Shonen love-hate relationships, food manga, and more

Brad Rice checks the list of this week’s new releases at Japanator, and David Welsh is pleased to see the second volume of Summit of the Gods on the list. At Manga Bookshelf, Kate, David, Melinda, and Michele list their picks of the week.

You can’t have a battle without a rival: At Sequential Tart, Margaret O’Connell discuses the way opponents define each other in shonen manga. It’s almost like a romance, except with hatin’ instead of lovin’, which is why these pairs are often so slashable.

At Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Calvin Reid takes a look at the joint venture between manga publisher Seven Seas and the science fiction publisher Tor. Seven Seas, which looked like it was going quiet for a while, has a robust lineup of 24 manga titles planned for 2011, and Tor is launching its own line of original graphic novels.

David Welsh reaches the letter Z in his seinen alphabet.

At Manga Widget, Alex Hoffman takes an advance look at Bloody Monday, one of the series in Kodansha’s summer lineup.

I noted a few weeks ago that Xiao Bai had won the 4th Annual International Manga Award for her story Si loin et si proche…, but I didn’t notice that the full list of winners had been released. It’s an interestingly international group, with several winners from Belgium and Thailand and one from the U.S.: Abby Denson, who won a Bronze Award for Dolltopia.

At Manga Life, translators Alethea and Athena Nibley use one of their old first attempts at translatoin to explain why a dictionary alone isn’t enough.

The Ateneo de Manila University is opening its Food Manga Library to the public, Khursten Santos reports.

News from Japan: Booth rentals for the Tokyo Anime Fair are way down this year, as exhibitors boycott the fair to protest the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s increased restrictions on what it views as “harmful” manga. A new manga telling the life story (so far) of actress Sasaki Nozomi, which appeared in the fashion magazine non-no as well as the shoujo anthology Margaret, is being published in book form. And the B Gata H Kei manga is coming to an end after 300 chapters.

Reviews

Sean T. Collins on vol. 1 of AX (Attentiondeficitdisorderly)
Kai Charles on vol. 2 of The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga (Fiction State of Mind)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 1 of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (The Comic Book Bin)
Khursten Santos on Red Blinds the Foolish (Otaku Champloo)
Carl Kimlinger on vol. 11 of Vampire Knight (ANN)
Anna on vol. 11 of V.B. Rose (Manga Report)

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