Archives for September 2008

First of all, some bad news: I won’t be at NYAF after all. I was really looking forward to it, but with everything that has gone on over the past two weeks, I need to spend a weekend at home with the family. I’ll miss being with you all, but I’m sure that Gia, Deb, Heidi, Kai-Ming, and the PWCW crew will do a great job of covering it without me. Casey, Erin, Ed, Erica, and Melinda will be there too.

Of course, I will be missing Yaoi-Con as well, but Kanara Ty, of the UCLA Asia Institute, gives some background on yaoi and why Yaoi-Con will be awesome.

This week’s big story is the demise of Minx, and in her latest Manga Before Flowers column, Danielle Leigh asks the logical question: Is CMX next?

Lori Henderson is not impressed with Digital Manga’s new online manga service, eManga.

Carolyn Ryder explores the world of yuri at Advocate.com.

There seems to be a lot of talk about moe lately. The Star of Malaysia weighs in, and I think this one sentence captures the whole thing:

It’s a “one-way” word used only to describe emotional attachment to something, not to describe how the object itself is.

The Star also helpfully provides a catalog of moe stereotypes. Over at Manga Widget, Alex Hoffman thinks it is a form of escapism, but admits that can be a mixed bag. (No, that’s not me, it’s a random pic of a moe girl swiped from The End of the World—which, interestingly, posted it as a random pic of a moe girl. Great minds, etc.)

If the commenters are to be believed, the Manga Recon YaoiCast may be more entertaining than the manga themselves.

Jason Yadao analyzes the ICv2 top 25 manga properties list and questions whether Batman belongs on it.

Dave White is struck by the beauty of a page from Honey and Clover, and he can explain why, too.

Chris Mautner has a nice article on Takehiko Inoue, creator of Slam Dunk and Real, at PennLive.com.

Brenda Gregson writes about writing shoujo manga and Hiro Takashi discusses storytelling at Animanga Nation.

Ypulse writer Alli has brief summaries of some recent Tokyopop titles and is looking for suggestions for graphic novels for the middle grades.

Creator Misako Rocks! will be holding a panel and book signing at NYAF. Josh Elder, creator of Mail Order Ninja, will be at the Poughkeepsie Public Library on Oct. 3.

Reviews: Sweetness or moe? Manga Recon’s Erin Finnegan smells more of the latter than the former in vol. 1 of Sunshine Sketch. Jason Thompson reads vol. 1 of Faust at comiXology. Ai Kano reviews the illustration book Flamboyant and Kiki Van De Camp enjoys vol. 1 of Knights at Animanga Nation. Dave White analyzes vols. 1-3 of Dororo at 741.5 Comics. At Comics Village, Dan Polley finds the last story in vol. 3 of Hell Girl a welcome change but not enough to lift the series above formulaic mediocrity. Erica Friedman reads vol. 1 of Tokimeki Mononoke Gakuen at Okazu. Lissa Pattillo whittles down the stack at Kuriousity with posts on Solfege, vol. 6 of Black Sun, Silver Moon, The Aluria Chronicles, vol. 24 of Bleach, World’s End, vol. 1 of Tenshi Ja Nai!!, and vol. 2 of Tea For Two. New reviews at Manga Jouhou: Snow Wildsmith on Caged Slave and The Color of Love, D.M. Evans on vol. 1 of Psycho Busters and vol. 2 of Dorothea, Lissa Pattillo on vol. 3 of Can’t Win With You!, Connie reads vol. 14 of Saint Seiya, vols. 2 and 3 of Honey and Clover, and vol. 13 of The Law of Ueki at Slightly Biased Manga. Julie checks out vol. 5 of Dragon Eye, The Devil’s Secret, vol. 1 of Kyo Kara MAOH!, and vol. 1 of Blank Slate at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Christina Koh reads the unspeakably sweet vol. 1 of Koi Cupid and P-Chan checks out vol. 1 of Monkey High at The Star of Malaysia. Katie Trattner reveiws vol. 7 of Tarot Cafe at Blogcritics. At The Comic Book Bin, Leroy Douresseaux looks at The Arina Tanemura Collection: The Art of Full Moon. Alex Hoffman reviews vol. 19 of Negima and vol. 1 of Eden: It’s an Endless World! at Manga Widget. Oyceter hearts vols. 1-4 of Azumanga Daioh and so do her readers at Sakura of DOOM. Sesho has podcasts on vol. 1 of xxxHoLiC, vol. 1 of Rave Master, and Goth, and text reviews of vol. 10 of The Law of Ueki, vol. 2 of Rave Master, and vol. 2 of Zombie Powder. At the Boys Next Door blog, they’re talking about vol. 2 of The Crimson Spell, Ruff Love, and vol. 4 of Totally Captivated. Michelle Smith reviews vols. 17 and 18 of Boys Over Flowers at Soliloquy in Blue. New at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page: Iinchou no Himegoto, Junai Sensation, LoveHo no Ojousama, Dakara Ore ni Shina yo, and Kiken na Honey. Ferdinand checks out vol. 1 of Fate/Stay Night, Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted, vol. 1 of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, and vol. 1 of Black Lagoon at Prospero’s Manga. Tangognat reviews Time Stranger Kyoko. Tiamat’s Disciple shares his thoughts and impressions on issue 3 of Yen+, vols. 1-5 of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and vol. 5 of Heavenly Executioner Chiwoo.

