AX followups, manga musings

Kai-Ming Cha, my editor at PWCW and someone who knows a lot about manga, says the kids are reading manga as a genre, not a medium. In other words, it’s all about the shonen and the shoujo.

The audience now likes a certain story and a certain art styel. Thye’re not interested in reading outside of that. When Viz was showing their Inoue stuff, there wasn’t a peep in the audience. Sumi and Water, his art books, are coming out in Sept. as are a few other manga, including REAL and SD, but no cheers or murmurs of excitement- or even of recognition.
The Arina Tanemura and Dragon Ball art books, however, were met with a wave of “ooohhh”

A special edition of Shonen Jump was met with cheers.

What about seinen and josei? She sees those genres as appealing to people who like comics in general, not those who define themselves as manga readers. It’s an interesting point, and I think the Dark Horse folks know it pretty well; it does suggest what direction the marketing should go in. And my own experience bears that out: My two daughters, who were passionate readers of shoujo and shonen manga just a few years ago, have largely outgrown it. My younger daughter, who will be 14 this month, only reads Yotsuba&! and Yakitate!! Japan, while my older one, at 15, reads mostly prose novels. Neither has any interest in Suppli. (Via The Beat, where the comments on this post are worth checking out.)

Japanator wins the race to post this week’s new releases.

The Anime Expo followups are rolling in. ICv2 takes a look at the four new titles from Viz. At MangaCast, Ed Chavez follows up on CMX, Bandai, and Go! Comi. Gia posts an index to her AX reportage.

John Jakala and Simon Jones came up with an interesting idea for marketing sports manga: Sell it at the events. Check out the comments at the Icarus blog (NSFW) to see the great minds at work.

At Comics 212, Christopher Butcher digs up and edits a vintage interview with manga-ka Taiyo Matsumoto, creator of Tekkonkinkreet. He throws in a bibliography and a gallery of cover images as well. Also, he spots an entry in Time Magazine’s “Famous Authors’ Guilty Pleasures” series in which Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz confesses to his love of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. So maybe all is not lost!

These are tough times for ADV Manga, but the fact is that readers wouldn’t beat up on them so much if they didn’t put out such good books. In his latest Flipped column, David Welsh looks at some of their standout titles.

Dark Horse has redesigned their website. The old one was actually pretty easy to use, but I generally ignored everything but the drop-down menus anyway. This one is nicely organized and puts comics front and center, including a link to their webcomics on the home page. (Hat tip: John Thomas.)

Manly Manga and More has the July releases for Germany.

Reviews: Carlo Santos comes back from Anime Expo with a stack of manga and a heap of opinions, all distilled into his Right Turn Only!! column at ANN. Also at ANN, Theron Martin reviews vol. 12 of Claymore and Casey Brienza reads vols. 1 and 2 of Fall In Love Like a Comic. Erica Friedman reads the yuri light novel Vanilla at Okazu. Salimbol posts an ambitious review of vols. 16-25 of Basara at The Chocolate Mud Wyvern Presents. Connie checks out vol. 1 of Suihelibe and vol. 2 of Fairy Tail at Slightly Biased Manga. Oyceter reads three Kaori Yuki titles, Blood Hound, Boys Next Door, and Kaine. Sesho reviews vol. 4 of Gunslinger Girl and vol. 5 of Sorcerer Hunters. Clive Owen takes a look at vol. 1 of Rosario + Vampire at Animanga Nation. Lissa Pattillo reveiws vol. 2 of Mail at Kuriousity. Michelle enjoys vol. 20 of Fruits Basket and vol. 13 of Skip Beat! at Soliloquy in Blue. Dave Ferraro devotes Manga Monday to vols. 1 and 2 of Cat-Eyed Boy at Comics-and-More.