Volume 11 of Naruto slips to number 27 on the USA Today booklist, from last week’s record high of 21. Volume 11 of Negima debuts at number 88 and volume 9 of Fullmetal Alchemist rises from 299 to 103.
Thursday is new comics day this week, because of the holiday. MangaCast runs down the new manga with their usual idiosyncratic picks of the week.
At Tokyopop, Telophase’s latest column gives the history of women manga-ka and how they have changed manga.
I’m sort of Tokyopop’d out, but if you’re not, Love Manga unpacks the PWCW story.
Tania del Rio just got her advance copy of Mangaka America, and you can take a peek at her Livejournal site.
How much does Jack Tse love Love Roma? So much that he put together a tribute podcast featuring many manga pundits offering their takes on LR. Full disclosure: he asked me to participate, but I’m the one person on earth who didn’t like it.
Rivkah says Tokyopop is not exploiting her. So there!
Forum moderation in action: Would it be so hard to do this on TokyoSpace?
Short stuff: David Welsh is enjoying Rumic Theater, a collection of short stories by Inuyasha/Maison Ikkoku/Ranma 1/2 manga-ka Rumiko Takahashi. And the Manga Junkie is reading Himawari ~ Ken’ichi Legend, a 4-koma manga about an office lady and her very strange father, but she admits it doesn’t translate well. (He poured curry on all his rice! He brought a durian on the bus! Horrors!) Enjoy her review, because this is one book that will probably never be translated.
Idiosyncratic? Do we amuse you? Are we peculiar to you?
Jack!! Brigid is using words I cannot translate or spell to make fun of me again!! JACK!! WAAH! :p
But about Himawari it is difficult to translate. I mean this is not just “lost in translation” but there is a cultural and personal gap here. I find it more like a long inside joke between father and mangaka. Can I relate to the curry story? Absolutely! If you do have more curry than rice the Japanese protocol is to create a bowl within the rice to hold the curry. The rice should never be entirely covered. The durian tale…. All I know is that you cannot drink alcohol and eat durian (its fatal).
If Del Rey ever even considers bringing that over, I’ll retire and become a full-time Dallas Middaugh groupie. Touring from city to city where ever Del Rey is playing.
Fear my sesquipedalianism! BWA-ha-ha!
Regarding Himawari, I know what you mean. I was very proud of myself when I started laughing at Swiss comics, which didn’t happen until I had lived over there for quite a while. Some people think the Swiss have no sense of humor, but they can be very funny. They’re just… different.
As for the durian, I think I heard somewhere that they smell bad. So maybe it’s like bringing a hunk of limburger cheese on the bus.
Brigid wrote:
“As for the durian, I think I heard somewhere that they smell bad”.
So bad that it’s forbidden to carry them onto subway trains in Hong Kong (or at least it used to be).