If you weren’t able to attend San Diego Comic-Con, fear not: Sean Gaffney has posted a report detailing the major licensing news from Kodansha Comics, VIZ Media, and Yen Press. Among the most exciting announcements at SDCC came from JManga, which has teamed up with Kodansha to rescue titles left unfinished by Tokyopop and Del Rey. JManga hasn’t revealed which titles it will be releasing through its online portal, so stay tuned.
Chip Kidd announced that he’s working on a new anthology of bara manga for PictureBox. Entitled The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: Bara Master, the book will feature a dozen or so short stories by Tagame, and will be translated by Anne Ishii.
In honor of the just-announced Sailor Moon reboot, Mike Toole takes a look at the franchise’s fascinating twenty-year history, from storylines to swag.
The Manga Bookshelf gang — myself included — weigh in on this week’s new arrivals.
File under “Not Manga, But Relevant”: Manga Bookshelf contributor Sara K. offers tips for mastering a new language. Not surprisingly, she recommends reading comics as a fun vocabulary-building exercise.
Erica Friedman rounds up the latest yuri manga news at Okazu.
DMP’s ambitious Kickstarter campaign is entering its final week. Currently, the publisher has raised enough funds for two titles — Osamu Tezuka’s Unico and A*Tomcat — but is hoping to attract additional support for a third, Triton of the Sea. Readers curious about Triton can read a short preview at Kickstarter.
Reviews: Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith dedicate their latest Off the Shelf column to supernatural shojo titles, including Jiu Jiu and Natsume’s Book of Friends. Over at Experiments in Manga, Ash Brown reviews Bond(z), Hikaru no Go, and Olympos.
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of Alice in the Country of Clover: Cheshire Cat Waltz (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Kristin Bomba on vol. 20 of Claymore and vol. 9 of Rosario + Vampire Season II (Comic Attack)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 7 of House of Five Leaves (The Fandom Post)
Ash Brown on NonNonBa (Experiments in Manga)
Matthew Alexander on vol. 6 of Omamori Himari (The Fandom Post)
Anna Neatrour on Roman Holiday (Manga Report)
You know, after having been let down so many times, I’m just going to out and outright say it- Kodansha USA is one of the worst things to ever happen to the U.S. manga industry! Sure, we got Sailor Moon back in print- but at what cost? Think about how many different series have been left on the sidelines (such as School Rumble or Moyasimon or [possibly] Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei) or suffered downgrades in quality control (Negima being an example). (And don’t even get me started on the corrected Akira and Ghost In The Shell manga we were promised a few years ago but never got.)
I would’ve felt a little better if Dallas Middaugh had said something at SDCC about improvements in quality control being in the works, but as of right now, I can’t trust blind-buying anything being released by Kodansha USA without an advanced review. It’s times like these I miss Del Rey (circa early 2010).