MangaBlog

Lots of interesting interviews on the Internets this morning. Newsarama has an interview with Eric Wight, who has just signed with Tokyopop to do My Dead Girlfriend.

ANN interviews voice actor Crispin Freeman. Scroll down a bit for his take on Western comics vs. manga:

mature storytelling doesn’t mean tits and ass, it means that there’s emotional stuff going on. So that has always existed—well, not always, but for a very long time—in manga. Sophisticated, emotionally-dangerous storytelling for girls and women that they find powerful and MEAN something to them. And I don’t see the equivalent of that on the American side of things, y’know?

ANN also has a nice interview with Adam Arnold and Jason DeAngelis of Seven Seas, in which they discuss their “stealth approach” to publishing and their plans to expand into films in the future and license their books in Europe and maybe even Japan.

And Wired News chats up Scott McCloud.

More from Toon Zone: Broccoli announced it has licensed E’s, by Satol Yugia, which is an Enix title. ADV has already released the anime. Here are two fansites with covers and plot information.

Also, Broccoli has a preview of Yoki Koto Kiku, about a set of triplets and the mischief that a possible inheritance can cause.

UPDATE: Ed has more at MangaCast and will have audio of the panel tomorrow.

SECOND UPDATE: Broccoli has posted their view of the con so far on their blog. If you’ve been following it (it’s better written and more consistently updated than most blogs) you’ll know that they have been discussing a mysterious “Title X” for some time; E’s is it.

Toon Zone has a report on the CMX panel at San Diego. Apparently it has sunk in that censoring Tenjho Tenge was a public relations disaster, especially as the crowd was somewhat hostile. One wonders if people showed up just to complain. CMX seems to have gotten the message:

However, they came with a tone of amends, mentioning that even if they wanted to do an uncut after the edited version finished, the licence would run out before they could complete it anyway. They also mentioned that in future they will focus on getting titles they know they can handle without any alteration. Add to that news that Emma will be uncut and rated to ensure that it can be uncut from the get go, and they seemed to have run the crowd over a little (maybe).

It sounds like they’re giving up on mature manga. That would be no loss, IMHO, as companies like Del Rey and Digital Manga seem to be happy to pick it up and do a good job with it.

Here’s the list of new titles:

Go Go Heaven by Yamada Keiko
Time Garden by Tamao Ichinose and Daimurou Kishi
Canon by Shiomi Chika
Apothecaries Argentum by Yamashita Tomomi
Key to the Kingdom by Shitou Kyoko
Orfina by Tennouji Kitsune
Variante by Ikura Sugitomo
Dorothea by Cutie

I can’t find much on any of these but the folks at the Anime on DVD forums are way ahead of me anyway. Here’s a thought: Maybe the publishers could, you know, have descriptions and covers ready to post on their websites, and press releases ready to be e-mailed, as soon as the announcement is made at the panel. On second thought, that would take away the element of audience participation that makes the manga world so … interesting.

(In all fairness, I did get a lovely press release from Dark Horse, but none of the titles on it look like manga.)

In other CMX news, volume 5 of Megatokyo is scheduled for March 2007. And I thought this was rather droll:

On the topic of synergy between CMX and the rest of Time Warner (TW), the TW general company line is that synergy doesn’t exist.

UPDATE: CMX has cover scans up, and ICv2 has more info.

It’s begun. Ed Chavez posts on the first manga panel of the San Diego Comic Con: Del Rey Manga. And he’s impressed. The new titles:

Kitchen Princess by Kobayashi Miyuki and Andou Natsumi
Mushishi by Urushibara Yuki
Mamotte Lolipop by Kikuta Michiyo
Shugo Chara by Peach-Pit
Parasyte by Iwaaki Hitoshi

Ed has cover scans if you want to get a sense of the art. Kitchen Princess and Mushishi are both Kodansha Award winners. Back in May, Ed wrote

Considering the history I wonder when we will be seeing either TOKYOPOP or Del Rey announce Insect Master and Kitchen Princess.

Now that’s what I call eerily prescient! There’s not much available on the web about Kitchen Princess, but I did find this Wikipedia article about Mushishi. It’s about supernatural creatures called Mushi that are invisible to most humans but not to the main character, Ginko, who studies the Mushi and helps people who are afflicted by them. Del Rey plans this to be a little nicer than your average manga, with flaps and better quality paper, and priced a little higher at $12.95. I’m not sure I like that; I’m all for quality, but I spend enough on manga as it is.

Mamotte! Lolipop is shoujo; according to the Manganews review, it’s about a girl who swallows what she thinks is a piece of candy but is actually a crystal ball.

now she’s the new object of the Pro Exam for the Magic World; whoever has Nina in their possession at the end of 6 months will be the only ones to become professional wizards!

