Wow! An e-mail came in overnight from JManga, saying they are shutting down as of May 30. They have already stopped selling points, but users can buy manga with their existing points through March 26. Unused points will be refunded in the form of Amazon gift cards. Details are here, and I’ll be back with analysis later.
Daniella Orihuela-Gruber bought a big stack of manga at DMP’s Warehouse Sale, and she’s reading—and blogging about—one volume at a time, mixing her opinions of the books with commentary on the genre and common yaoi tropes. Here are her first four: All Nippon Air Lines, Ambiguous Relationship, Affair, and Secretary’s Job?
At Kuriousity, Lissa Pattillo opens up the swag bag and shows us her latest purchases.
News from Japan: Eiichiro Oda is taking a week off from One Piece due to illness. Highschool of the Dead will be back in the next issue of Dragon Age. Negima creator Ken Akamatsu has a new series in the works, as does Blade of the Immortal creator Hiroaki Samura. Boys Over Flowers manga-ka Yuko Kamio is starting a new series, Ibara no Kanmuri (Crown of Thorns), starting in the May issue of Bessatsu Margaret. Also coming to Bessatsu Margaret: Stand Up!, by Chocolate Underground manga-ka Aiji Yamakawa. With the release of volume 12, there are now 10 million copies of Yotsuba&! in print.
The strange saga of the Kuroko’s Basketball threats continues: Studio You, which organizes Kuroko’s Basketball doujinshi events, cancelled an event that was scheduled for April 7 in Osaka, but they have announced another one that will take place on April 21 in Shizuoka. Someone has been sending threatening letters to manga-ka Tadatoshi Fujimaki and venues associated with the manga, and at least one of them may have contained a potentially lethal chemical.
Reviews: Carlo Santos brings us up to date on recent releases in his Right Turn Only!! column at ANN. Ash Brown takes us through the past week’s worth of manga reading at Experiments in Manga.
Katherine Hanson on vol. 1 of Ameiro Kochakan Kandan (Yuri no Boke)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 18 of Bakuman (Comics Worth Reading)
Ash Brown on vol. 11 of Death Note (Experiments in Manga)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vols. 1 and 2 of Demon Love Spell (Comics Worth Reading)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 11 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden (The Comic Book Bin)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 21 of Hayate the Combat Butler (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 9 of Psyren (The Comic Book Bin)
Helen on vols. 2-8 of Sailor Moon (Narrative Investigations)
Leroy Douresseaux on Three Wolves Mountain (I Reads You)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 1 of Tokyo Babylon (Comics Worth Reading)
Matthew Alexander on vol. 2 of Triage X (The Fandom Post)
The JManga news and the bit in their FAQs about not being able to download any of what you paid for is why I’m glad I never caved and bought myself anything from there. If I can’t download something, back it up, and use it after a company shut down, I’m not likely to buy it.
And that’s why JManga never got any of my money. I’m thrilled at Sublime’s methods (downloadable pdf, even if it does have my name embedded in some of the pages) and have bought most of what they put out, but I don’t pay for things I can’t own and need to be online to read.
The only exception I was willing to make was the Shonen Jump subscription – but that’s because it was cheap enough that the “rental” was reasonable. I ended up not doing it because of the time gaps between print and digital. I didn’t want to read titles at two different points in the story.