News and opinions on many topics

Kai-Ming Cha writes about No Starch Press’s manga guides to subjects like calculus and statistics at PWCW, which also features a review of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto.

The big news of the day for BL fans is that Deux Press has picked up the license for Cigarette Kisses, which was to have been published by Broccoli’s Boysenberry imprint. And they are also assisting with the Japanese company LIBRE’s “Repeat After Me,” which is a romantic comedy manga that teaches the reader English.

The best read of the day, though, is the pair of opinion pieces by Jason Thompson and Carl Horn on the Christopher Handley manga trial. If for some reason you haven’t heard about this, the details are here. The short version: Dude is being prosecuted, with the possibility of up to 20 years in prison, for owning a manga for his own personal use that some government entity has deemed offensive. If you find this offensive, as I do, please consider making a donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is helping with Handley’s case.

Ryan Sands has posted his interview with veteran manga expert Fred Schodt at the Electric Ant site.

The Anime Vice folks present part two of their video invasion of the Viz offices; here’s Gia’s interview with Viz marketing folks Candice and Mark about what to look forward to in the near future. 20th Century Boys! Yes!

The votes have been tallied for Danielle Leigh’s Best Manga of 2008 poll. Now that it’s over, the comments thread on the original post makes some interesting reading as well. Well done, Danielle!

The Manga Recon gang have a roundtable discussion about which manga character they would like to be.

Speaking of roundtables, the smart women at ANN discuss crossdressing in manga.

Lori Henderson features Nana for the second day of her Twelve Manga of Christmas feature at Manga Xanadu.

New Blog Alert: The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis blog, with plenty of insights into manga and anime, which has been set up by Jonathan Clements to promote his upcoming book Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade. (Via Otaku News.)

News from Japan: Kannagi creator Eri Takenashi has halted work on the popular manga because of a serious illness; according to this article from Akiba Today, some fans aren’t taking the news well.

Reviews: At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson has a good critique of The Manga Guide to Statistics, and she links to Jog’s hilarious review as well. You’ll be hearing about it soon at this site as well, once my sister (a mathematician) and my husband (a physicist) finish reading it. Let me just say that the storyline didn’t seem all that unrealistic to me! At soliloquy in blue, Michelle Smith dips her toe into josei waters with her review of vol. 1 of Suppli. Nadia Oxford has some good things to say about vol. 1 of The Mysterians at Mania.com. Ferdinand enjoys vol. 1 of Kyo Kara MAOH! at Prospero’s Manga. Connie reads vol. 6 of Let Dai, vol. 2 of Barefoot Gen, and vol. 13 of Hikaru No Go at Slightly Biased Manga. Lissa Pattillo checks out vol. 3 of Fairy Cube at Kuriousity. Julie reviews vol. 6 of I Hate You More Than Anyone and vol. 5 of Vampire Knight at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Rachel Bentham digs into some yaoi titles at Active Anime with reviews of vol. 2 of Loveholic and vol. 1 of Blue Sheep Reverie. Erica Friedman turns her sharp eye on the 4-koma manga Soutennenshoku-iro Otome-gumi at Okazu. Emily has reviews of two more untranslated manga, Tobiiro Shadow and Yokubou Strawberry, up at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. Tangognat reviews vols. 1 and 2 of The Wallflower and vol. 1 of Silver Diamond at her eponymous site. At Comics Village, Katherine Farmar reads vol. 1 of Close the Last Door! and Lori Henderson checks out vol. 2 of Record of a Fallen Vampire. Casey Brienza has vastly different reactions to vol. 5 of One Thousand and One Nights and Ruff Love at ANN.

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Comments

  1. I thought Carl and Jason’s editorial was beyond excellent, and was subsequently repulsed by the complete failure of the commenters to grasp any of the points that were made. ANN forums are intolerable to me – these are the people who will watch the anime and manga industry go down in flames, shrug and say, “well, I wasn’t buying any anyway.”

  2. When you say “well, I wasn’t buying any anyway.” do you mean people who watch and read their anime and manga on the internet?

  3. Kudos to Carl and Jason. Those are two of the best, and most important editorials I have read all year.