Shaenon Garrity cancels her cancellation of this week’s Overlooked Manga Festival and provides a year-end update.
ChunHyang72 pauses for another manga minute and asks: What underrated Tokyopop titles should she add to her pile?
Free manga for Monday: Broccoli’s January webcomic is Kamui Academy, an extra that will appear in vol. 6 of Kamui.
Wrapping up the old year, starting the next: Chris Mautner posts his list of the best manga and manwha of 2006. Dave Lartigue’s best comics list includes several manga. And Andre posts his wish list for 2007.
Paul Gravett profiles manga-ka Junko Mizuno, whom he describes as “queen of the cute and creepy.” (Via Journalista.) At MangaCast, Ed links to an interview with mangaka Moyoko Anno. (Note: Ed’s link is a download.) Also at MangaCast: This week’s doujinshi ratings.
Mail Order Ninja made its debut in the funny pages yesterday. I read it in the Boston Globe, where it was quite small, even smaller because the comic itself is enclosed in a frame with a synopsis on one side. It seems to be standard practice to cut out a lot of pages when transferring manga to newspapers, so the story starts rather abruptly.
It’s the Cardcaptor Sakura Truly Creepy Love Diagram! (Via When Fangirls Attack!)
Elae has some updates on German manga artists.
Icarus Comics brings the sad news that Cup Noodle inventor Momofuku Ando has died at the age of 96. Ando was one of the stars of the manga Project X: Cup Noodle.
Job posting: Rush needs a Russian translator for a manga project.
Yaoi Press has a new online store.
Ed shows off some of his loot from Comiket, including the original Broke Back manga. Erica Friedman picked up a few things as well.
At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna is so disgusted with the last volume of Hot Gimmick that she’s reconsidering the whole series. There are spoilers in the post, but it’s an interesting addition to the discussion about shoujo role models.
David Welsh loves Love Roma, and his ardor isn’t dimming any even by volume 4. The final volume of Anne Freaks threw him a bit, though.
Kethylia is pleasantly surprised by vol. 1 of Kashimashi ~Girl Meets Girl~. Active Anime’s Christopher Seaman reviews the Tsubasa Character Guide and vol. 1 of Ninin Ga Shinobuden, while Holly Ellingwood checks out vol. 3 of Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja and vol. 5 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden. Mangamaniaccafe is disappointed by White Guardian, aside from the production values, but enjoys vol. 1 of Nosatsu Junkie. Alex of Yaoi911 also disliked White Guardian. At Manga Punk, Anime Punk Joey mostly likes DVD but docks a point for some offensive content. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie whittles down the stack with reviews of vol. 15 of Fruits Basket, vol. 16 of Dragon Ball, vol. 1 of DVD, vol. 8 of Phoenix, and vol. 4 of Sgt. Frog. PopCultureShock’s Katherine Dacey-Tsuei doesn’t think vol. 1 of Vampire Knight lives up to its potential. Adam Stephanides reads vol. 10 of Wallflower and decides the series has lost its mojo.
Thanks for the linkage and for the manga recommendations! Tim Beedle also raved about “Genju No Seiza,” so I think I’m going to bump that one to the top of my list. I need a palette cleanser after “Vampire Knight.”