News and interviews

I was going to do a roundup post on the BeBeautiful/Libre dustup, but Simon has done it for me, with links to info and commentary and his own insightful analysis as well. (Link is NSFW.)

In this week’s Flipped column, David Welsh explains exactly what is so good about Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, just out from Last Gasp.

At PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha interviews the affable Stephen Robson of Fanfare/Ponent Mon.

John Jakala reprints part of an interview with Japanese creator Usamaru Furuya, who started out at an avant-garde magazine, Garu, where he was allowed a great deal of artistic freedom but wasn’t paid for his work, and then moved to the more commercial Young Sunday, where he was paid but also expected to collaborate.

ANN interviews Fuyumi Ono, author of The Twelve Kingdoms. A beautiful copy of the hardback edition just arrived from Tokyopop, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

LJ’er Psychoe goes to see Roland Kelts speak about his new book Japanamerica and reflects on Japanese pop culture, the portrayal of women in manga, and the interactivity between fans and anime/manga.

At the MangaCast, Ed posts audio of the Del Rey panel at NYCC and cover images of the newly announced titles.

The final volume of Fruits Basket is out in Japan.

Otaku Champloo points us toward a Manga cafe’s website.

Congrats to Jeremy Atkins, who was recently promoted to director of publicity at Dark Horse. He immediately earned his first paycheck by sending out a blast of press releases, including the news that DH will be publishing the Dirty Pair novels.

They’ve had manga for cell phones for simply ages, so I guess it’s no surprise that a Japanese company is launching the first manga magazine exclusively for cell phones.

Reviews: As always, your first stop should be Pata’s Right Turn Only!! column at ANN, where this month he turns his gaze on the latest volume of Death Note and Brandon Graham’s new King City, among others. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie reads the manwha novella collection 9 Faces of Love and deems it weird, but worth checking out; she also enjoyed vol. 4 of Bride of Deimos. Miranda checks out the yaoi one-shot Wishing for the Moon at Prospero’s Manga, while Ferdinand briefly reviews vols. 3 and 4 of Genshiken. Jarred Pine gives high marks to Tapenshu at AoD, and the whole gang chimes in for the latest round of Small Bodied Manga Reviews. Also: Matthew Alexander gets his hands on the galleys of vol. 1 of Princess Resurrection. At Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 13 of One Piece and Christopher Seaman checks out vol. 7 of Nodame Cantabile. Okazu’s Erica Friedman reviews vol. 3 of R.O.D. Read or Dream. At the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie is disappointed by vol. 1 of Backstage Prince. Jordan Marks enjoys The Day I Became a Butterfly but is confused when the characters dressed like girls turn out to be… girls.