Vintage manga continues to awe and amaze the blogosphere. The latest entry: Shaenon Garrity posts some pages from Noburo Ohshiro’s Yukaina Tekkôsho and pulls out the most important story elements for your delectation. (Image from Shaenon’s post.)

In a very different vein, Ryan of Same Hat shows off the copy of Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster that he picked up for a song recently.

At The Anime Almanac, Scott VonSchilling compares Yen+ to Raijin and hopes the former is more successful than the latter.

Matt Blind thinks that the popularity of Naruto is beginning to erode, but at a glacial pace; he lays out his geological/retail argument at Rocket Bomber. One of the translators of Naruto, blogging as Gottsu-Iiyan, mulls over the implications of that, and they sound pretty grim for the industry as a whole.

Matt also posts his online sales charts for new releases and preorders and an emerging trends report.

Ed Chavez is in Japan right now, and he’s posting about some of his favorite offbeat manga at MangaCast. Check out his writeups on Sailor Fuku to Juusensha (sailor suits and heavy tanks, apparently) and EkiBen Hitori Tabi (train manga!).

Fruits Basket translators Athena and Alethea Nibley discuss the challenge of translating dialects at Manga Life.

Manga Recon has a URL of its own now, so you don’t have to wade through all the superhero and gaming stuff on the PopCultureShock site to get to it.

This is too pretty not to post: Sho Murase’s drawing from the latest Nancy Drew manga.

Erica Friedman rounds up the yuri news of the week at Okazu,

John Thomas wonders if subscribers to Newtype USA and PiQ are ever going to be compensated for the remainder of their subscriptions.

Viz will be publishing two more of Akira Himekawa’s Zelda manga.

News from Germany: Jonathan posts Tokyopop’s spring and summer 2009 releases and posts his annotated August and September shopping list at Manly Manga and More.