Humorous and possibly romantic complications ensue.

According to ComiPress, volume 1 of Shugo Chara came out on July 6 in Japan, so the U.S. release won’t be far behind the originals. This page is in French but includes some scans of the characters. The story seems to involve a rebellious (but sweet) student, Amu, who possesses three mysterious eggs. There’s also a handsome “prince” and some less benign character who wants to get the eggs. Each character is accompanied by guardian angels who represent their character traits (Amu gets three). Peach-Pit is actually two manga-kas whose other work includes DearS and Rozen Maiden.

If Parasyte sounds familiar, it’s because it was an early Tokyopop title. Tokyopop wiped the pages off their site, so the link is to a Google cache of their original page. It’s about alien parasites infecting the world, and one man who is able to get along with his parasite rather than let it destroy him. The Del Rey version will be unflipped and in the wideban format, which means about 400 pages, and will be priced at $12.95.

At the Anime on DVD forums, they’re all excited about Mushishi and Parasyte.

In addition to the new title announcements, Del Rey said they will change the cover of vol. 2 of Air Gear:

The leggings will now cover up the exposed thong. Dallas promised that will be the only change to the series.

Del Rey will be holding a focus group on August 11 in Los Angeles.

Toon Zone also has a report on the panel.

UPDATE: Here’s David Taylor’s take on the new Parasyte:

I’ve got some of the original Tokyopop volumes but to be perfectly honest I would trade those in a heartbeat to get a Del Rey version. You know what your going to get, you know the quality is going to be fantastic, care is going to be taken over the product. This isn’t a hard choice.

In the comments, Jarred Pine wonders if this new version has anything to do with the Parasyte movie, now scheduled for 2008. Hmmm.

SECOND UPDATE: Comic Book Resources has more information, including better plot summaries, in their panel report.

Active Anime interviews Izumi Kawachi, the author of Enchanter, who provides some insight into the life of a Japanese manga-ka:

First of all, you’re constantly under pressure with the deadlines. And I use every minute of the 10 days that are given to me, so everything is turned in very last minute. I usually do about 40 pages in 10 days, and that’s the time I have to think of a good storyline and draw everything. It’s definitely a very stressful job. There are also many things that I love about this job, though. In Enchanter, there’s a lot of talk about alchemy and science, so to make my story believable and accurate I’ve been doing a lot of research and talking to knowledgeable people. Being a writer has landed me in many interesting interviews with experts on a variety of subjects.

Love Manga checks out the USA Today Top 150 and notes, without surprise, that Naruto is still there at #123 (8 weeks on the list: a record!) and Kingdom Hearts has jumped from #111 to #73.

Some reviews to check out: At Standing and Reading, Ginger reviews Legend of Chun Hyang, a single-volume manga by CLAMP. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna likes Fool’s Gold but feels it didn’t quite live up to expectations. And Noah Berlatsky of the Chicago Reader reviews Nana but also gives a bit of a dissertation on manga. He has clearly done his homework, although I don’t agree with his statement that shoujo manga are the new romance comics (especially when he lumps them in with Chobits two sentences later). It’s a thoughtful review and a nice counterpart to the Bento Physics analysis.

Down at the New Statesmen, they’re having a roundtable entitled “Smart learning for the future,” with all kinds of professors ‘n’ school principals ‘n’ stuff. But look who they bring up as an example: scanlators!

When you look at children’s learning outside school, it is driven by what they are interested in, which is the direct opposite of school-based learning. For example, in the United States a group of students were interested in Manga, the Japanese animated cartoons. In order to get hold of them before they were due to arrive on the market, this group got together, taught themselves Japanese, subtitling and web streaming, because they were motivated to.

Japundit finds a bad manga article and lays on the snark.

Somewhat off-topic: I really don’t know how to describe this next article except to say that if the idea of Romanian otaku doesn’t get to you, check it out anyway for the picture of Henry Ford taking an ax to a soy car. Yes, you read that right.

Psst! Go check out the Tokyopop site! It’s been redesigned and considerably enlarged, with blogs (blogs!) and a new manga column by Stephanie Folse (a.k.a. Telophase), a people column by Chris Arrant, an interview with Beck manga-ka Harold Sakuishi, and a bunch of stuff I’ll probably never read (anime, games) but that other people will probably enjoy. Oh, and it looks like they’re posting fanart and fanfic as well. It’s almost more like a magazine than a publisher site, especially as that single page with every manga on it has disappeared, and clicking on “manga” brings up the featured manga, not all of ’em. Fortunately, there’s a search engine for that unglamorous stuff.