MangaBlog

Media Blasters is back in the yaoi manga game with the announcement that they will publish You Higashino’s Gay’s Anatomy: Episode Zero, which had been solicited and then cancelled last June. The company’s anime division is still going strong but they laid off part of their print division earlier this year.

Zack Davisson talks to Dark Horse director of Asian licensing Michael Gombos and online marketing manager Matt Parkinson at Manga Life.

Sean Gaffney looks ahead to this week’s new manga.

The Banana Fish roundtable continues at Manga Bookshelf with Melinda Beasi, Robin Brenner, Connie C., Khursten Santos, and Michelle Smith taking a look at volumes 9 and 10.

Ash Brown takes a look at manga podcasts at Experiments in Manga, and in the latest Manga Out Loud podcast, Ed Sizemore, Johanna Draper Carlson, and their guests discuss Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories.

Jason Thompson devotes his latest House of 1000 Manga column to Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac, which he describes as “possibly the ultimate ’80s Shonen Jump fighting manga.”

One Great Turtle has a close encounter with the teenage point of view: Reading print manga is for squares, man. (Via Ogiue Maniax.)

Melinda Beasi looks at three workplace manga at Manga Bookshelf.

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber provides one-stop shopping with a roundup of manga gift guides at All About Comics. She also asks her readers: What are your favorite shoujo manga cliches?

Seven manga, including Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, were nominated for awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival; Deb Aoki provides a brief look at each one.

News from Japan: The last volume of Tenjho Tenge was published this month, and Shueisha marked the occasion with a one-shot story in Ultra Jump. Also, Dragonball is coming back but not in its original form: Shueisha has announced a new children’s magazine, Saikyō Jump (Super Strong Jump), that will include spinoffs of Shonen Jump manga, including Naruto and One Piece. The Dragonball spinoff, Dragonball SD, will be a color strip drawn by Naho Ooishi. And the latest educational manga is coming out courtesy of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is looking for artists to draw an anti-piracy manga to be translated into six languages and published online.

Reviews: Deb Aoki shares a quick look at what she has been reading lately with her 10 mini-manga reviews at About.com. Johanna Draper Carlson lines up some short reviews of Shojo Beat titles at Comics Worth Reading.

Deb Aoki on Ayako (About.com)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 2 of Bakuman (Comics Worth Reading)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 2 of Fairy Navigator Runa (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Zack Davisson on vol. 5 of Jormungand (Japan Reviewed)
Andre on vol. 1 of Kurozakuro (Kuriousity)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 4 of Ninja Girls (I Reads You)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 3 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Kuriousity)
Kate Dacey on Short Cuts and vol. 1 of Genkaku Picasso (The Manga Critic)
Deb Aoki on vol. 1 of The Story of Saiunkoku (About.com)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of The Story of Saiunkoku (A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Deb Aoki has a long list of the 21 best manga of 2010.

Peepo Choo creator Felipe Smith is living the dream—he is one of the few Americans to get a gig making manga in Japan, for a Japanese magazine. Marc Bernabe interviews him on video for Masters of Manga, and his advice can be boiled down to this: Learn the language, and be prepared to work really, really hard.

Share your knowledge: Same Hat posts some questions from Ryan Holmberg, who curated the Garo manga show and is doing a postdoc in contemporary art, about American reactions to the work of Kazuo Koike.

Sean Kleefeld finds a manga reader, a extension for the Chrome browser, that’s so good, users might not realize it’s pulling in scanlated manga.

Two manga, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto and Suehiro Maruo and Edogawa Rampo’s La Chenille (Imomushi) have been nominated for the Best Comic award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

David Welsh reaches the letter Q in his Seinen Alphabet at The Manga Curmudgeon.

Tanbishugi spots a new Tokoyopop license on Amazon: The Sacred Blacksmith. ANN has more.