Reviews: Let’s start at Okazu, where Erica Friedman reviews Girl x Girl x Boy, vol. 6 of Battle Club, and vol. 3 of Stray Little Devil. Elizabeth Schweizer reads vol. 3 of Mushishi at PLAYBACK:stl. EvilOmar has another round of Midweek Manga Reviews at About Heroes. New at the revamped Manga Recon site: Phil Guie on vol. 1 of Guardian Hearts, Isaac Hale on vol. 5 of Gon, and Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, plus a bouquet of Manga Minis. Oyceter has short, insightful reviews of vol. 1 of Pumpkin Scissors, vols. 1-7 of Moon Child, vol. 1 of Chronicles of the Grim Peddler, vols. 12-13 of Skip Beat (spoilers!), and vols. 1-2 of Your and My Secret at Sakura of DOOM. Note: Always read the comments to Oyceter’s posts; she has smart friends. Jonathan reviews vol. 21 of Blade of the Immortal at Manly Manga and More. Lori Henderson looks at vol. 3 of Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President at Manga Xanadu. Michelle Smith checks out vol. 1 of Akira, vols. 1 and 2 of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, vols. 1 and 2 of Short Program, vol. 24 of Bleach, and vol. 18 of Tsubasa (warning: spoilers!) at Soliloquy in Blue. At Manga Life, Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane reviews vol. 2 of Time Stranger Kyoko and Park Cooper reads vol. 14 of Kekkaishi, vol. 23 of Hunter x Hunter, and vol. 6 of Strawberry 100%. Chris Arrant takes a look at vol. 1 of Black Lagoon at Newsarama. Kat reviews Cardcaptor Sakura for the Cornell Japanese Animation Society. Up at Comics Village: John Thomas on The Art of Hideshi Hino and vol. 1 of Black Jack, Charles Tan on vol. 1 of One Piece, Sabrina on vol. 1 of Iron Wok Jan, and Katherine Farmar on Hybrid Child. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie reads Pretty Poison, vol. 2 of Sand Chronicles, vol. 21 of Eyeshield 21, vol. 6 of Oyayubihime Infinity, vol. 23 of Bleach, vol. 10 of Sorcerer Hunters, vol. 24 of GetBackers, vol. 7 of Hoshin Engi, Bizzarian, and vol. 6 of Apothecarius Argentum.

They opened it up for test drives a few months ago, and now DMP has opened up shop for real at emanga.com. The site is a combination of rental and purchase models; you buy points and use them to get access to an online title for 72 hours. If you want to read it again, you pay a discounted price and you get unlimited access. That means you can re-read the manga forever, as long as the site is up—there doesn’t seem to be a download option.

Digital has beefed up the yaoi content with a total of 13 titles, one of which, L’Etoile Solitaire, is free for a limited time. They offer free previews of some of the others. The current offering of non-yaoi titles is somewhat disappointing—just four how-to-draw books. Digital does some interesting but hard-to-find titles, and it would be nice to see some of them offered online. Click for the full press release.

Digital Manga Inc.’s Online Manga Site eManga Open For Business

(Los Angeles, September 23, 2008) – Digital Manga Inc., one of the industry’s most unconventional and innovative companies, is pleased to announce that its online content service eManga has completed its beta stage and is now open for business. Launched last month, eManga is the industry’s first publisher-sponsored manga rental site. The site offers many titles published by Digital Manga, Inc., making them available for rent at a low price. Users can also access free samples of all the titles.

On eManga, content is not downloaded, but is streamed through the Adobe Flash player, which means that users can access their library wherever they have an internet connection. The customized reader also supports extra features, such as a panel-by-panel mode that helps users easily follow the flow of a story. Additional features and performance improvements are constantly being added, and users are encouraged to shape the development process by providing feedback and suggestions.

For a limited time, the standard rental price has been lowered to 300 points for 72-hour access. Users can also “keep” their favorite titles by re-renting them at a discounted price, which means that they have unlimited access to that content. Currently, eManga offers points in four different packages. The standard package costs $10 for 1000 points, but higher packages come with free bonus points.

New titles are being added on a regular basis, and the site will feature not only manga and novels, but also will introduce original creator content. For a limited time, L’Etoile Solitaire by Yuno Ogami is being offered for free in its entirety.

The eManga website can be found at www.emanga.com .

I’m back home again, ready to adjust to the new normal. Again, thank you for all your kind comments and condolence messages. Last week was bleak at times, and it was really comforting to hear from so many friends.

Needless to say, I returned to over 500 RSS feed notifications and about as many e-mail alerts, so I’ll be going back and looking things over, picking the cream of the older posts as well as what’s new.

ICv2 makes it easy by posting a very significant story this week: A four-part interview with Gonzalo Ferreyra, Viz’s VP of sales and marketing. Here’s part one; follow the links for the rest.

