Comicsnob posts this week’s manga watch list.
Comics in the Classroom has an interesting interview with Jason Thompson about his upcoming Complete Guide to Manga.
Meanwhile, the Japan Times harrumphs that grownups these days are acting like a bunch of kids, with the the manga and the celebrities and all.
Baseball and bandits: Over at Same Hat! Same Hat!! Ryan and Evan present another comic you won’t see anywhere else: Yoshida Sensha’s The Young Bandit.
ICv2 has more on the three new titles announced by Yen Press at SDCC.
Reviews: In his latest Flipped column, David Welsh reviews vol. 1 of Alive and vol. 1 of Keys to the Kingdom. Craig Johnson reviews vol. 17 of Blade of the Immortal at Manga Life. At Okazu, Erica Friedman checks out vol. 1 of The Last Uniform and a Japanese light novel, vol. 3 of Strawberry Panic. Hobotaku gives a B- to vols. 1 and 2 of Midori Days, which seems generous to me. At the Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie reviews Hate to Love You. Connie checks out vol. 1 of Heroes Are Extinct at Slightly Biased Manga. Michelle Ramonetti looks at an older title, vol. 1 of Moon Child, at Anime on DVD. At Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood reads vol. 1 of Spell. Hung reviews vol. 4 of Stray Little Devil at the BasuGasuBakuhatsu Anime Blog. Over at Manganews, Cornerofmadness checks out vol. 2 of Kuro Gane.
Re: Japanese growups: Funny article, There’s nothing much about manga really, but rather about youth culture. They guy’s data is all wrong… Only young teens would care about Kat-tun or Kumi Koda… people he was talking about, those in their 30’s, have simply kept their old idols LIKE Mr. Children, while some became otaku and fujoshis and become anime obssessed. They guy is very confused about the topic, mixing current trends with those 20-30 years ago. Idols have existed since the 70’s and the very first generation to be idol-crazy for icons like Yamaguchi Momoe, and those folks are in their 50’s now; they’re not going to watch SMAPxSMAP and sure as hell do not approve of kids putting on ko-gal makeup. Sounds like a young reporter writing about his first big piece, but he lost all credibility when he misspelled Morning Musume’s nickname: it’s MOMUSU, buddy. Just focus on a single group would be have been better, instead of lumping all post-war generations into one lump sum group.