The manga scene has been busy lately, and over at MTV Geek I posted about Viz’s new shoujo licenses and Kodansha’s announcements as well as this week’s new manga releases. What’s more, Animate USA has added three new titles to its lineup for the Kindle, including NightS, a one-shot by Kou Yoneda; vol. 9 of Kiss Ariki, by Youka Nitta; and a special Finder episode, “Viewfinder: Hard-Working Cameraman Akihito Takaba’s Romantic Life as an Indentured Servant.”
Lissa Pattillo gives her take on the latest batch of manga in her On the Shelf column at Otaku USA, and at Kuriousity she has some notes on another new license, One Peace Books’ edition of Crayon Shin-chan.
Sean Gaffney looks ahead to the manga that will be coming out next week.
Kate Dacey continues the Manga Moveable Feast at The Manga Critic, with roundups of links from days three, four, and five, all discussing Viz’s Signature manga, and she rounds it out with her own post on seven essential Signature manga. And at Slightly Biased Manga, Connie’s latest license request is a yuri romance that runs in Ikki, Gunjo.
Hunter x Hunter gets the Jason Thompson treatment in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.
Daniella Orihuela-Gruber thinks Viz should pep up its Signature line by marketing more aggressively to comics shops, which seems about right—Dark Horse has had a lot of success with this tactic.
News from Japan: Deb Aoki notes that Moto Hagio has been awarded the Japan Medal of Honor; she is the first female manga-ka to be so recognized. Tomo Kimura shows off some of Koge-Donbo’s omake about how she met her husband. GTO creator Tohru Fujisawa has a food manga in the works. Paging Ed Chavez! Ghost Talker’s Daydream creator Saki Okuse is launching a new series in the next issue of Comic Gum, and Xenon manga-ka Masaomi Kanazaki also has a new series, this one in Akita Shoten’s Play Comic.
Reviews
Kristin on vol. 20 of 20th Century Boys (Comic Attack)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Bokurano: Ours and vol. 5 of Biomega (Manga Xanadu)
Connie on Boyfriend Next Door (Slightly Biased Manga)
Rebecca Silverman on vol. 3 of A Bride’s Story (ANN)
Ash Brown on vol. 1 of Dorohedoro (Experiments in Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 23 of Excel Saga (The Comic Book Bin)
Kristin on vol. 6 of House of Five Leaves (Comic Attack)
Kate Dacey on I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow (The Manga Critic)
Connie on vol. 9 of InuYasha (VizBig edition) (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 5 of Itsuwaribito (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 12 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Our Everlasting (Slightly Biased Manga)
TSOTE on vol. 25 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (Three Steps Over Japan)
Connie on vol. 27 of Skip Beat! (Slightly Biased Manga)
Just as a point of clarification, GUNJO is most definitely *not* a romance. It’s closest to the genre of “True Crime.” It’s quite possibly an anti-romance.