Also, Comix Talk posts an interview I did with Tokyopop’s Jeremy Ross a few weeks ago about their Manga Pilots program. It’s really more about the new interface and the direction they’re going in than the contracts thing, which has been extensively covered elsewhere (and which I doubt is going to change anyway).

Matt Thorn tracks the popularity of the term “shoujo” to describe girls’ magazines, as well as the changes in content over the years, at his blog. He also provides a peek at some early Japanese animation.

Speaking of shoujo, Danielle Leigh discusses Itazura na Kiss, both the manga and the anime based on it, and explains how the manga introduced some of our standard shoujo cliches.

Japanator posts this week’s new releases.

ANN’s Smart Women on Anime roundtable (I think that’s what they meant to call it, but there was a typo somewhere) takes on alpha and beta males in manga and anime.

Manga online: Concordia University professor Matthew Penney has translated and posted the short story War and Japan by GeGeGe no Kitaro creator Mizuki Shigeru. (Via ANN.)

This is a big weekend, with both Yaoi-Con and NYAF going on at the same time. At About.com, Deb Aoki lists the manga-related events at NYAF and the Yaoi-Con highlights to help you choose.

Gia has coverage of the Dark Horse panel at AWA.

Kai-Ming Cha has a piece on Afro Samurai, the manga, at PWCW.

Zig*Zag and Beauty Honey are coming to an end in Japan.

Reviews: There’s lots more to come, but here’s a start. Christopher Butcher has started posting reviews on Tuesdays, and so far he has posted thoughtful discussions of Disappearance Diary and vol. 1 of Black Jack. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson recommends vol. 10 of Nana but is less impressed by vol. 9 of Beauty Pop and the online version of Princess Ai: Encounters. Deb Aoki checks out vol. 1 of Blank Slate, vol. 1 of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Future Lovers, vol. 1 of Sola, and vols. 1 and 2 of Black Lagoon at About.com. Dave Ferraro reads vol. 1 of Me and the Devil Blues at Comics-and-More.

Hi everyone. I’m sorry I haven’t been around the internets the past few days. My father died on Tuesday. I’m in the busywork stage of bereavement—planning, traveling, paperwork—but I hope to be back into a regular blogging routine by the beginning of next week at the latest.

Longtime readers may know that Dad was a big comics fan and used to read comics to me when I was growing up. Here’s a post and a followup that I wrote about him a few years ago. I want to write more about him in the future, but I need time to wrap my brain around all that has happened.

In the meantime, talk among yourselves, and I’ll be back soon with news and some fresh reviews.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one having a bad week: David Welsh’s mother passed away this week as well. David has some words of wisdom for all families, so drop by and offer your condolences. And to all of you who have left notes here: Thank you. It really does help.

Just a few short things today, but let’s start with a big one: Tokyopop has signed on with the video-sharing site Crunchyroll to promote their properties, using their embeddable manga player. First up: A sneak peek at Princess Ai: Encounters. Tokyopop is offering free downloads on its own site as well; you have to sign up to be notified. Here’s their forum thread to watch for commentary. Stay tuned!

Matt Thorn shows off some another lovely vintage manga, The Adventures of Little Shô, at his blog.

Lianne Sentar posts some thoughts on moe at Sleep Is For the Weak.

Melinda Beasi continues the discussion of morality in anime and manga at her blog, there it is, plain as daylight.

The first volume of The Faerie Path manga is due out in January, according to ICv2.

At Manly Manga and More, Jonathan lists the all-shoujo German Tokyopop top 20 and editorializes a bit about content.

If you enjoy Protoculture Addicts, here’s a cheaper way to read it: E-books are available at a reduced price.

Reviews: Lianne Sentar posts a witty review of Wanted at Sleep Is For the Weak. Snow Wildsmith reviews Weekend Lovers and D.M. Evans checks out vol. 3 of Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning at Manga Jouhou. Ferdinand enjoys vol. 1 of Sugar Princess: Skating to Win at Prospero’s Manga. Sesho has a podcast up about vol. 1 of xxxHoLiC.