Reviews: Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith discuss four Juné manga in their latest BL Bookrack column at Manga Bookshelf. Ng Suat Tong puts the beat down on vol. 1 of Genkaku Picasso at The Hooded Utilitarian. Other reviews of note:

Greg McElhatton on vol. 1 of AX (Read About Comics)
Lissa Pattillo on <a href="Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Demon Sacred (ANN)
Kristin on vol. 19 of D.Gray-Man (Comic Attack)
Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Fafner: Dead Aggressor (Sequential Ink)
Lori Henderson on vol. 8 of Gestalt (Manga Xanadu)
Anna on vol. 3 of Itazura na Kiss and vol. 2 of Alice the 101st (Manga Report)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 8 of Pokemon Adventures (ANN)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 4 of Time and Again (Kuriousity)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 9 of Vagabond (VizBig edition)

Kate Dacey, Brad Rice, and David Welsh make their choices from this week’s new releases.

Melinda Beasi’s Pick of the Week is Real; check out Manga Bookshelf to find out why she likes it so much.

At comiXology, Kristy Valenti quizzes Carl Horn about Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

News from Japan: Ken Akamatsu is working with other manga-ka to create a free “J-Comi” site that will post out-of-print manga as DRM-free PDFs, with advertising. Interesting idea.

Reviews

Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Arisa (Prospero’s Manga)
Anna on vols. 1-3 of Cross Game (Manga Report)
Rob McMonigal on vol. 7 of Emma (Panel Patter)
Todd Douglass on vol. 4 of Hero Tales (Anime Maki)
Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of K-ON! (Okazu)
Julie Opipari on vol. 4 of Raiders (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Lori Henderson on Tale of a White Night (Comics Village)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 4 of Twin Spica (A Case Suitable for Treatment)

The big news this morning is that Viz announced its spring-summer 2011 lineup, and it includes Tenjho Tenge, which will be published in new two-volume omnibus editions that are “100% faithful to the original”—unlike the bowdlerized edition published by CMX back in the day. The series will be published under Viz’s Signature imprint, and ANN catches up with Signature editor-in-chief Leyla Aker for a bit more background. But David Welsh is more excited about another one of Viz’s new titles, Natsume Ono’s La Quinta Camera.

Lori Henderson has some advice for a mom whose teen is reading scanlations online.

Melinda Beasi rounds up the latest Korean-comics news in this week’s Manhwa Monday post at Manga Bookshelf.

At Masters of Manga, Marc Bernabe takes a look at Tokiwa-sō Power!, a collection of manga by the creators who lived in the legendary Tokiwa-sō apartments, which were home to many manga-ka (including Osamu Tezuka) in the 1950s.

The next Manga Moveable Feast will feature One Piece, and if you aren’t reading it already, the prospect of a 55-volume (so far) series can be intimidating. Helpfully, David Welsh suggests some possible jumping-in points at The Manga Curmudgeon.

News from Japan: Japanator reports that the bookstore chain Kinokuniya is opening an electronic bookstore featuring both print volumes and ebooks, with about 30,000 ebooks ready to go when they launch at the end of this year. Perhaps some of those will be manga?

Reviews: Ash Brown looks at a week’s worth of reading at Experiments in Manga.

Erica Friedman on vols. 1 and 2 of Baba Yaga (Okazu)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 2 of Chobits (omnibus edition) (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime & Manga Blog)
Kate Dacey on Dragon Sword and Wind Child, vol. 1 of The Story of Saiunkoku, and vol. 1 of Summoner Girl (The Manga Critic)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 12 of Fairy Tail (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Carlo Santos on vol. 2 of Kingyo Used Books (ANN)
Caddy C. on Ouran High School Host Club (A Feminist Otaku)
Ai Kano on vol. 1 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Animanga Nation)
Kristin on vol. 3 of Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee (Comic Attack)

Molly McIsaac starts us off with the first Best Manga of the Year list of the year (at least, it’s the first I have seen) at iFanboy.com. (Via The Manga Critic.) Meanwhile, the Manga Village crowd pick the best of the past week’s new releases. At Good Comics for Kids, Lori Henderson posts this week’s all-ages comics and manga.

