Here’s your must-read manga post of the day: Editor, creator, and all-around manga pundit Jason Thompson pens a thoughtful essay at io9 titled Why Manga Publishing Is Dying (And How It Could Get Better). Jason’s description of the reasons for the decline of manga publishing is impeccable, but I’m not sure I’m on board with his suggestions for improving the picture. Be sure to read the comments for some more pointed criticism.
The Manga Bookshelf bloggers (myself included) discuss their Pick of the Week.
At The Beat, Torsten Adair looks at some of the new manga due out this month.
Attention translator wannabes: The digital manga site JManga is having a translation contest! Do your best translation of a four-koma strip from JManga title Young-kun and send it in, and you could win a copy of the full book plus 1,000 points. You have to have a JManga account to enter, which means you must live in North America.
The competition will be judged by veteran translator William Flanagan, and JManga also has an interview with him in which he talks about the finer points of manga translation.
News from Japan: Crunchyroll has the list of winners of the Shogakukan Manga Awards, with nice cover images and a summary of each one—none are licensed in English yet. Shin Mashiba, creator of Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun, is working on a new series set in Kyoto in the Heian era. Utau! Heian-kyō will debut in the March issue of Square Enix’s Monthly G Fantasy magazine. Boys Be… Next Season will come to an end in the Feb. 20 issue of of Kodansha’s Magazine Special.
Reviews: Short takes on new manga are the order of the day in this week’s Bookshelf Briefs column at Manga Bookshelf. At Experiments in Manga, Ash Brown takes a break from hosting the Usumaru Furuya Manga Moveable Feast to present a weeks’ worth of manga reading that, not surprisingly, includes a lot of Furuya’s work.
Erica Friedman on vol. 15 of Hayate x Blade (Okazu)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Hyakusho Kizoku (The Manga Critic)
Victoria Martin on vol. 4 of K-ON! (Kuriousity)
Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Princess Knight (Sequential Ink)
[…] this week, my Manga Bookshelf colleague Brigid Alverson steered readers towards Jason Thompson’s essay “Why Manga Publishing Is Dying (And How […]