking forward to some August yaoi releases.

I missed this last week, but better late than never: Benjamin Ong Pang Kean interviews the creators of the Ghostbusters manga for Newsarama.

ICv2 has more on Vertical’s hardcover editions of Black Jack, which will include stories that weren’t in the paperbacks.

New to the blogroll: Shoujo Only Breaks Your Heart, a review blog devoted to untranslated shoujo manga, by an Australian student and confessed manga addict. You’ll find titles here you wouldn’t find anywhere else (because they are only out in Japanese) so it’s well worth a click.

Manga pundit Jason Thompson will be speaking at the opening of the exhibit Manga & Anime: An Exhibition of Popular Cartoon Art at the Napa Valley Museum on Friday.

News from Japan: Fist of the North Star is marking its 25th birthday with a wedding. And more and more manga is coming to Japanese cell phones.

Reviews: Kate Dacey told me that she would be reviewing vols. 1 and 2 of Cat-Eyed Boy for PopCultureShock, and I was a big nervous that our reviews would repeat each other. As it turns out, Kate is more charitable than I plan to be. Deb Aoki reads vol. 1 of Real at About.com. I picked it up this weekend and it looks awesome. Ed Sizemore has a thoughtful review of vol. 1 of S.S. Astro at Comics Worth Reading. Carlo Santos reviews vol. 5 of Alive, Theron Martin reads vol. 1 of Black Lagoon, and Casey Brienza reviews vol. 1 of Ultimate Venus and the novel Death Note: Another Note at ANN. Dan Polley checks out vol. 16 of The Wallflower at Comics Village. Connie reviews vol. 13 of Iron Wok Jan and vol. 1 of V.B. Rose at Slightly Biased Manga. Tangognat takes a quick look at vol. 4 of High School Debut and vol. 13 of Skip Beat. Emily reviews Isshoni Ofuro at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. While you’re there, check out the poll on the right-hand side asking what sort of manga you’d like to see reviewed there. At Prospero’s Manga, Ferdinand enjoys vol. 1 of Jyu-Oh-Sei almost as much as I did. Dave Ferraro checks out vol. 1 of Passion at Comics-and-More. Julie is not too impressed by vol. 2 of Nephilim at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Tiamat’s Disciple takes a look at vols. 1 and 2 of Mobile Police Patlabor and vols. 1-9 of Full Metal Panic. At The Comic Book Bin, Leroy Douresseaux cracks open the September Shonen Jump and critiques the new Stan Lee comic, Ultimo.

John Jakala muses over which manga have literary qualities; it’s a short list, but he invites suggestions.

Japanator has the list of this week’s new releases, both anime and manga, and at Kuriousity, Lissa Pattillo is already looking forward to September.

Tiamat’s Disciple tackles the thorny question of whether OEL (original English language) comics should be marketed as manga.

Deb Aoki has some exciting news about the hardcover editions of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack that Vertical is publishing: They will include stories omitted from the Japanese editions. Deb also takes Go!Comi’s game O-Play for a test ride.

Rivkah is trying a new inking technique, and she posts some examples so her readers can weigh in, which they do (up to 63 comments as of this writing).

Reviews: In his Flipped column, David Welsh looks at a best-seller that’s easy to overlook but a surprisingly rewarding read: Fruits Basket. Julie checks out vol. 1 of Jyu-Oh-Sei at the Manga Maniac Cafe. At Comics Village, Charles Tan reviews vol. 2 of the VizBig edition of Rurouni Kenshin and Lori Henderson takes a look at vol. 2 of Sand Chronicles. Lori Henderson reads vol. 1 of Dark Metro online on the Tokyopop website and has some comments about the story and the interface. Writing for Manga Jouhou, D.M. Evans liked the story of vol. 1 of Hell Girl but was disturbed by the HUGE MANGA EYES. Vol. 1 of Aspirin gives Ferdinand a headache at Prospero’s Manga. Erica Friedman reads vol. 3 of Red Garden at Okazu. Lissa Pattillo critiques vol. 3 of Mail at Kuri-ousity. Tiamat’s Disciple reviews vols. 1-3 of Alien Nine. Ed Sizemore reads vol. 12 of xxxHoLiC at Comics Worth Reading. Michelle Smith gives vol. 1 of Azumanga Daioh a B, which is probably a little better than I would have graded it, at Soliloquy in Blue. At Active Anime, Scott Campbell checks out vol. 6 of Pretty Face and Sandra Scholes reads vol. 4 of Totally Captivated. Leroy Douresseaux reviews vol. 2 of The Record of a Fallen Vampire at The Comic Book Bn.