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Archives for November 2009

Deep Thoughts Thursday

November 5, 2009 by

The Eastern Edge translates an interview with Moebius about manga in general and Naoki Urasawa in particular. (Doesn’t Moebuis sound like some sort of noir superhero—like Rorschach, only maybe he forms a one-sided strip or something? But he’s really a French comics creator.)

Kuriousity has the full list of November manga releases.

Patrick Macias treats us to a gekiga version of Jaws at his blog.

Craig Fischer reads God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and draws some analogies with film at Thought Balloonists.

Welcome Datacomp translates a Japanese essay on Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa.

David Welsh is up to the letter D in his shoujo-sunjeong alphabet. Readers kick in with more suggestions in the comments section.

At Skepticblog, Brian Dunning has a few nice things to say about the Manga Guides to various subjects.

This story on the Vancouver Opera notes that their online manga retellings of classic operas have contributed to their success.

News from Japan: Editors discovered some unpublished pages by the late Crayon Shin-Chan manga-ka Yoshito Usui, which will allow the comic to continue until the March issue of Monthly Manga Town. Kaiji Kawaguchi is ending Zipang and planning a new series for next year. And ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings.

Reviews: Chris Mautner has some pithy manga reviews up at Robot 6.

Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 5 of Apothecarius Argentum (i heart manga)
Connie on vol. 2 of Arm of Kannon (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on Aromatic Bitters (Slightly Biased Manga)
Chloe Ferguson on The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga (Manga Recon)
Theron Martin on vol. 12 of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (ANN)
Connie on vol. 31 of Berserk (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 3 of Detroit Metal City (Slightly Biased Manga)
Dan Polley on vol. 8 of Fairy Tail (Comics Village)
Grant Goodman on vol. 2 of The King of Debris (Manga Recon)
Connie on vol. 22 of One Piece (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 2 of Ooku (Slightly Biased Manga)
Julie on vol. 4 of Papillon (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Carlo Santos on vol. 9 of Rosario + Vampire (ANN)
Tangognat on vols. 5 and 6 of Swan (Tangognat)
George R. on vol. 1 of Taisho Yakyuu Musume (Okazu)
D.M. Evans on vol. 5 of Zombie-Loan (Manga Jouhou)

New manga, Harlequin online, and Kagome's uniform

November 4, 2009 by

Brad Rice and David Welsh check out this week’s new releases, which are heavy on the shoujo, apparently, and Tangognat looks at the month ahead.

Deb Aoki takes a look at the Harlequin manga that Digital will be publishing online.

Publishers Weekly has posted its Best Books of 2009 list and both Pluto and A Drifting Life make the “comics” list.

Cathy shows off her collection at it can’t all be about manga.

InuYasha creator Rumiko Takahashi blogs about Kagome’s uniform at The Rumic World.

Neither of these is manga, but they are both sort of interesting for other reasons: I interviewed Mark Waid of Boom Studios for PWCW, and at Robot 6 my Unbound column takes a look at dead webcomics.

Reviews: Ed Sizemore reviews Hayao Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979-1996, a book of writings by and interviews with the director, at Comics Worth Reading.

Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Beast Master (Comics Should Be Good!)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 2 of Black Bird (Manga Bookshelf)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Bloody Kiss (Prospero’s Manga)
Julie on Boys Love (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Michelle Smith on vols. 4 and 5 of Case Closed (Soliloquy in Blue)
Steven M. Bari on vol. 32 of Case Closed (Manga Life)
Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vol. 10 of The Gentlemen’s Alliance+ (Manga Life)
Joy Kim on vol. 1 of Hero Tales (Manga Life)
Andre on An Ideal World (Kuriousity)
Emily on Kanojo wa Uso wo Aishisugiteru (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vol. 14 of Love*Com (Manga Life)
Erica Friedman on vol. 2 of Manga no Tsukirikata (Okazu)
Tangognat on vol. 1 of Mikansei and vol. 1 of Momogumi Senkei (Tangognat)
Nick Popio on vol. 1 of Nightschool (Girlamatic)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Ouran High School Host Club (i heart manga)
Tangognat on vol. 1 of Papillon (Tangognat)
Danica Davidson on vols. 1-3 of Romance Papa (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Jennifer Dunbar on vols. 1 and 2 of Two Flowers for the Dragon (A word is a unit of language)
Katherine Farmar on Weekend Lovers (Comics Village)
John Martone on vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits (Anime Vice)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Yokaiden (Manga Xanadu)
Barb Lien-Cooper on vol. 1 of Yotsuba&! (Manga Life)

Domo creator speaks; yaoi readers pick their faves

November 3, 2009 by

Just a quick update today as I’m heading out for what I anticipate will be a busy day at work. One important reminder, though—if there’s an election going on where you live, get out and VOTE! We’re having municipal elections today, and although we all pay more attention to the president, local officials have a much more direct effect on everyday life. So take a minute to pull that lever or fill in that bubble.