Lori Henderson gives us the week’s manga news in one handy post at Manga Xanadu, and Erica Friedman does the same for the world of yuri in her latest Yuri Network News at Okazu.

Sean Gaffney’s latest license request is Medaka Box, a Weekly Shonen Jump series that is written by NisiOisiN. Sean explains why that’s important:

NisiOisiN is a pen name for one of the more famous young Japanese novel writers at the moment, creator of several series such as Bakemonogatori (which spawned an anime) and Zaregoto (which Del Rey released two volumes of). He is very famous for, pardon the expression, screwing with his reader’s heads, as well as his character and plot twists, where you feel the immediate urge to go back and re-read everything with your newly gained perspective.

Melinda Beasi lists four of her favorite reviewers in her Follow Friday column at Manga Bookshelf.

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber thinks the manga industry could do a better job of marketing to the casual fans, the ones who don’t spend all their time on blogs like this one; more in-book ads would be a good start, she says.

David Welsh asks, the readers answer: Which manga and graphic novels do you feel guilty about not reading? Also: What would you like to see the Japanese publishers do with their new web portal?

Erica Friedman writes about the Japanese manga magazine Monthly Shounen Ace, home of Haruhi, Deadman Wonderland, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, at MangaCast.

Astrange takes a look at a textbook doujinshi at welcome datacomp.

Reviews: Deb Aoki takes us through this week’s reading with 10 mini manga reviews at About.com.

Greg McElhatton on vol. 1 of Ax (Read About Comics)
Michelle Smith on vols. 1-10 of Blame! (Soliloquy in Blue)
Katherine Farmar on The Dawn of Love (Comics Village)
Connie on vol. 6 of Future Diary (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Genkaku Picasso (Slightly Biased Manga)
Leroy Douressaux on vol. 1 of Genkaku Picasso (The Comic Book Bin)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of Hayate x Blade (omnibus edition) (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Leroy Douresseaux on vols. 7-9 of Hell Girl (omnibus edition) (I Reads You)
Shannon Fay on vol. 21 of Hikaru No Go (Kuriousity)
Johanna Draper Carlson on How to Draw Shoujo Manga (Comics Worth Reading)
Todd Douglass on vol. 3 of Ichiroh! (Anime Maki)
Victoria Martin on vol. 1 of March Story (Manga Life)
Oyceter on vols. 7 and 8 of Pluto (Sakura of DOOM)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 9 of Real (The Comic Book Bin)
Erica Friedman on Sukoyaka Paradigm Shift (Okazu)
Ash Brown on Tenken (Experiments in Manga)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 4 of Twin Spica (Comics Worth Reading)
Anna on vols. 8-10 of V.B. Rose (Manga Report)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 16 of XXXHolic (Kuriousity)
Erica Friedman on vols. 8-10 of Zombie-Loan (Okazu)

ANN is reporting this morning that 37 Japanese publishers are working together to set up a North American digital distribution portal for manga. What on earth does this mean? It’s not clear, but the players include Kodansha, Shueisha, and Shogakukan, the three biggest publishers in Japan, all three of whom publish manga exclusively with a single publisher in the U.S. (Del Rey for Kodansha, Viz for Shueisha and Shogakukan).

Deb Aoki has a preview of Shonen Jump‘s new look, plus a peek at the new series, at About.com.

Sean Gaffney takes an advance survey of next week’s new manga at A Case Suitable for Treatment.

Jason Thompson takes a fond look at Cobra, a manga whose hero looks like a 28-year-old man rather than a 14-year-old girl, in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

At Manga Therapy, Tony Yao looks at the question of sexism in Bakuman.

Melinda Beasi thinks about guilty pleasures in her 3 Things Thursday post at Manga Bookshelf.

Reviews

Anna on vol. 2 of Bunny Drop (Manga Report)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso (Comics Village)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 3 of Maoh: Juvenile Remix (The Comic Book Bin)
Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of Nobara no Mori no Otome-tachi (Okazu)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of The Stellar Six of Gingacho (The Manga Critic)
Penny Kenny on vol. 1 of Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution (Manga Life)