MangaBlog

Work, graduations, graduations, work… I’ll have a bigger, juicier post soon, but for the moment, here are a few highlights from today’s news and commentary.

Yen Press has announced two new titles: Y Square, by German manga artist Judith Park, and the manga versions of the Kids WB show World of Quest.

Is laughter the best medicine? David Welsh reviews three allegedly funny manga, Strawberry 100%, Gin Tama, and My Heavenly Hockey Club, in this week’s Flipped column.

ComiPress writer Isaac Alexander lists all the English-language anime and manga magazines he can find, with some info on each. And Hesei Democracy reviews the newest addition, Otaku USA, which officially debuts today.

Reviews: At Okazu, Erica Friedman reviews vol. 5 of Hana no Asuka-gumi. At the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie checks out vol. 6 of Skip Beat, vol. 3 of Peach Girl: Sae’s Story, and vol. 3 of Inu Baka: Crazy for Dogs. At Comics Worth Reading, Rob Vollmar gives thumbs up to vol. 1 of Phoenix, by Osamu Tezuka. The Manga Life crowd has been busy: Dan Polley reviews vol. 4 of The Empty Empire and vol. 9 of Nodame Cantabile, and Javier Lugo reviews InuYasha Profiles, vol. 2 of Dragon Drive, and vols. 1-4 of R.O.D. Read or Dream.

My latest column is up at Comixpedia: It’s an interview with artist Sonia Leong and writer Lloyd Prentice about their new webcomic, Aya Takeo.

Viz has announced that manga-ka Arina Tanemura, creator of Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Full Moon O Sagashite, will be their guest at SDCC, and the August issue of Shojo Beat will include a Tanemura short story never before published in English.

For Extreme Lesiban Cuteness, check out Shaenon Garrity’s latest Overlooked Manga Festival, which features Rica Takashima’s Rica ‘tte Kanji. Best line: “everything in this manga is as cute as a blender full of kittens.”

On the non-kawaii side of the blogosphere, Ryan from Same Hat is goes shopping in New York, and the pair write about a French exhibit featuring the work of Suehiro Maruo.

People don’t post to the Manga Talk LJ community too often, but when they do, it’s always interesting. The latest is a scholar working on an ESL program using translated manga, who asks about the trend toward unflipped manga. As always, the readers oblige in comments.

Awards time: The nominations for the Quills Awards are out, and one manga made the cut: Ode to Kirihito was nominated in the Graphic Novels category. And the Harvey Award nominations were also announced this weekend, and it looks like the year of Uncle Scrooge, who got a slew of nominations. As for manga, not so much; the only nominations were for Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Ode to Kirihito in the “Best American Edition of Foreign Material” category. Given the critical and commercial success of manga in recent years, the list seems rather narrow.

Speaking of that, Diamond released its sales numbers for the first time, and they are pretty good: Gross sales of $350 million, about 100 million comics and graphic novels sold. And sales of GNs are up 10% in the direct market, which ICv2 says is a trend that has been going on for a while.

Nearly 60% of the respondents to a Chinese survey on leisure activities said that they “like” or “love” manga, according to ComiPress, which also has the latest on the fate of serials from the Japanese Monthly Shonen Jump, which is being replaced with a new magazine.

Reviews: Precocious Curmudgeon David Welsh reviews Solfege and the fourth volumes of Dokebi Bride and ES: Eternal Sabbath. Matthew Alexander reviews vol. 1 of My Heavenly Hockey Club at Anime on DVD. At the MangaCast, Mangamaniac Julie reviews vol. 1 of Yurara.

Everything’s kind of late this week, including my posts. Here’s MangaCast’s rundown of the week’s new manga, which went on sale yesterday because of the holiday.

And they have a sweet Shojo Beat scoop: The editors are taking Nana out of the magazine (but will still publish it in graphic novel form) and they are replacing it with Honey and Clover. Meanwhile, on the boys’ side, according this LJ post, big changes are afoot at Shonen Jump as well. (Via ComiPress.) ANN has more.

