Yaoi comes to Viz, MMF begins, a look back at Hot Gimmick

Jason Thompson’s pick for this week’s House of 1000 Manga column is the Manga of Deep Feminist Shame, Hot Gimmick. Go, read, and remember why you kept on reading it even though you hated yourself for it.

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith are hosting this month’s Manga Moveable Feast at Manga Bookshelf, and they kick it off with an introduction to this month’s main course, Wild Adapter. This inspires fellow Bookshelf-er David Welsh to ask his readers to name the sexiest manga they ahve ever read.

The Manga Village team looks at the best of the most recent batch of new manga.

Erica Friedman brings us the latest yuri news at Okazu, and she catches a bit of yuri in a shoujo magazine with a look at Blue Friend, Second Season.

At The Manga Critic, Kate Dacey notes that Viz has just announced a round of new series on their iPad app and makes some suggestions for their next move, including using the app to bring back some out-of-print gems; this inspires David Welsh to make a list. David’s latest print license request is Sakuna Hitona, a josei manga that has already been licensed in France.

Viz is looking for a yaoi/BL editor to help “establish and grow Viz Media’s line of mature content titles.” This is a verrry interesting development, as Viz doesn’t really publish yaoi at the moment. Lissa Pattillo rounds up some other Viz news, including their 25th anniversary plans and their announceent that they have licensed the Cinnamoroll manga, based on the Sanrio character of the same name.

David Brothers analyzes an example of multi-strand storytelling in Akira, and he also takes a look at the character of Kaneda.

Noah Berlatsky writes about identity and essence in Ghost in the Shell, but he’s not too impressed with it.

Erica Friedman dusts off a column that ran at MangaCast but is well worth another look, about Ultra Jump, the home of Tenjho Tenge, Hayate x Blade, and Battle Angel Alita.

If you’re yearning for some snippets of classic shoujo manga, and you don’t mind bad words in your browser window, go check out Fuck Yeah Year24, a tumbler devoted to the art of the Magnificent 49ers.

Convention season is upon us! Lissa Pattillo has a sneak peek at the manga programming for Animaritime, which takes place July 1-3 and will feature Vertical, Inc. marketing director Ed Chavez as a special guest.

Speaking of Ed Chavez: Animemiz reports on the Vertical, Inc. panel at AnimeNEXT, at which Ed provided a wealth of information on Vertical’s schedule and what we can expect from them in the next few months.

News from Japan: Last week brought news of two new projects from well known manga-ka: Hana-Kimi creator Hisaya Nakajo is launching a new series, Wild Kiss, that will run for just two chapters in Hana to Yume, and Arina Tanemura is embarking on a manga about the idol group Fudanjuku, to be titled Fudanjuku Monogatari. And Kathryn Hemman posts a guide to finding doujinshi in Tokyo at Contemporary Japanese Literature. (Via The Manga Critic.)

Reviews: Michelle Smith and Melinda Beasi discuss snacks and recent releases in their latest Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf. Anna looks at the last volumes of some Tokyopop series at Manga Report.

Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 15 of 20th Century Boys (The Comic Book Bin)
Diana Dang on vols. 1-3 of Bakuman (Stop, Drop, and Read!)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 5 of Bakuman (Comics Worth Reading)
Connie on vol. 9 of Black Bird (Slightly Biased Manga)
TSOTE on vol. 2 of A Bride’s Story (Japanese edition) (Three Steps Over Japan)
David Welsh on vol. 1 of A Certain Scientific Railgun (The Manga Curmudgeon)
Theron Martin on vol. 18 of Claymore (ANN)
TSOTE on vol. 10 of Geobreeders (Three Steps Over Japan)
Carlo Santos on vol. 5 of Hyde and Closer (ANN)
Julie Opipari on The Palette of Twelve Secret Colors (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Connie on vol. 5 of Papillon (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 9 of Rasetsu (Kuriousity)
Lori Henderson on vol. 4 of Rosario + Vampire Season II and vol. 18 of Claymore (Manga Xanadu)
Connie on vol. 12 of Sensual Phrase (Slightly Biased Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on World’s End (I Reads You)

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