Everybody is reading A Bride’s Story this week!

I reviewed Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths for Graphic Novel Reporter and vol. 1 of A Bride’s Story for MTV Geek.

Melinda Beasi updates us on life in the Digital Manga Guild, where editing teams are have gotten their contracts and are contending with some inconstency from the home office, and Daniella Orihuela-Gruber contrasts editing manga with editing other material.

Speaking of Digital Manga, they just put Vampire Hunter D on comiXology, thereby effectively doubling the amount of manga available through that particular reader. (comiXology lists 10 series as “manga” but most of them are more manga-ish than actual manga.) And Lissa Pattillo turns up another bit of news that hasn’t been so widely broadcast: Digital is starting a hentai imprint.

At the Hooded Utilitarian, Yoshimichi Majima and Timothy Finney dig into Manga Legends, a company that claims to sell original manga artwork—a claim that the investigators find rather dubious.

For this week’s House of 1000 Manga column, Jason Thompson takes a look at one of Naruto’s literary ancestors, Raiko.

Jonathan Clements writes about Katsuhiro Otomo and Akira at the Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis blog.

David Welsh checks out this week’s new releases at The Manga Curmudgeon, and Sean Gaffney is already looking ahead to next week’s new manga at A Case Suitable for Treatment.

Kristin checks out the highlights of this month’s Previews at Comic Attack.

Ed Sizemore and Johanna Draper Carlson discuss A Bride’s Story in the latest Manga Out Loud podcast.

Molly McIsaac has another roundup of classic manga you should be reading at iFanboy.com.

Over at Same Hat, Ryan meets one of his heroes, Usamaru Furuya, and he talks not only about their meeting but why Furuya is so awesome, with lots of links and images to bolster his case (may be NSFW). And he also posts a sampling of art by Jiro Ishakawa, which is definitely NSFW unless your workplace is totally insane.

David Welsh reaches the letter S in his josei alphabet. David draws his license requests this week from winners of the Prix Asie, and he reports in on his Previews order, which was done with significant reader input.

On Lori Henderson’s wish list: Pet Diary, which she spotted as a scanlation. (Gasp!)

News from Japan: Matt Thorn takes a look at the new web manga by Wandering Son manga-ka Takako Shimura, which is about romance in a large, all-female theatrical troupe. There is a real all-female theatrical troupe in Japan that really, really doesn’t like its name connected with these things, but Matt manages to fill in some background without naming names at all. Let’s leave that to Google. Three Steps Over Japan has a post (NSFW) about three men’s magazines that include freebies: Young King, Young Animal, and Young Magazine. I sense a trend here. Tony Yao writes about baseball manga and the popularity of baseball in Japan at Manga Therapy. The creator TAGRO, who is an old college buddy of Ken Akamatsu, is publishing three of his short stories on Akamatsu’s online manga site J-Comi. Meanwhile, the president of the company that maintains Co-Op Land Tokyo’s website accidentally uploaded the first 20 volumes of One Piece to the site, and when word got out on 2chan, traffic surged and the site was overwhelmed. And ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings.

Reviews: Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith have lots to say about some recent releases in their latest Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf.

Lori Henderson on vols. 1 and 2 of 7 Billion Needles (Manga Village)
Connie on vol. 5 of Alice in the Country of Hearts (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 8 of Black Bird (Slightly Biased Manga)
Anna on vols. 1 and 2 of Blue Exorcist (Manga Report)
Julie Opipari on vol. 1 of A Bride’s Story (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Rebecca Silverman on vol. 1 of A Bride’s Story (ANN)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of A Certain Scientific Railgun (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Carlo Santos on vol. 6 of Chi’s Sweet Home (ANN)
Vicki Paull on A Drifting Life (Manga Bubbles)
TSOTE on vol. 9 of Geobreeders (Three Steps Over Japan)
Connie on vol. 11 of Goong (Slightly Biased Manga)
Kate Dacey on vol. 3 of Grand Guignol Orchestra (The Manga Critic)
Ayra on vol. 4 of Ichiroh! (Okazu)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 1 of Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Connie on vol. 2 of Knights (Slightly Biased Manga)
Vicki Paull on Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! (Manga Bubbles)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 16 of Ouran High School Host Club (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Connie on Pine Kiss (Slightly Biased Manga)
Danica Davidson on vols. 7 and 8 of Rasetsu (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Connie on vols. 7, 8, and 9 of Sensual Phrase (Slightly Biased Manga)
Todd Douglass on vol. 6 of Soul Eater (Anime Maki)
Connie on vol. 7 of With the Light (Slightly Biased Manga)
Kristin on Your Story I’ve Known (Comic Attack)