MangaBlog

Shaenon Garrity cancels her cancellation of this week’s Overlooked Manga Festival and provides a year-end update.

ChunHyang72 pauses for another manga minute and asks: What underrated Tokyopop titles should she add to her pile?

Free manga for Monday: Broccoli’s January webcomic is Kamui Academy, an extra that will appear in vol. 6 of Kamui.

Wrapping up the old year, starting the next: Chris Mautner posts his list of the best manga and manwha of 2006. Dave Lartigue’s best comics list includes several manga. And Andre posts his wish list for 2007.

Paul Gravett profiles manga-ka Junko Mizuno, whom he describes as “queen of the cute and creepy.” (Via Journalista.) At MangaCast, Ed links to an interview with mangaka Moyoko Anno. (Note: Ed’s link is a download.) Also at MangaCast: This week’s doujinshi ratings.

Mail Order Ninja made its debut in the funny pages yesterday. I read it in the Boston Globe, where it was quite small, even smaller because the comic itself is enclosed in a frame with a synopsis on one side. It seems to be standard practice to cut out a lot of pages when transferring manga to newspapers, so the story starts rather abruptly.

It’s the Cardcaptor Sakura Truly Creepy Love Diagram! (Via When Fangirls Attack!)

Elae has some updates on German manga artists.

Icarus Comics brings the sad news that Cup Noodle inventor Momofuku Ando has died at the age of 96. Ando was one of the stars of the manga Project X: Cup Noodle.

Job posting: Rush needs a Russian translator for a manga project.

Yaoi Press has a new online store.

Ed shows off some of his loot from Comiket, including the original Broke Back manga. Erica Friedman picked up a few things as well.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna is so disgusted with the last volume of Hot Gimmick that she’s reconsidering the whole series. There are spoilers in the post, but it’s an interesting addition to the discussion about shoujo role models.

David Welsh loves Love Roma, and his ardor isn’t dimming any even by volume 4. The final volume of Anne Freaks threw him a bit, though.

Kethylia is pleasantly surprised by vol. 1 of Kashimashi ~Girl Meets Girl~. Active Anime’s Christopher Seaman reviews the Tsubasa Character Guide and vol. 1 of Ninin Ga Shinobuden, while Holly Ellingwood checks out vol. 3 of Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja and vol. 5 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden. Mangamaniaccafe is disappointed by White Guardian, aside from the production values, but enjoys vol. 1 of Nosatsu Junkie. Alex of Yaoi911 also disliked White Guardian. At Manga Punk, Anime Punk Joey mostly likes DVD but docks a point for some offensive content. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie whittles down the stack with reviews of vol. 15 of Fruits Basket, vol. 16 of Dragon Ball, vol. 1 of DVD, vol. 8 of Phoenix, and vol. 4 of Sgt. Frog. PopCultureShock’s Katherine Dacey-Tsuei doesn’t think vol. 1 of Vampire Knight lives up to its potential. Adam Stephanides reads vol. 10 of Wallflower and decides the series has lost its mojo.

ComiPress translates a Japanese article about the manga market in 2006 and reports on a new manga imprint that will be publishing a new seinen magazine.

David Welsh asks if anyone has read Kino no Tabi, and what they thought of it.

Elae points to an article on the Yaoi Press blog about backlist, which makes a pretty good point: Backlist books don’t sell—unless they are part of a multivolume series. Then they do quite well:

The Yaoi Hentai series was an eye-opener for me. When Yaoi Hentai 2 was put in the face of buyers, sales of volume 1 went from fizzle to boom. I had to scramble out a second printing. Now with volume 3 coming out in January I see the effect again on volume 1 and 2.

The upshot: Yaoi Press won’t be considering one-shots from unknowns. They want creators who either have “name power” or will make the commitment to a multivolume series (or, presumably, both).

Andre finds some cover art for upcoming books at Amazon.ca.

Bookslut checks out the best book covers of 2006, and Abandon the Old in Tokyo makes the list:

There’s just something so cool and noir about this cover — so noir it’s beige. Not to get all J. Peterman about it, but this looks a bit like the book that you would be reading on the bus shortly before being drawn into a complex set of seemingly unrelated circumstances, that would eventually involve you having to stab someone with the knife concealed in your inconspicuous-looking plaid umbrella. This is also one of the few editions of Japanese comics that, to American eyes, will not make you look like someone who spends a lot of time at home composing personal ads expressing one’s interest in Asian women.

Gee, thanks!

MangaCast has the latest doujinshi ratings.

Reviews: Kethylia reviews volumes 1, 2, and 3 of The Drifting Classroom. It’s career day for Tangognat, who reviews Banya, the Explosive Delivery Man and Hayate, the Combat Butler. Mangamaniaccafe reviews vol. 13 of Red River. AoD’s Matthew Alexander reads vol. 1 of Trinity Blood. At Active Anime, Holly Ellingwood has an advance review of a new title that looks pretty cute, Crazy for Dogs. I have a feeling we’ll be picking that one up.

