Aya Kanno Interview; New Licenses from Dark Horse; Free Manga from Viz

Aya KannoI interviewed Aya Kanno, creator of Otomen and Requiem of the Rose King, for the Barnes & Noble blog. Although her work is published in shoujo and josei magazines, Kanno originally wanted to do seinen manga, and she apprenticed with a shonen artist. But the first manga she ever drew was a shoujo manga:

What is the first comic you ever made? Not the first comic that was published, the first comic you made for yourself.
It was probably when I was in elementary school, grade three maybe—I was about eight or nine years old. I don’t even know why I wrote this, but the usual shoujo—the way things played out with shoujo—I was really kind of in opposition to, I was like “Ah, I hate this,!” but the details were very shoujo: This girl falls in love with her senpai [an older student], but he is moving away, so she knits him a scarf. That is the first thing I drew.

giganto-maxiaDark Horse announced some new licenses at its Anime Central panel: Giganto Maxia, by Berserk creator Kentarou Miura; RG Veda, by CLAMP (originally licensed by Tokyopop back in the day); Danganronpa: The Animation, by Spike Chunsoft and Takashi Tsukimi; and I Am a Hero, by Kengo Hanazawa. Lori Henderson covers the panel, which was apparently a surprise appearance.

Want some free digital manga? Viz is offering the first chapters of All You Need is Kill, Bleach, Food Wars, Naruto, and One Piece on their vizmanga.com platform.

The Manga Bookshelf team looks at this week’s new releases.

Lori Henderson looks at the latest manga best-seller lists from the New York Times and Amazon.

Erica Friedman brings us up to date with the latest edition of Yuri Network News at Okazu.

Reviews: Ash Brown reports in on the week in manga at Experiments in Manga.

Matthew Warner on vol. 15 of 07-Ghost (The Fandom Post)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 15 of Attack on Titan (The Fandom Post)
Erica Friedman on the May issue of Comic Yuri Hime (Okazu)
Anna N on His Virgin Mistress and Night of Love (Manga Report)
Matthew Warner on vol. 4 of Little Battlers Experience (The Fandom Post)
Sean Gaffney on vols. 15 and 16 of Ranma 1/2 (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Matthew Warner on vol. 17 of Rin-ne (The Fandom Post)
Ken H on vol. 1 of A Silent Voice (Sequential Ink)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Your Lie in April (Manga Xanadu)

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