MangaBlog

David “Love Manga” Taylor, that is!

And he’s jumping right in with a discussion of the yaoi manga issue that we’ve been muttering about all week. As always, he has a cogent take on the matter.

Welcome back, David! We missed you.

MangaBlogCast #2 is up at the MangaCast site, with a special exclusive report on AnimeNEXT by our own Jack Tse. ComiPress follows up with interviews with Jack, Ed Chavez, and me.

Here are the links for the stories in this week’s podcast:

What’s up with ADV?

This week, the blogosphere had a group vent about ADV. Fans are frustrated because the company has licensed a number of popular series (Yotsuba&!, Aria, Gunslinger Girl) but only released a handful of volumes of each. Manga doesn’t seem to be a big priority with ADV these days.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin story on ADV
ADV’s manga website
ADV’s press release on Anime Expo

Kenshin calls it a life

The long-running series Rurouni Kenshin wraps up next month with volume 28, but the franchise continues with a Kenshin novel and a rare extra story in the September Shonen Jump. And to avoid Viz taking a sudden tumble into red ink, the publisher is starting a new series, Buso Renkin, by the same author.

Rurouni Kenshin comes to an end (press release)
Rurouni Kenshin info on the Viz website

Death Note rules

The Death Note movie opened in Japan on June 17, which inspired this excellent article on the Death Note phenomenon.

Mainichi story on Death Note
Japanese blogger reviews the Death Note movie

Milestones

Three manga reach 30-year mark
Viz turns 20
Shoujo Beat’s first anniversary: David Welsh interviews Yumi Hoashi

People are talking about…

Barb Lien-Cooper’s article, “12 Reasons Why Manga Is Not a Gateway Drug to Western Comics”
Lyle Misaki’s five reasons why it could be

Manga sales for May

New titles watch

Sequels to Kingdom Hearts and Gunsmith Cats
“Shoujo” version of Densha Otoko
Harlequin relaunches its manga line

Naruto drops to number 79 on the USA Today booklist, down from 42 last week.

Two from PW Comics Week: Shakespeare gets the manga treatment, from John Wiley, a publisher better known for calculus textbooks than sequential art. Still, the sample pages show some promise. Also, yaoi manga-ka Makoto Teteno will be doing a book signing at Borders stores in LA and DC this summer, marking (they say) the first time a yaoi author has appeared in bookstores. Teteno is the author of DMP’s Yellow.

From the Newsarama blog: the Death Note movie drew over 306,000 viewers in Japan this week, toppling The Da Vinci Code from the number one box office slot. David Welsh is still waiting for the tribute album.

If you’re tired of summer vacation already, take a gander at this academic article about fan art. (Found via the Pseudome forums.)

Tokyopop is sponsoring a summer reading program with a difference at the Los Angeles public libraries.

Teens, ages 11 to 18, who join the “Manga Madness Summer Reading Club” at their local branch library will receive a free folder, book bag, reading log, and bookmarks. Every branch will have special scheduled teen programs as part of the reading club.

This is nice because around here anyway, the programs for younger kids seem to get all the attention. Our library has a teen summer reading program but it’s pretty low-key.

At the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library and its 71 branches, librarians have doubled and in some cases tripled the number of manga series ordered for their young adult collections because of high demand from teen readers.

Hey, it’s reading. And all reading is good. Here is an interview with the YA librarian (via The Comics Reporter.)

At The Beat, Heidi passes along a report from a Southern correspondent of a Books-a-Million shelving yaoi in the erotica section. I know we’re supposed to be outraged, but I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of Books-a-Million having yaoi at all.

There’s not much information yet, but here’s the website for MangaNEXT, which bills itself as the first manga con.

ANN has details on CLAMP’s autograph sessions at AnimeNEXT.

Only slightly off topic: too many maids in Akibahara.

Tony Salvaggio reviews Basilisk and Dogby Walks Alone in Calling Manga Island, and finds plenty to like about both of them.

Pata tips us to the next manga innovation: lawyer manga

Ed Chavez has been busy: At MangaCast, he reviews Madtown Hospital and Hotel California, both from Netcomics, and Battle Vixens, in addition to posting the Japanese manga magazine covers for the week.

At Completely Futile, Adam looks at weekly Japanese manga magazine sales.

Scary yaoi story from the Toronto Star. (Link is to a Livejournal page by sensorglitch because I couldn’t find the story on the Star’s site. And I found this on When Fangirls Attack.)

New blog alert: The Translation Dojo is the blog of Wiliam Flanagan, a translator who has worked on XXXHolic, School Rumble, and Tsubasa, among others. (He seems to do a lot of work for Del Rey.)