A classics student named Dygo Tosa has translated a story from Kazuhiro Fujita’s Ushio to Tora Gaiden and he has posted the first four pages on the web along with extensive notes. It’s written as an introduction to manga, so some of it will be familiar territory to scanlators and reviewers, but some is new, and it’s interesting to see his thought process. Also, it looks like a pretty nice manga, and it does not seem to have ever been translated into English. He’s waiting for copyright clearance to post more pages.

In a much less serious vein, Tokyopop is doing another online manga marathon, this one of Roadsong. Volume 2 must be coming out, as they have volume 1 up for free.

There are some serious rumblings of discontent out there about the American Anime Awards. At MangaCast, Ed dubs their list of nominated manga “stranger than a PWCW top ten list” and in the comments, Yaoi Suki’s Jen Parker notes that any book that was available in 2006 was eligible: “So technically you’re voting for the best (whatever) of all time, which means they are seriously missing some stuff ;p” Apparently the initial nomination lists were riddled with errors as well. ANN’s Zac Bertschy asks some tough questions of ICv2’s Milton Greipp, starting with why the whole thing seems to be an ADV production, and it’s fun to watch him squirm. And David Welsh has more to say.

Manwha sales are fairly anemic in South Korea but taking off in other countries, according to this article translated by ComiPress.

In case you needed convincing, Comicsnob’s Matt Blind explains why manga are better. And it’s part 4 of a four-part series! (Five-part, actually, as there’s a part 0.)

Alert TokyoSpace blogger Andre spots the June titles list at Tokyopop.

CMX is reprinting Sword of the Dark Ones with updated cover art. (Via Anime on DVD.)

In Japan, manga goes multimedia once more with sound files of the manga being read by “professional manga readers.”

If your New Year’s resolution is to broaden your horizons a bit, Katherine Dacey-Tsuei has some new suggestions for comics for manga lovers at PopCultureShock. This month she focuses on titles from Archaia Studios Press.

Happy Blogiversary to one of my favorite sites, When Fangirls Attack.

Evidence of manga creep: Remember when manga was obscure, and people didn’t know from chibi? I ran across three amusing cultural crossovers in the past day or so. First of all, Powerpuff Girls doujinshi, with a Dexter crossover. (Found via the Comicsnob article linked above.) Second, I was browsing this page of Monty Python plushies (the Black Knight, with removable arms, a parrot that is definitely alive, just sleeping, etc.) and realized that a bunch of them were chibis. Wrap your brain around the concept of “Spanish Inquisitor chibi” or “King Arthur chibi” and you’ll see how far we’ve come. And finally, this article in a computer magazine suggests that Microsoft’s user interface comic would be much better if it were written as a manga, with chibis. Which just goes to show that E-week is hipper than Wired. Who knew?

Kethylia finds solid shoujo entertainment in vol. 1 and vol. 2 of Tail of the Moon. MangaManiacCafe reviews vol. 1 of Eden. Active Anime’s Holly Ellingwood enjoys vol. 2 of Suzuka. Comicsnob takes a look at vol. 1 of Return to Labyrinth.

This week’s USA Today top 150 is up, and our two favorite series are back, after being pushed off the list by soppy Christmas books last week. Volume 12 of Naruto is back, checking in at number 77 after spending last week at #164. Volume 15 of Fruits Basket also rebounds, from 182 last week to 82 this week.

PWCW has an article about manwha that covers differences in content and the overall publishing culture.

David Welsh takes a look back at 2006 in his Flipped column and finds steady growth but nothing too exciting. Here’s his wish for this year: “And maybe 2007 will be The Year of Josei.” From your keyboard to the publishers’ ears, David.

German blogger Myk has an interesting post comparing publishing schedules in the U.S. and Germany. (Via Precocious Curmudgeon.)

Hazel wraps up her look at January 2007 debuts with her top four picks.

The Comiket crowd checks in: Ed Chavez nearly gets run over by the fujoshi while Erica Friedman watches TV and buys novels.

Did Santa disappoint you this year? Tuffy at Fan Dumb has some awesome schwag, and some of it is even free. Or you could order the new Cantarella poster from the ALA. If you just want some kickass manga, try the brand-new Go!Comi online store. They’re offering free shipping until Jan. 14. And if you’re flat broke but in need of a good read, check out the Vertical blog, where Anne Ishii is giving away galleys of To Terra…, but only for the next few days.

It’s Manga Monday at Comics-and-more, where Dave Ferraro goes from one extreme to another with reviews of vol 1 of Fruits Basket and vol. 3 of The Drifting Classroom. At Anime on DVD, Jarred Pine reviews both volumes of Boogiepop Dual. At Active Anime, Blake Waymire reviews vol. 10 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and Holly Ellingwood has an advance look at vol. 14 of From Far Away. And speaking of manwha, Kethylia gets a little cynical herself about vol. 1 of Cynical Orange.