MangaBlog

May 7 is Free Comic Book Day. Daniella Orihuela-Gruber notes the complete absence of manga among this year’s offerings and wonders if publishers are missing an opportunity to diversify. But it’s not entirely manga-free: Yen Press is giving away the first chapter of Svetlana Chmakova’s adaptation of Witch & Wizard.

At Publishers Weekly, I talked to Fred Lui of Digital about Amazon’s removal of some of their yaoi manga from the Kindle Store. And at MTV Geek, I list all the things that are wrong with the Sugoi Books app. Meanwhile, The Yaoi Review suggests some alternatives to the Kindle.

Sean Gaffney peers into his crystal ball at the manga being released next week.

At Manga Report, Anna asks if Ai Ore is clever satire or sexist trash. If you have to ask, the question has probably answered itself.

Jason Thompson looks at a classic, Reiko the Zombie Shop, in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

Viz turns 25 this summer, and David Welsh celebrates by naming his 25 favorite Viz manga and six more he’d like to see them license. David also reaches the letter N in his josei alphabet.

Melinda Beasi marks the release of the last volume of Hikaru no Go by hosting a roundtable on the series, and she also discusses its slashability in her Fanservice Friday post. And at Soliloquy in Blue, Michelle Smith reviews vols. 21-23 of the long-running series.

Rob McMonigal reflects on the Rumiko Takahashi Manga Moveable Feast at Panel Patter.

The Contemporary Japanese Literature blog has a nice roundup of the best of Tokyopop, including Suppli, Dramacon, and Gerard & Jacques.

A Day Without Me starts out reading Baseball Heaven but ends up discussing why bad translations are bad.

News from Japan: Shueisha has announced a new manga magazine to launch this summer; they claim that it won’t cater to any particular demographic, which is a bit hard to imagine. A manga adaptation of Black Rock Shooter will begin in Young Ace in June. And ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings, in which One Piece and Naruto lead all the rest.

Reviews

Connie on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Katherine Farmar on vol. 1 of Amnesia Labyrinth (Manga Village)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 6 of Biomega (The Comic Book Bin)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 3 of Genkaku Picasso (The Comic Book Bin)
TSOTE on vol. 5 of Geobreeders (Three Steps Over Japan)
Julie Opipari on vol. 6 of Goong (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Rob McMonigal on vol. 6 of Jormungand (Panel Patter)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 8 of Kimi ni Todoke (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 4 of Kurozakuro (The Comic Book Bin)
Kristin on vol. 5 of Maoh: Juvenile Remix and vol. 3 of Kingyo Used Books (Comic Attack)
Connie on Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! (Slightly Biased Manga)
Danica Davidson on vols. 4-7 of Monster (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Christopher Mautner on Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (Robot 6)
Connie on vol. 2 of Peepo Choo (Slightly Biased Manga)
Erica Friedman on vol. 4 of Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari (Okazu)
Erica Friedman on vol. 5 of Rakuen Le Paradis (Okazu)
Danica Davidson on vols. 4-6 of Rasetsu (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Lori Henderson on the May issue of Shonen Jump (Manga Xanadu)
Kyla Hunt on vol. 1 of Skip Beat (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Kate Dacey on vol. 4 of Spice and Wolf (The Manga Critic)
Todd Douglass on vol. 4 of Spice and Wolf (Anime Maki)
Connie on vol. 2 of Under Grand Hotel (Slightly Biased Manga)

Today’s big story is still a moving target, but here’s the gist of it: Amazon has removed a number of yaoi titles from the Kindle store, although most (not all) of the books remain available in print form through their website. [UPDATE: More on this at Robot 6.] The manga publisher Digital first posted about this yesterday, and what’s surprising is that it is not just affecting their fairly steamy 801 imprint; several of their milder June titles, including The Color of Love, have also been removed. The Yaoi Review reports that Yaoi Press titles have also been affected:

Yaoi Press’s founder Yamila Abraham has stated they will now have to change their explicit images on their prose titles to more ‘romantic’ images that will be acceptable to KINDLE.

Oddly, none of Animate’s titles seem to have been removed. Books that have already been purchased will remain available, and of course, there’s plenty of male-female and female-female porn comics available for Kindle. I have a few inquiries out about this, and if you can add anything from your own experience, feel free to comment below or e-mail me at the address on the right.

David Welsh looks over this week’s new manga at The Manga Curmudgeon.

Viz Media is adding four more manga titles to their iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch app: The House of Five Leaves, not simple, MAOH: Juvenile Remix, and Hyde & Closer. At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson is disappointed that Viz is moving to the iPhone but not to Android devices.

