Drawn and Quarterly announced seven new volumes of Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro manga today. All will be in a “kid-friendly” format—standard manga trim size, 150 pages, black and white, $12.95 per volume—and each will collect new (to us) short stories from Mizuki’s extensive back catalog, translated by Zack Davisson, who will also contribute an essay to each volume. The first one, Birth of Kitaro, a collection of early stories, will be out in March 2016, and D+Q will issue a new one each season after that.
Also, more digital license rescues from Viz, which has picked up three former Tokyopop titles: Welcome to the NHK, Metamo Kiss, and AiON.
Justin Stroman talks to MangaBlog’s own Kate Dacey at Organization Anti-Social Geniuses. Learn how Kate got her start as a manga blogger, why she took a break, and what she’s doing now that she has jumped back in!
Also at OASG, Justin talks to translator Dan Luffey, who worked on Manga Reborn for a while and has translated over 1,000 chapters of manga.
The Manga Bookshelf team discuss their Picks of the Week. Lori Henderson gives her take on this week’s new releases—just call it shoujo-riffic!—at Manga Xanadu. Lori also says farewell to three series that are drawing to a close.
Laura looks at the new shoujo titles debuting in June at Heart of Manga.
Caitlin McGurk of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University interviews Maureen Donovan, OSU’s Japanese Studies librarian, who is retiring after 37 years on the job, part of which involved establishing one of the premier manga collections in the U.S.
News from Japan: Apparently there’s no such thing as too much Naruto: Saikyo Jump magazine has announced that Kenji Taira, creator of the Naruto spinoffs Rock Lee no Seishun Full-Power Ninden and Uchiha Sasuke no Sharingan Den, will create a manga based on the new movie Boruto -Naruto the Movie- for the September issue. Detective Conan (Case Closed) is going on hiatus for a few weeks. ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings as well as the top selling manga for the first half of the year by volume and by series.
Reviews: At Brain Vs. Book, Jocelyne Allen takes a peek inside the massive tome that is vol. 1 of Comitia 30th Chronicle, a collection of comics honoring the 30th anniversary of this massive doujinshi festival. Sean Gaffney and Michelle Smith go over some recent releases in the latest Bookshelf Briefs column at Manga Bookshelf. Ash Brown looks back at a week’s worth of manga reading at Experiments in Manga.
Matthew Warner on vols. 2 and 3 of Ani-Imo (The Fandom Post)
Kory Cerjak on vol. 1 of The Devil Is a Part-Timer (The Fandom Post)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 5 of Food Wars (The Comic Book Bin)
Ken H on vols. 43-48 of Fairy Tail (Sequential Ink)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 6 of Food Wars (Comics Worth Reading)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 2 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 11 of Magi (The Comic Book Bin)
Sakura Eries on vol. 2 of Milkyway Hitchhiking (The Fandom Post)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 3 of Prophecy (Comics Worth Reading)
Julia Smith on vol. 2 of Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire (The Fandom Post)
John Rose on vol. 3 of Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro (The Fandom Post)
Anna N on vol. 1 of So Cute It Hurts! (Manga Report)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 6 of Terra Formars (Lesley’s Musings… on Manga)
Matthew Alexander on vol. 1 of Trinity Seven (The Fandom Post)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 10 of Umineko When They Cry (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Erica Friedman on vol. 3 of What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Okazu)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vols. 7 and 8 of What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Comics Worth Reading)