Spot the error: ICv2 has a bit more on the Tokyopop/Kaplan vocabulary books, along with a cover shot. And they add

Tokyopop and Kaplan Publishing are planning to introduce additional volumes of vocabulary-building manga that will expand the number of exam-favorite words defined and allow teens to build their vocabularies in a much more pleasurable (and easy-to-remember) fashion than pouring over dry vocabulary lists.

Emphasis added. (It should be “poring.”) It’s a common error, but ironic that it would pop up here; the editors’ contempt for vocabulary lists is just a tad too apparent.

Okay, /snark. ICv2 also has a brief article about first-quarter sales that is really more of a promotion for their latest graphic novels guide, but does include some hard info: The best selling GN for the first quarter of 2007 was 300, although Naruto has surpassed it since. And some nice news for the girls:

Eleven of the top 25 manga properties identified by ICv2 are true shojo titles, while other key properties such as Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist and Bleach have substantial numbers of female readers. The distaff side of the market is also responsible for the increasing sale of “boys’ love” and yaoi titles, stores about relationships between male characters created largely by female artists for female readers.

Tech talk: 40% of Japanese consumers have downloaded manga to a computer or cell phone at least once. I’m always suspicous of this sort of survey, and just because they have downloaded some manga in the past doesn’t mean they do it every day. Over 60% say they plan to try it in the future, which is interesting, although obviously there’s a lot of overlap with that initial 40%.

MangaCast member readilbert translates an article on a recent symposium on women in Asian comics. Meanwhile Ed has compiled a list of Japan’s new manga releases for May and he also translates the Japanese manga rankings for this week.

The LA Times has an interesting article on novels based on manga:

In English, they read like a cross between the pulp fiction of the ’40s and the juvenile novels of the postwar decades. Yet the manga characters often display greater depth. Nancy Drew never had to choose between violating an oath never to kill again and preventing a coup d’etat that could result in thousands of deaths, as Kenshin does.

David Welsh continues to track the story of the Wanganui (NZ) library where a patron has had several manga, including Chobits, officially classified as age-restricted. The library will move its YA graphic novels section further from the children’s section and consider the matter closed. However, as noted in the local newspaper’s coverage, the classified books were immediately taken off open shelves and are now available only by request—with proof of age. “The graphic novel collection was popular among teenagers,” the paper states, but that’s less likely to be true if they have to ask a grownup whenever they want to check out a title.

David also checks out the fall titles in the latest Previews catalogue and lists readers’ recommendations for shoujo manga.

New at ComiPress: the Q&A session from a lecture by manga-ka Hirohiko Araki. They also translate a letter from the editors of Monthly Shonen Jump to their readers about the fate of several serials from that soon-to-be-discontinued magazine and relay the news that Rozen Maiden will soon end. On the other hand, Honey and Clover manga-ka Chika Umino has a new title in the works.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna comments on the upcoming Naruto blitz:

I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone comment on how more frequent releases make manga more like the traditional superhero comic. Naruto’s only $7.95 a book, and some of the Prestige format superhero series are $6.95 for a much thinner (although color) issue. If this plan succeeds, it’s one more thing that superhero comics used to be the only choice for (frequent serialized chapters) that manga might make inroads on. (And one more thing for retailers uncomfortable with manga to bitch about: “they come out too often!”)

Same Hat! Same Hat!! enjoys Chip Kidd’s cover designs for Vertical’s classic manga.

Not manga, but an excellent read anyway: Shaenon Garrity eviscerates Chris Muir’s Day by Day. I personally have always found this strip incomprehensible; it’s good to know I’m not alone.

Reviews: LJ’er exlibris76 reviews vol. 1 of Innocent Bird (via tokyojupiter). At the BasuGasuBakuhatsu Anime Blog, Hung checks out vol. 2 of Stray Little Devil, vol. 2 of The World of Narue, and vol. 1 of Penguin Musume, which is in Japanese. Robots Never Sleep is back with a review of the series Ressentiment, which is also available only in Japanese. Mecha Mecha Media enjoys vol. 1 of Mail. At the MangaCast, mangamaniac Julie reviews vol. 2 of Oyayubihime Infinity, and back at the Mangamaniaccafe she checks out vol. 2 of O-Parts Hunter, vol. 1 of Junk, and vol. 4 of Chibi-Vampire. At Manga Punk, Joey reviews vol. 1 of Dark Angel. Katherine Dacey-Tsuei has short reviews of Blue Spring, vol. 2 of E’S, and vol. 5 of Yakitate!! Japan at PopCultureShock.

