Today’s big story is still a moving target, but here’s the gist of it: Amazon has removed a number of yaoi titles from the Kindle store, although most (not all) of the books remain available in print form through their website. [UPDATE: More on this at Robot 6.] The manga publisher Digital first posted about this yesterday, and what’s surprising is that it is not just affecting their fairly steamy 801 imprint; several of their milder June titles, including The Color of Love, have also been removed. The Yaoi Review reports that Yaoi Press titles have also been affected:
Yaoi Press’s founder Yamila Abraham has stated they will now have to change their explicit images on their prose titles to more ‘romantic’ images that will be acceptable to KINDLE.
Oddly, none of Animate’s titles seem to have been removed. Books that have already been purchased will remain available, and of course, there’s plenty of male-female and female-female porn comics available for Kindle. I have a few inquiries out about this, and if you can add anything from your own experience, feel free to comment below or e-mail me at the address on the right.
David Welsh looks over this week’s new manga at The Manga Curmudgeon.
Viz Media is adding four more manga titles to their iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch app: The House of Five Leaves, not simple, MAOH: Juvenile Remix, and Hyde & Closer. At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson is disappointed that Viz is moving to the iPhone but not to Android devices.
Khursten Santos has an introduction to and appreciation of Natsume Ono’s work at Otaku Champloo. Ono and Usumaru Furuya (Genkaku Picasso, Lychee Light Club) are going to be guests at this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which takes place this weekend, and Deb Aoki has a guide to TCAF for manga lovers at About.com.
Erica Friedman has an essay on the theme of the “girl prince” in yuri manga at The Hooded Utilitarian. She also has some thoughts on translating anime and the latest edition of Yuri Network News at her own blog, Okazu.
Rumiko Takahashi and her work are the topics for this week’s edition of the Manga Out Loud podcast.
Daniella Orihuela-Gruber reads all 26 volumes of the out-of-print classic Basara at All About Manga.
News from Japan: The shoujo magazine Margaret has announced five new series, including one by Arina Tanemura. We Were There/Bokura Ga Ita is coming to an end next year, and the Togari Shiro sequel manga wraps up next month. Three Steps Over Japan shows off an old issue of Garo and goes shopping for manga in the fairly remote town of Kagoshima.
Reviews
Ken Haley on vols. 2 and 3 of 7 Billion Needles (Sequential Ink)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (The Comic Book Bin)
Anna on vol. 8 of Black Bird, vol. 5 of Stepping on Roses, and vol. 5 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Manga Report)
Connie on vol. 17 of Blade of the Immortal (Slightly Biased Manga)
Eduardo Zacarias on vol. 34 of Bleach (Animanga Nation)
Sean Gaffney on vols. 11 and 12 of Higurashi: When They Cry (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Connie on vol. 2 of Itsuwaribito (Slightly Biased Manga)
Johanna Draper Carlson on The Manga Guide to Relativity (Comics Worth Reading)
Michael C. Lorah on Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths (Blog@Newsarama)
Connie on vol. 5 of Sensual Phrase (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lori Henderson on the April issue of Yen Plus (Manga Xanadu)
I haven’t yet bought any electronic versions of manga yet. I own a Nook, and the NookBook prices for those works are high enough that I’d rather just pay for print versions and do without the ones that are only available electronically. Plus, I’m guessing that on my Nook that page sizes would be excruciating, unless they break the works down to individual panels or something.
I’m not really surprised about this news, considering other kinds of e-reader censorship I’ve read about, and it also wouldn’t surprise me if other stores followed suit. Maybe it’s cynical of me, but I wouldn’t even be surprised if print versions started to get removed from stores – all it seems to take is the complaints of a tiny, vocal group.
Amazon’s corporate policies get worse every day. First it was the de-listing of LGBT books (I find claims of it being a computer error dubious), then the news of their crap labor policies, their continuing issues with censorship of Kindle texts, and now this. I stopped buying anything from them months ago. I’m disgusted with the company.