Khursten Santos has an introduction to and appreciation of Natsume Ono’s work at Otaku Champloo. Ono and Usumaru Furuya (Genkaku Picasso, Lychee Light Club) are going to be guests at this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which takes place this weekend, and Deb Aoki has a guide to TCAF for manga lovers at About.com.

Erica Friedman has an essay on the theme of the “girl prince” in yuri manga at The Hooded Utilitarian. She also has some thoughts on translating anime and the latest edition of Yuri Network News at her own blog, Okazu.

Rumiko Takahashi and her work are the topics for this week’s edition of the Manga Out Loud podcast.

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber reads all 26 volumes of the out-of-print classic Basara at All About Manga.

News from Japan: The shoujo magazine Margaret has announced five new series, including one by Arina Tanemura. We Were There/Bokura Ga Ita is coming to an end next year, and the Togari Shiro sequel manga wraps up next month. Three Steps Over Japan shows off an old issue of Garo and goes shopping for manga in the fairly remote town of Kagoshima.

Reviews

Ken Haley on vols. 2 and 3 of 7 Billion Needles (Sequential Ink)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (The Comic Book Bin)
Anna on vol. 8 of Black Bird, vol. 5 of Stepping on Roses, and vol. 5 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Manga Report)
Connie on vol. 17 of Blade of the Immortal (Slightly Biased Manga)
Eduardo Zacarias on vol. 34 of Bleach (Animanga Nation)
Sean Gaffney on vols. 11 and 12 of Higurashi: When They Cry (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Connie on vol. 2 of Itsuwaribito (Slightly Biased Manga)
Johanna Draper Carlson on The Manga Guide to Relativity (Comics Worth Reading)
Michael C. Lorah on Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths (Blog@Newsarama)
Connie on vol. 5 of Sensual Phrase (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lori Henderson on the April issue of Yen Plus (Manga Xanadu)

Here’s some big digital news: Viz is expanding its manga app to the iPhone and iPod Touch. I had the opportunity to test-drive the app, and the manga was surprisingly readable on the small screen. They have marked down select volume 1’s to $2.99 to encourage people to check it out.

Sequential Tart’s Margaret O’Connell starts the week with a look at Tokyopop’s role in creating the boys-love readership in the U.S., and how they gained fans with inexpensive manga and then turned them off by raising prices without improving quality. Tokoyopop’s BL-lite titles like Fake and Challengers helped them to get yaoi manga into bookstores that balked at more explicit offerings, which in turn helped create a wide readership for the genre.

And here’s some news about Blu digital manga: Digital’s eManga website has been carrying Blu manga for a while, but today they warned that the titles will be disappearing at 5 p.m. PST on May 20. If you buy them before then, however, you will continue to be able to read them after that time.

This month’s Manga Moveable Feast draws to a close with host Rob McMonigal posting links for day six and day seven as well as Megan Smith’s Rumiko Rummy and a very nice wrapup post.

Help David Welsh decide which yaoi manga to buy this month at The Manga Curmudgeon. David also shares his picks from the May Previews., and he teams up with Melinda Beasi, Kate Dacey, and Michelle Smith to discuss the Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week.

Lissa Pattillo shows off this week’s purchases at Kuriousity.

Michelle Smith and Melinda Beasi discuss some manga pages that make them laugh in their latest Let’s Get Visual dialogue at Soliloquy in Blue.

RightStuf has a sale on Udon books right now, and Lissa Pattillo points out some good bets at Kuriousity.

News from Japan: The winners of the 15th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Awards have been announced. Only one is licensed here: Hiromu Arakawa won the New Artist Prize for Fullmetal Alchemist. Khursten Santos gives us a bit more background on all the winners at Otaku Champloo. A manga with an unfortunately timed nuclear-power arc, the yakuza series Hakuryū Legend, which was suspended from the magazine Weekly Manga Goraku, will return with a new storyline. And Michiyo Kikuta (Fairy Navigator Runa, Mamotte! Lollipop) has a new series in the works.

Reviews: Ash Brown shares a week’s worth of manga at Experiments in Manga. At Manga Bookshelf, Melinda Beasi, Kate Dacey, Michelle Smith, and David Welsh have a new round of Bookshelf Briefs.