Yeah, there is some.

Shaenon Garrity reaches back into the dim pre-history of translated manga (1998) and hauls out the original Mixx edition of Parasyte for the Overlooked Manga Festival. It’s a killer combination of bad art, weird lettering, and rappin’ back cover copy; I’m looking forward to seeing Del Rey show just how far we have come when they put out their edition next week.

Chloe lists four manga she’d like to see in English.

Pata digs up some Christian manhwa—from Chick Comics.

At Sporadic Sequential, John Jakala falls victim to a failure to communicate.

Reviews: Matt Brady’s review of vol. 1 of King City can be summed up in one word: “Yowza!” At Brain Food Lunch, Ariadne reviews vols. 1-3 of Red River. Mangamaniac Julie checks out the latest issue of Shonen Jump at the MangaCast. At Anime on DVD, Matthew Alexander reviews the adult one-shot Anzu: The Shards of Memory. Miranda gives vol. 1 of Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs a lukewarm reception at Prospero’s Manga, while Ferdinand is pleasantly surprised by vols. 2 and 3 of The Devil Does Exist. Reika is up to vol. 8 of the same series at the Tokyojupiter blog. Katherine Dacey-Tsuei reviews vol. 1 of Tanpenshu at PopCultureShock. If you read French, check out Stephen Paul’s review of Ranman at du9; if not, you can still enjoy Xavier Guilbert’s reviews of Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators and Soil. Only one manga review from Active Anime today: Holly Ellingwood checks out vol. 20 of the InuYasha Ani-Manga.

In order to catch up to the present Japanese release schedule and to prepare readers for upcoming notable changes in the main character and story arc, VIZ Media will offer three new volumes of NARUTO per-month from September through December 2007 – a first for any U.S. manga publisher.

Yes, you read that right: Viz just sent the Naruto publication schedule into hyperdrive, spitting out three new volumes a month for the last four months of 2007. Here are the release dates:

September 2007: NARUTO Vols. 16-18
October 2007: NARUTO Vols. 19-21
November 2007: NARUTO Vols. 22-24
December 2007: NARUTO Vols. 25-27

David Welsh has posted the full press release (warning: spoilers) in the Flipped forum, so you can see for yourself. At Precocious Curmudgeon, commenters wonder if Viz is trying to stay ahead of scanlations.

I’m leaning more toward the thinking on the ANN forums, which were onto this a week ago: Viz may be doing this to neutralize the deadly filler arc in the anime and let people know that the so-called Shippuden arc, in which Naruto is older and the story changes somewhat, is coming. That arc begins after volume 27, and Viz does seem to be very earnest about preparing people:

To support NARUTO NATION, VIZ Media’s SHONEN JUMP magazine will continue to serialize the NARUTO series, will provide in-depth background information for fans about the developments in the accelerated manga, and will begin to feature the new adventures of the older Naruto beginning in the January 2008 issue (estimated in stores December 4, 2007).

A third possibility, I suppose, is that someone just noticed the fine print in the Naruto contract and realized it was about to run out. But somehow I doubt that.

At the Anime on DVD forums, Peter Ahlstrom (an editor for rival Tokyopop) points out a possible downside:

There’s not going to be room on the bookshelves for anything else. I fear for the sell-in of any low-print-run favorite book of mine during those months.

The editor in me wonders how they are going to get the books out that fast. Either they have a huge backlog already translated and ready to go, or they’re going to have to hijack every freelancer and printer in the Bay Area to pull this off.

Update: Are they killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? Simon Jones says no:

Speeding up the release schedule of a hot property isn’t always a good thing (see Matrix 2 and 3), and there’s something to be said about the value of anticipation. But in this case, I think parents across America will just have to figure in an extra $15 into their monthly expenses, lest they face the wrath of their plastic-sword-swinging little Narutos at home.