Naruto, vol. 10, shoots to number 38 on the USA Today top 150, up from 67 last week. Volume 10 of Negima also makes it onto the list, at number 101. Checking the handy database, I note that every volume of Negima except 1 and 4 has made it onto the Booklist for one week, with volume 5 doing the best at number 95.
Everyone is all excited about Seven Seas’ announcement of a Death Jr. manga. Not being a gamer, I was slow to catch on, but the “franchise,” as they so appealingly call it, is supporting two games and now two comics, a manga and a non-manga, so there must be something to it.
The Lincoln Heights Literary Society looks at something a little different: Project X Cup Noodle, a nonfiction manga about the development of the Nissen Cup Noodle. Manga creep, anyone?
The Japan Times has another article about Chung In Kyung, the political cartoonist who got the first-ever PhD in manga. Kyung wields a sharp pen and gets off some good points about American as well as Japanese politics.
At MangaCast, Ed gives the rundown on the DMP panels at Anime Expo 2006.
ComiPress translates an article on abrupt endings to (Japanese) Shonen Jump series. At Irresponsible Pictures, Pata does a bit of analysis:
In a way, you can see how SJ really is the Big Two (and then some) of manga, getting into these indefinitely long-running adventure storylines and then having to pull endings out of their asses when the series suddenly gets cancelled.
This site made me laugh: Kawaii Not, webcomics and icons that send up those overly cute Japanese cartoon characters. My younger daughter is completely addicted to the San-X menagerie of cuties—Tarepanda, Nyanko Kitty, and my favorite, Kogepan. The San-X characters are so weird they are almost self-parodies to begin with; Kawaii Not just makes it explicit. (Not entirely safe for work, at least, not at second glance.)