University of California, Irvine, is offering a course in anime and manga. Well, OK, it’s the UC Irvine Extension, but it’s still cool. It sounds like an applied manga course, actually:

Aimed at screenwriters seeking to expand their writing skills and passionate fans of manga and anime, the course will have students applying methods of story and character development found in manga to screenwriting, advertising, information publishing and other creative endeavors.

And the teacher is a professional screenwriter, Northrop Davis, whose anime/manga work includes successfully pitching Battle Angel Alita to Fox.

It sounds too good to be true, but according to this press release, a company called Stickam will be offering a free, live video feed of Anime Expo. Also, Mick Takeuchi, creator of Her Majesty’s Dog, will be there.

And I’m pulling this up from the comments, because it made me laugh: On the post below, about Del Rey, Jack Tse says,

Del Rey Manga itself is like a shonen manga in how it powers itself up every few months.

Del Rey has posted its release calendar for the rest of 2006 (pdf file). I could get all snarky about being six months late, but hey, at least they did it!

Here’s a sneak peek at their new series:

Not on the calendar but due out on June 27 is Kurogane. (Link is to the preview.)

July 25

Q-Ko-Chan looks rather kawaii from the cover. Del Rey has no info, but Anime Castle supplies the standard writeup:

Kirio is the iceman at school: brilliant, cool, and distant. But now Kirio’s cool is in for a real test. Up in the sky, a giant robot is seen battling a fleet of gunships – and then lands right at Kirio’s front door and rings the bell! Which is just the last thing Kirio needs. After all, he already lives in a world gone mad: a grim, near-future Earth where neverending war is a fact of life. But could it really be that the worst threat of all is what’s shown up on his doorstep: an alien invader robot with the face of an adorable girl?

Air Gear: Here’s Del Rey’s writeup:

Itsuki Minami needs no introduction–everybody’s heard of the “Babyface” of the Eastside. He’s the toughest kid at Higashi Junior High School, easy on the eyes but dangerously tough when he needs to be. Plus, Itsuki lives with the mysterious and sexy Noyamano sisters. Life is never dull, but it becomes dangerous when Itsuki leads his school to victory over some vindictive Westside punks with gangster connections. Now he stands to lose his school, his friends, and everything he cares about. But in his darkest hour, the Noyamano girls come to Itsuki’s aid. They can teach him a powerful skill that will save their school from the gangsters’ siege–and introduce Itsuki to a thrilling and terrifying new world.

I prefer the Manganews summary:

Brought to you by the artist who knows his boobies and his fighting. Oh Great!’s brings us Air Gear. You can easily think of Air Gear as another Tenjou Tenge but with skater gangs. Again you are blessed with hot girls and lots and lots and lots of fighting and stuff.

August 29

Suzuka: This is rated M (18+) and priced a little higher than usual at $13.95. There’s no other info in the Del Rey catalog, but again Manganews has the scoop:

Akitsuki Yamato, 15 years old, moved to Tokyo to enter high school. He’s now staying at the public bath house managed by his aunt! What was supposed to be the start of a normal life is now “heaven and hell” in this public bathhouse and women’s dorm! One guy in a forbidden “flower garden”!? Something has to happen… it’s inevitable!

With that many exclamation points, it has to be good!

December 26

Gacha Gacha: Next Revolution

I got nothin’. Too early, I guess.

The administrator at the Princess Tutu Livejournal Community lays down the law: Princess Tutu is not magical girl shoujo. This post is actually about anime, but I think the points apply pretty well to the manga (I haven’t read this one, although it’s in the house somewhere). Her criteria are: It has to be originally from Japan, the protagonist has to be a girl under 16, the girl has to have unusual supernatural powers (as opposed to the ordinary kind, I suppose), the story has to focus on those powers, and the intended audience has to be under 12. I’m not sure where Princess Tutu falls short, but a lively debate follows in the comments.

The conversation is interesting in itself, but what’s even more interesting (to me anyway) is the admin’s contention (in comments) that all anime can be classified by genre:

This isn’t a matter of “fairness,” this was originally conducted as a scholarly approach to a specific form of media. All media can in some way, shape, or form be categorized into a genre and thus a subgenre.

Magical girl (mahou shoujo) is a specific sub-genre in Japan, she says, and

It is not up to American fans to define what the Japanese-origined subgenre is.

I don’t think this has much of an effect on the average fan (and note that ANN calls Princess Tutu “magical girl” in their encyclopedia entry). This writer is an academic, and she’s being analytical.

But I’m not sure the genres are so clear-cut. Even the publishers often classify books as more than one genre. And while the Japanese market books in a certain way to Japanese readers, it doesn’t necessarily follow that these books must be marketed in the same way to non-Japanese readers. Yes, I believe genre, or at least the perception of genre, is influenced by marketing as well as the contents of a book.

Livejournal member pink lightning gives her take on the debate here.

(Via Telophase.)