David Welsh on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (The Manga Curmudgeon)
Connie on vol. 16 of Blade of the Immortal (Slightly Biased Manga)
Katherine Hanson on Claudine (Yuri no Boke)
Connie on vol. 2 of ES: Eternal Sabbath (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 3 of Genkaku Picasso (Slightly Biased Manga)
Dave Ferraro on Hipira (Comics-and-More)
Johanna Draper Carlson on I’ll Give It My All … Tomorrow (Comics Worth Reading)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 5 of Tegami Bachi (The Comic Book Bin)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 5 of Toriko (The Comic Book Bin)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 12 of V.B. Rose (A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Tokyopop shut down their website this week, after sending a blizzard of e-mails warning users to make sure they had copies of anything they posted to the site over the years. The URL now redirects to their Facebook page, where fans are mourning the demise of their favorite publisher. Tokyopop took its fair share of criticism over the years from bloggers, but it’s easy to forget that we weren’t their core audience. The posters at the Facebook don’t follow the intricacies of publishing, but they do want their Hetalia/Alice in the Country of Hearts/Maid-Sama to continue. I hope the marketers from other publishers are looking at this—and noting the fierce loyalty some of these series inspired. Here’s a fairly typical comment, from Anna Elizabeth:

I want Tokyopop to answer this: Why are you shutting down? What about Hetalia? I can’t live without your manga and anime!!! WHYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?

Actually, the digital version of Hetalia will continue to be available, although there is no word yet on whether new volumes will come out in future. Over at MTV Geek, I took a look at Tokyopop’s closing event, a contest in which the winner gets a goodie bag and the chance to buy manga at a discount.

At The Comics Journal, Sean Michael Robinson talks to several Tokyopop creators about the situation regarding their rights.

Dark Horse announced yesterday that they would indeed be publishing CLAMP’s Gate 7 manga; I talked to DH director of Asian licensing Michael Gombos about it at MTV Geek.

Lori Henderson has this week’s list of all-ages comics and manga at Good Comics for Kids, and David Welsh checks out the best of this week’s new manga. Sean Gaffney takes a look at the manga heading our way next week.

The Manga Moveable Feast is going strong with this month’s celebration of Rumiko Takahashi. Head on over to Panel Patter, where host Rob McMonigal has links for days three, four, and five, as well as some fun facts and an interview with the hosts of the Takahashi fansite Rumic World.

For his latest House of 1000 Manga column, Jason Thompson looks at the classic Akira.

Johanna Draper Carlson and Ed Sizemore discuss 20th Century Boys in their latest Manga Out Loud podcast.

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith head over to The Hooded Utilitarian for this week’s Off the Shelf column, a discussion of Please Save My Earth. This in turn inspired David Welsh’s latest license reques: Global Garden, which is by the same creator. And Melinda’s Three Things Thursday post at Manga Bookshelf is… three reasons to read Please Save My Earth.

David also reaches the letter M in his Josei Alphabet.

Crunchyroll has just added a news site, Crunchyroll News, with updates on manga, anime, J-pop, and all other aspects of Cool Japan.

News from Japan: ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings, and they note that vol. 55 of Naruto is tops this week’s Oricon chart. Sakura Ikeda is working on a manga based on Tsukasa Fushimi’s Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai light novels, to run in Dengeki G’s magazine. And St. Oniisan creator Nakamura Hikaru has made five postcards to be auctioned off to help earthquake victims.

Reviews

Anna on vol. 1 of Ai Ore (Manga Report)
Noah Berlatsky on All My Darling Daughters (The Hooded Utilitarian)
Snow Wildsmith on vol. 1 of Amnesia Labyrinth (Good Comics for Kids)
David Welsh on vol. 1 of The Beautiful Skies of Hou Ou High (The Manga Curmudgeon)
Kristin on Cafe Latte Rhapsody and Honey Colored Pancakes (Comic Attack)
Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of Citrus (Okazu)
TSOTE on vol. 4 of Geobreeders (Three Steps Over Japan)
Michael Buntag on vol. 21 of Kare Kano (NonSensical Words)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 8 of Kimi ni Todoke (The Comic Book Bin)
Julie Opipari on vol. 3 of Library Wars: Love and War (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Sean Gaffney on Lychee Light Club (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Greg Burgas on Monster (Comics Should Be Good)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 2 of Oresama Teacher (I Reads You)
Diana Dang on vols. 14 and 15 of Ouran High School Host Club (Stop, Drop, and Read!)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 2 of The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Kristin on vol. 3 of The Story of Saiunkoku and vol. 2 of Oresama Teacher (Comic Attack)

It looks like the long-awaited CLAMP manga Gate 7 will finally be published in the U.S. Lissa Pattillo caught the word from a CLAMP fan site that the creative team had announced that Gate 7, which has already been serialized in Japan and France, will be published in book format in North America this summer. Dark Horse had announced several years ago that they would publish this series in mini-volumes they dubbed “mangettes,” but they never materialized. We reached out to Dark Horse for a comment but got no response; ANN had slightly better luck, with a cryptic “stay tuned.”

