Aurora Publishing’s big manga sale will go on until April 30, and they have put up special pages for each of their lines—Aurora, Deux, and LuvLuv—to make life easier. The shipping is reasonable as well. To help with decision-making, here are links to the titles I have reviewed: vol. 1 of The Manzai Comics, vol. 1 of Hitohira, vol. 1 of Yakuza in Love and Hate to Love You, and vol. 2 of Yakuza in Love. If I had only ten bucks to spend, though, I would put it toward the two est em books, Seduce Me After the Show and Red Blinds the Foolish. That’s a lot of awesomeness for ten dollars.
The New York Times manga best-seller list is up, and vol. 22 of Fruits Basket nabs the top slot, followed by Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Negima!, Naruto, Naruto, Vampire Knight, and Bleach. At least we’re getting a bit of variety. Meanwhile, Matt Blind posts the top 500 manga in online sales at Rocket Bomber.
Lissa Pattillo reports that it looks like the Yen Press Rescue Squad has pulled a former Broccoli title, Pandora Hearts, back from oblivion, and picked up another series by the same creator, Crimson Shell. This comes from the Amazon listings, so no guarantees.
Price-conscious John Jakala notes something that slipped by the rest of us: Tokyopop’s standard cover price seems to have gone up by a dollar.
This Wolverine preview won’t get you in trouble: Del Rey posts some pages from their upcoming Wolverine manga at MySpace Comics. (Via AnimeVice.)
Erica Friedman posts the latest news from the world of yuri at Okazu.
At The Eastern Edge, Gottsu-Iiyan says that while the Japanese may like foreigners, they don’t want to be them, and he discusses how that relates to the national tendency toward conformity.
Noah Berlatsky has more to say on his recent juxtaposition of images from Dokebi Bride and All Star Superman; this time he goes more into the cultural aspects of both images and the milieux they are drawn from.
Here’s a nice article about a teenager who donated her manga collection to her local library, a course of action that I heartily recommend that folks who are trying to clear their shelves. My local library has a pretty good collection, so I often send my used review copies to the Reader to Reader program, which sends books to schools and libraries in low-income areas. For some reason most of the manga goes to a library on the Navajo Reservation, which tickles me no end as I have Navajo relatives and I visited the reservation several times. Anyway, one thing I was curious about in the original article was whether this 15-year-old girl was still reading manga; it turns out that she is, and in fact she’s running her own scanlation site.
Shop talk: Yamila Abraham posts about lettering Yaoi Press titles and how the publisher’s instructions shape the final look.
John Hogan brings some good news: The Brooklyn Botanic Garden will be holding a manga festival during its annual Cherry Blossom Festival. I went to the Cherry Blossom Festival when I lived in Brooklyn, and it was lovely, down to the bento-box lunch (the first one I had ever seen).
Good news for users of Android mobile phones: Their comics viewer can now handle manga that reads right-to-left.
News from Japan: Shuho Sato, creator of Say Hello to Black Jack, provides some interesting insights into the economics of manga by revealing his gross income from magazines and tankoubon and the cost of his staff of six. He actually loses money on the magazine series but makes it back on the compiled volumes. And watch out soon for new manga from a host of familiar names: Atsushi Suzumi (Venus Versus Virus, Haridama Magic Cram School), Izumi Kirihara (Hitohira), and Yuji Iwahara (King of Thorn, Chikyu Misaki). (Promo image for the Suzumi manga borrowed from ANN.)
Reviews: The Manga Recon team looks at some recent releases in their latest Manga Minis column.
Michelle Smith on vol. 1 of 10, 20, and 30 (soliloquy in blue)
Connie on vol. 2 of 20th Century Boys (Slightly Biased Manga)
Danielle Leigh on Dogs: Prelude (Comics Should Be Good)
Sesho on vol. 9 of Eden (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews)
Connie on vol. 9 of Golgo 13 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Michelle Smith on vol. 1 of Goong (Comics Should Be Good)
Connie on vol. 2 of Goong (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vols. 16 and 17 of Hana-Kimi (Slightly Biased Manga)
Katherine Farmar on Heavenly Body (Comics Village)
Julie on Hey, Sensei? (MangaCast)
Nick Smith on vol. 1 of Leave it to PET! (ICv2)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Kuriousity)
Julie on vol. 12 of Love*Com (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 1 of Maid Sama! (Comics Worth Reading)
George R. on Memories Off 2nd (light novel) (Okazu)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Negima!? neo (Prospero’s Manga)
Michelle Smith on vol. 4 of One Piece (soliloquy in blue)
Connie on vol. 12 of Pastel (Slightly Biased Manga)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Pig Bride (Comics Should Be Good)
Diana Dang on vol. 1 of Pixie (Stop, Drop, and Read)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 1 of RahXephon (novel) (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
Connie on vol. 3 of Record of a Fallen Vampire (Comics Worth Reading)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Samurai 7 (Prospero’s Manga)
Tangognat on vol. 2 of Shinobi Life (Tangognat)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 1 of Walkin’ Butterfly (there it is, plain as daylight)
If I had only ten bucks to spend, though, I would put it toward the two est em books, Seduce Me After the Show and Red Blinds the Foolish. That’s a lot of awesomeness for ten dollars.
I just wanted to second this. These are seriously awesome books. I’d recommend them to anyone, whether they generally read yaoi or not.
I’ll give the Wolverine thing a chance, but from what I saw it doesn’t look promising. Did the artist ever hear about drawing some background art instead of brushing over everything with action lines? Looked like he was just lining empty space for lack of anything else to fill it. Reminds me too much of the manga Shakespeare series. I was hoping they would have some Japanese creators on the title, but no dice. More OEL.