OK, on with the manga news…

Lissa Pattillo and Deb Aoki write up the most recent Tokyopop webinar, which featured Domo creator Tsuneo Goda.

Deb also reports the results of a Twitter poll on the essential yaoi and BL manga.

Hey, someone’s writing an academic book on Boys’ Love manga, appropriately titled Boys’ Love Manga, and the contributors include a few famliar names: former Tokyopop editor Hope Donovan and Yaoi Press publisher Yamila Abraham.

The four-day Barcelona Manga Show drew 60,000 people, according to the Barcelona Reporter.

Christopher Butcher posts more photos of his recent trip to Japan at Comics212.

News from Japan: Canned Dogs notes that Yabuki Kentarou, creator of ToLoveRu, will be starting a new series in Jump Square soon. The post includes some discussion of the length of time it takes a creator to get rolling again once a series ends.

Reviews: The Manga Recon team starts the day with a fresh set of Manga Minis. Johanna Draper Carlson checks out three kid-friendly manga at Comics Worth Reading.

Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 4 of Apothecarius Argentum (i heart manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Arm of Kannon (Slightly Biased Manga)
Asamisgirl on vol. 4 of Breath (The Yaoi Review)
Julie on Cigarette Kisses (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Connie on vol. 15 of Claymore (Slightly Biased Manga)
Erica Friedman on vol. 4 of Click (Okazu)
Connie on vol. 1 of Fushigi Yugi (VizBig edition) (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on Hino Horror 14: Skin and Bone (Slightly Biased Manga)
Alex Hoffman on vol. 1 of Honey Hunt (Comics Village)
James Fleenor on vol. 1 of Momogumi Plus Senki (Anime Sentinel)
Dave Ferraro on vol. 1 of Sugarholic (Comics-and-More)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 2 of Sumomomo,Momomo (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
Connie on vol. 1 of Tale of the Waning Moon (Manga Recon)
Snow Wildsmith on vol. 1 of Tale of the Waning Moon (Fujoshi Librarian)

The Tyrant finds a home

November 2, 2009 by

DMP made a splash at Yaoi-Con with its new title announcements, including license rescues of The Tyrant Falls in Love (from DramaQueen) and Kizuna (from BeBeautiful), the latter in double-sized volumes. ANN has cover images of the new titles. Also, DMP will be putting Harlequin manga on its eManga website and is accepting submissions of original graphic novels and prose novels as well.

Asamisgirl links to her Yaoi-Con photos at The Yaoi Review.

Lori Henderson rounds up all the week’s manga news at Manga Xanadu. She also finds some handcrafting manga, although the crafting is generally incidental to the story. And Erica Friedman updates on the latest yuri news at Okazu.

The Comics Village gang selects the best new manga from the latest round of releases.

Melinda Beasi has started a new feature at Manga Bookshelf: Manhwa Monday, in which she rounds up recent reviews of Korean comics.

The Eastern Edge treats us to some Takehiko Inoue sketches.

Here is some evidence that The Man is hijacking manga and using it to sell stuff. As if we didn’t already know.

News from Japan: Japan Today reports that the real-life baseball player who inspired the character of Kagura in the baseball manga Abu-san is now contentedly running his own yakitori restaurant.

Reviews: As always, I have joined the Robot 6 team for our Sunday roundup of What Are You Reading?

Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Andromeda Stories (Comics Village)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 5 of Aria (Comics Worth Reading)
Clive Owen on vol. 28 of Bleach (Animanga Nation)
Danielle Leigh on Boys Love (Comics Should Be Good)
Colette Bennett on Boys Over Flowers: Jewelry Box (Japanator)
Julie on vol. 2 of Brilliant Blue (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Zaki Zakaria on vol. 1 of Children of the Sea (The Star of Malaysia)
Bill Sherman on vol. 1 of Deka Kyoshi (Blogcritics)
Julie on vol. 3 of Honey Hunt (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Jennifer Dunbar on vols. 1-3 of Kaze Hikaru (A word is a unit of language)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of Ludwig (Kuriousity)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 2 of March on Earth (i heart manga)
Jennifer Dunbar on vols. 1-3 of Minima (A word is a unit of language)
Michelle Smith on vol. 12 of Ouran High School Host Club (Soliloquy in Blue)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Soul Eater (Kuriousity)
Jennifer Dunbar on vols. 1 and 2 of Sugarholic (Manga Recon)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Two Flowers for the Dragon (i heart manga)
Sesho on vol. 6 of Yotsuba&! (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews)
Kitty Sensei on vol. 1 of Zone-00 (The Star of Malaysia)

Review: Deka Kyoshi, vol. 1

November 1, 2009 by

DekaKyoshiDeka Kyoshi, vol. 1
By Tamio Baba
Rated T+, Teen Plus
CMX, $9.99

Detective Toyama is a big, bumbling, good-hearted guy, so when his superiors suspect a schoolteacher has been murdered, they send him undercover as the new teacher for her class. It sort of works, because he obviously loves kids, but Toyama tends to lead with his heart, not his head.

Well, actually, he does lead with his head on the first day of school—hearing a child being bullied, he rushes into the classroom and hits his head on the top of the door frame, leaving a visible head-shaped dent. That’s the only bit of slapstick in the story, though. Although the cover suggests a comedy, Deka Kyoshi is more of a series of moral tales, with a central mystery knitting them loosely together.

The mystery has to do with the first teacher’s death—she fell from a roof, so her students assume she committed suicide, and several of them blame themselves or each other. It’s not clear what Toyama is looking for, but he gets an assistant early in the book: Makoto, one of his fifth-graders, who can see people’s emotions as physical forms. To Makoto, a bully appears as a spiky monster, a girl who doesn’t want to grow up looks like a giant stuffed doll. It’s all pretty basic, although the alternate personalities, called synthes, are well conceived and well drawn.

Makoto’s abilities make him shrink from others, and that in turn makes him a target for bullies—he was the child Toyama heard being bullied in the beginning of the book. After Toyama rescues him, the two hit it off, and Makoto starts helping Toyama. But not with the case of the falling teacher—that case is forgotten as the book turns episodic and Toyama and Makoto start solving the other students’ problems.

In addition to Makoto, Toyama has another ally—Narita-sensei, the school doctor, who is also something of a psychologist. She is cool and logical, proposing sensible solutions and countering Toyama’s hotheadedness. If anything she is too cool, often offering advice that is so laid-back as to be useless. When Toyama gets frustrated that his class is all reading manga instead of paying attention, Narita advises him not to confiscate the offending books. “Being a hardnose about it will have the opposite effect,” she says. “The best thing to do is take time to persuade them that their time here is better spent paying attention.” Like that’s going to work with a classroom full of fifth-graders.

And indeed, the solutions proposed to the students’ problems are too simplistic. In the manga story, a student has been shoplifting manga so he can share it with the class and thus become popular. Narita catches him and makes him promise not to do it any more. Of course the kid backslides, and Toyama yells at him to be a man and stop stealing. The student’s synth disappears and he gives up shoplifting for good. With similar ease, Toyama, Narita, and Makoto manage to cure a girl who cuts herself and another girl who is uncomfortable with her changing body. The stories are nice little self-contained dramas, but they never veer far from the predictable. There does seem to be a dark figure lurking in the shadows who may be causing bad thigs to happen—and by implication may have something to do with the teacher’s death—but that possibility goes unexplored in this volume.

The art in Deka Kyoshi is clean-lined and clear, with a fair amount of exaggeration. People more knowledgeable than me have described it as old-style shonen, ad that does seem to fit, but it’s an accessible style that either girls or boys can enjoy. The synthes are nicely drawn, and creator Tamio Baba does a nice job of using physical forms to describe emotional states.

At about 160 pages, this volume feels a little skimpy, but there are a few extras—a color page in front, a two-page bonus comic in the back. The cover is bright and appealing, although it implies a wackiness that isn’t really present in the book. With its simple stories and clear art, Deka Kyoshi does feel like it is pitched more toward the middle grades than adults, and it will probably have the most appeal for that age group.

This review is based on a review copy supplied by the publisher.

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