Don’t forget this week’s Manga Moveable Feast, which focuses on the manga of Rumiko Takahashi. Host Rob McMonigal has all the links to the Day Two writeups at Panel Patter.

Sean Gaffney looks at the top-selling manga in Japan and thinks about which ones he would like to see licensed in the U.S.

Caddy C. posts her thoughts on the Nana anime and manga at A Feminist Otaku.

Yen Press will start its manga-style adaptation of Gail Carriger’s Soulless novels in an upcoming issue of Yen Plus, with illustrations by rem, whom you may remember as the winner of the first Morning International Manga Competition and the illustrator of Tokyopop’s Vampire Kisses. Carriger from now until the book comes out, Carriger will be posting rem’s character sketches at her LiveJournal.

Viz has announced some new omnibus editions for summer.

Digital Manga has a few new licenses to show off, including Koi ni Tsuite and some later volumes of other series.

Manga-ka Natsume Ono (Ristorante Paradiso, House of Five Leaves) will be appearing at Kinokuniya in New York on May 10 to speak and answer questions about her work.

News from Japan: Microsoft is publising a manga called Cloud Girl to promote its cloud services system. Two Kadokawa magazines, Gundam Ace and Newtype, will be collaborating to produce a new manga magazine this summer. At Otaku Champloo, Khursten reports that Nakamura Asumiko is back to work on Sora to Hara, after taking a break due to health problems.

Reviews: Carlo Santos checks out a big stack of recent manga in his latest Right Turn Only!! column at ANN. Ash Brown takes us quickly through a week’s worth of manga reading at Experiments in Manga. Anna has some quick takes on Viz Signature manga at Manga Report. And the Manga Bookshelf gang posts their latest batch of Bookshelf Briefs.

Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 23 of Hikaru No Go (The Comic Book Bin)
Connie on vol. 3 of Maoh: Juvenile Remix (Slightly Biased Manga)
Nicola on vol. 2 of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (Back to Books)
Connie on Rose of the Rhine (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of With the Light (Manga Xanadu)

Tokyopop is not actually dead yet, but the post-mortems continue at a brisk pace. At All About Manga, former Tokyopop freelancer Daniella Orihuela-Gruber takes a well-rounded look at the way Tokyopop brought down rates for translators—but also made manga a mass medium.Christopher Mautner lists his six favorite Tokyopop titles, and reader chime in with theirs, at Robot 6. Johanna Draper Carlson rounds up some Tokyopop reactions and lists her favorite Tokyopop manga at Comics Worth Reading. And Lexie has a list to remember Tokyopop by at Poisoned Rationality.

The Manga Village team looks over the past week’s new releases.

This month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Rob McMonigal of Panel Patter, will focus on the works of Rumiko Takahashi. David Welsh takes the opportunity to ask his readers to name their favorite Takahashi manga and to check out Ranma 1/2 for the first time. At Otaku Champloo, Khursten Santos highlights her favorite character, Happosai. I won’t link to every post, because that’s Rob’s job; here’s his roundup of Day One links.

The writers of Sequential Tart celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday (and death day) with a look at star-crossed lovers in comics and manga.

Three Steps Over Japan has a quick peek at a vintage issue of Garo.

Yuricon is looking for yuri fans to write about their first yuri anime or manga. Details at Okazu. Also at Okazu: The latest Yuri Network News roundup.

Reviews

Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 14 of 20th Century Boys (The Comic Book Bin)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 14 of 20th Century Boys (Comics Worth Reading)
Kristin on vol. 1 of Ai Ore! Love Me (Comic Attack)
Sesho on vol. 1 of Arisa (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews)
Voitachewski on vol. 1 of Ax (in French) (du9)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 4 of Bakuman (Comics Worth Reading)
Oyceter on vols. 1 and 2 of Children of the Sea (Sakura of DOOM)
Sesho on vol. 1 of Cross Game (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews)
Edouardo Zacarias on vol. 2 of Cross Game (Animanga Nation)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 22 of Excel Saga (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Leroy Douresseaux on Invisible Love (I Reads You)
Lori Henderson on vols. 4 and 5 of Tena on S-String (Manga Xanadu)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 4 of Urusei Yatsura (A Case Suitable for Treatment)