MangaBlog

Fruits Basket Volume 13 has arrived in our house, so nothing is going to get done around here for a while.

However, there are a few things to note elsewhere. Manganews reports that Eiichiro Oda, the manga-ka responsible for One Piece, is ill, and Weekly Shonen Jump (in Japan) has put the series on hiatus.

Also via Manganews, the Japan Times looks at hate manga.

There’s a doctor in the house: Polite Dissent kicks off its examination of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster with an explanation of the cerebral aneurysm.

At Love Manga, David Taylor notes that volume 6 of Naruto is still on the USA Today Top 150, although it has plummeted to number 123.

Anime on DVD’s Jarred Pine has an early review of Claymore, which is in Viz’s Shonen Jump Advanced line (which means it’s reasonably priced at $7.99!). Jarred likes it, and after hearing Ed Chavez’s review on mangacast, I think I’m going to check it out.

Finally, David Taylor has been hosting an interesting discussion—which migrated over to Tangognat—about whether libraries and bookstores should enforce the age ratings on manga. Purely by coincidence, Wai Wai gets the last word with a worst-case scenario.

I got a nice e-mail from Heewoon Chung of Netcomics today with some good news: Netcomics now supports Safari and Firefox browsers on Mac OS, which means that many, many more people can check them out. Netcomics launched in January with an ambitious 10 titles, and several have been getting good word-of-blog, notably The Great Catsby, which is available for free viewing.

Netcomics offers web manwha, and while I’ve only viewed a few of their titles (because of that browser thing), the format is noticeably different. For one thing, they are in color, which can be a mixed blessing. Also, they are not designed as individual pages but as a continuous chapter that scrolls down the screen. It’s a little disorienting at first, but in a title like Catsby (which I admit I’m not a fan of) it does work well. Netcomics is also offering the comics in printed form; Catsby is coming out this week, priced at $17.99 because it’s in color (which elicited an “ouch” from David Taylor, followed by some interesting comments from manga maven Ed Chavez). It will be interesting to see how well the continuous web format translates to printed pages.

OK, geez, I take a day off to take my dad to the doctor and all heck breaks loose. I refer to the Tokyopop/HarperCollins deal, which even made the New York Times. (registration required; I’ll update the link if it gets reposted on a free site, but in the meantime, use bugmenot if necessary).

The only nice thing about being the last to post on something is I can be lazy and just point you to everyone else’s links. Here goes: Heidi at the Beat has good solid coverage as always, with links to coverage from major industry sites PW Weekly and ICv2, including the latter’s interview with Tokyopop’s Mike Kiley.

David Taylor of Love Manga dissects the deal at length in three different posts, while Johanna rightly critiques the press release as full of buzzwords and links to more commentary, notably Lea Hernandez’s rather negative take on the whole thing. As always, the folks at the ANN and AoD forums and the engine have plenty to say.

Here’s my two cents: I’m not as thrilled as everyone else about this deal opening up the possibility of adapting Meg Cabot’s books into graphic novels. Comics are a medium, and the best comics are conceived for the medium, not adapted from something else. If I wanted to read Meg Cabot novels, I’d buy the novels. (For the same reason, I find it hard to get excited about novelizations of manga.) I look to Tokyopop for original comics, and while I’m not at all against OEL, I also really like the Japanese books, and I would hate to see them fade away. The distribution side of this deal sounds fine, but I hope the creative part doesn’t cause Tokyopop to change emphasis too much.

A quick update on what was going on while I was off earning money.

At Love Manga, David Taylor is understandably thrilled that Del Rey is expanding to the UK and peppers them with questions via e-mail, thus unearthing this bit of news:

The list is currently just Kodansha titles but we do plan to publish titles from other manga publishers and indeed develop our own home-grown publishing – I suspect that this will be a little way off, but we are actively looking. We also plan to take Kodansha titles that Del Rey might not – we will of course try and publish the best manga we can for UK fans.

There is also an interesting discussion of pricing.

Dissecting Monster: If you haven’t picked up Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, go do so immediately! Not only is it a great read, but Polite Dissent is going to pick it apart, chapter by chapter, next week.

The AoD blog has some nice articles up, one about yaoi manga and another about Del Rey’s upcoming title Basilisk.

Apparently, they have their parents fooled: Arab News has a pretty interesting article on Japanese educational reforms that includes this insight into what Japanese teenagers do with their spare time:

They combine home work with surfing on the Internet and going through Manga comics with different themes, such as education, sports, the importance of work ethics, etc. “Hard work is part of our mindset, its importance is underlined both in schools and at home.”

Ah yes, indoctrination through manga. I can just see those kids earnestly assuring their parents that their favorite Shonen Jump title is educational and character-building.

Speaking of which, the Viz newsletter arrived this week, and here are the top five best-selling manga: Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto. And the top five anime? Inuyasha, Inuyasha, Inuyasha, Inuyasha, Inuyasha. Time to move along, people.

I was so busy that I didn’t have time to enter David Welsh’s Gray Horses giveaway contest. But everyone is a winner, because entrants had to say what graphic novel they read over and over again, and their responses make for a great blog post (with minimum effort—well done, David!). For those following along at home, Metrokitty got the books.

Flower Mound sounds like a manga title, but it’s really a town in Texas that just had a manga day at the local library. Some good comments from youth librarian Teresa Chiv:

Chiv said she considers manga to be at a higher level than many traditional youth novels. Because of its unique presentation style, manga is very good with reluctant readers, she said.

“The many pictures give clues to the readers about the text, allowing the reader to comprehend more sophisticated vocabulary than they would be able to decode in a traditional novel,” Chiv said.

Clearly Chiv doesn’t subscribe to the comics-is-crap line. Neither does her friend Shannon Terrill, who works in the Irving library:

Many characters have skeletons in their closets. A character typically goes through several layers of development,” said Terrill, of Irving.

The Japanese graphic novels — comic book-style bound tomes — are filled with themes that involve conflict, struggle, love and peer pressure. American animators and children’s book writers don’t often deal with those subjects in such real terms, Terrill said.

“Manga definitely does not try to flower up reality or the battle of good and evil,” she said. “A romantic relationship almost always fades, and a hero almost always dies.”

Why would we want that?

Alisa Mask, 13, of Double Oak sat next to a stack of 18 borrowed mangas Sunday. She said she appreciates the realism of mangas because they help her deal with problematic situations.

“In mangas, I learn a lot of stuff that could happen to me and people around me, like problems with depression or dating problems,” Mask said. “In one manga I read that in moments like these, you should tell your parents what’s going on with you.”

Teenagers set their bullshit detectors on stun. If you talk down to them, they know it. And while most manga aren’t all that realistic (we have no giant robots in our public schools), if the kids see it as authentic, they may actually glean a bit of genuine insight.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to read Shojo Beat, the April issue will have an interview with manga artist Keiko Takemiya. Interestingly, none of her work is available in English (according to the press release), although I’m sure the ink is dry on a contract somewhere in the Viz offices. And you might as well write that check for a subscription, because it looks like it’s going to get better:

As an extension of her desire to nurture the next generation of artists, Takemiya will also begin offering instructional techniques and advice to SHOJO BEAT readers and hopeful manga artists, beginning in the June issue. This instruction will be augmented by additional artistic instruction from Hiroyuki Iizuka and Yuu Watase, another shôjo superstar and the creator of popular titles like ABSOLUTE BOYFRIEND, FUSHIGI YÛGI: GENBU KAIDEN and CERES (all published by VIZ Media). Their Drawing with Yuu series launches in July.