The internets have yielded an unusually good harvest today—some unusual scanned manga and a couple of interesting commentaries—so fix yourself a cup of coffee and settle in for some good reading.
A little Moto Hagio to start your day: For those who missed the shoujo manga issue of The Comics Journal, Scans_Daily posts a gallery of Hagio’s art from that issue, including a short manga.
Shaenon Garrity’s Overlooked Manga Festival rolls on with a look at an awesome manga from 1931, The Four Immigrants Manga. Originally published in Japanese and English, it’s a first-hand account of immigrant life in San Francisco and includes the earthquake, dealing with anti-Japanese bigotry, and the Panama-Pacific exhibition, along with vignettes of daily life.
In case you missed the boat and didn’t get one of the galleys of To Terra that Vertical sent out last week, Christopher Butcher has a 16-page preview up at Comics212.net. It’s a sci-fi epic by Keiko Takemiya, who later achieved fame as one of the shoujo artists known as the Magnificent Forty-Niners—but this work, as Kethylia pointed out earlier this week, is a shounen manga.
Are you being served? Mickle has some thoughts on fanservice. (Via When Fangirls Attack!)
John Jakala has a great roundup of his reading in 2006. I like his conclusion: he enjoyed his comics more this year because he gave up on floppies, quit preordering, and read the reviews first.
ComiPress translates a Japanese blogger’s comparison of casual and hardcore manga readers. Also at ComiPress: more info on the Kodansha international manga competition.
MangaCast looks at this week’s manga. Executive summary: Kare Kano!
New to the blogroll: margin.notes, a blog about novels, manga, and other written media translated from Japanese to English, written by teacher and freelance writer Winnie Shiraishi. I believe she is the first person on the blogosphere to review To Terra, so that’s a good place to start. And say hello to Shuchaku East, brand new blog with a very nice design and just one post so far: a review of vol. 1 of Kami Kaze.
Reviews: “It was quite the large manga experience”: Connie has a lengthy and thoughtful review of Ode to Kirihito at Slightly Biased Manga. AfterEllen.com reviews 12 Days. (Via Journalista.) Mangamaniaccafe reads vol. 1 of Utopia’s Avenger. Kethylia gives high marks to vol. 1 of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster.
Hmm… maybe that’s why Viz is not busy beating Tokyopop at the OEL manga game. They have a much bigger weapon to wield: their parent companies. Who would drew more talent, a small American manga importer focusing on soley the English market, or the biggest manga house in the world? The opportunity to be published in Morning or even the real Shonen Jump? To be considered a REAL manga-ka by not just s tiny group of fans in your own country, but other publishing Japanese manga artists? Forget that Rising Star of Manga fiasco, this is the real deal with submissions from all over the world. I’d say that OEL artists can grow that much faster facing this level of competition and critical analysis.
I don’t think the current crop of OEL stands a chance of winning the first e-morning Grand Prize; it will most certainly be someone from Taiwan, China, or Korea. But I believe within a few years the Western artists may become real competitors. Who knows, maybe in a few years gaijins would be allowed to enter the prestigious Four Seasons Award. As an Afternoon subscriber I get the annual special Four Season winner manga, and I’ll tell you no one out of Japan currently stand a chance of placing in THAT competition.
I’m sure given the popularity of this blog I’m just gonna become flammed liked there no tomorrow, but that’s just how I feel. Flaming me won’t change the fact that the average level of OEL artists in term of art, story, etc is still right about mid-level doujin circles (university clubs). May sell a few copies at Comiket (if you pick the right series like Haruhi), but ZERO chance of being published commercially. Outside of TP of course.