MangaBlog

Time to flip through some magazines.

At Comics-and-More, Dave Ferraro picks up the latest Shojo Beat and has nothin’ but love for Nana and Absolute Boyfriend, although he’s a bit disappointed by Aishiteruze Baby. Why not just buy the books?

I like the previews, I like being caught up with the story and I like the little tid bits of Japanese culture speckled throughout the magazine.

The same is true in my house, as my girls have developed a sudden and urgent need for lime-green cell phones, bubble tea, and expensive shoes.

Meanwhile, David Welsh at Precocious Curmudgeon treats Manga Month at Previews with the appropriate degree of sarcasm but manages to find a few comics he’d like (most of which, ironically, are not manga). Scroll down a bit to read his review of Tokyopop’s Manga magazine as well. This issue brings a preview of the next Fruits Basket, which alone is worth the trouble of signing up, as well as advance glimpses of Dragon Head and Sorcerers & Secretaries. Manga is printed on glossy paper, which seems like a waste as the comics themselves are in black and white. They put a lot of color in the margins to make up for it, but I actually like Shojo Beat better. I’d rather have a lot of stories on cheap paper than a few chapters on glossy paper with colored doohickies on the sides. Manga is an advertising flyer, Shojo Beat is a magazine.

It says something about the manga blogosphere that no one seems to have picked up on the March Shonen Jump, which features a two-page spread on “The Women of Shonen Jump” and a preview of a new manga, Claymore, that has a main character—excuse me, “kick-butt hero”—who just happens to be a girl. And the Japanese lessons feature a discussion of the Japanese for “tomboy.” Could this be an acknowledgment that girls read shonen too? My girls were unimpressed, although they were happy to get a chapter of One Piece, which is a favorite of theirs.

GoComics is bringing manga to your cell phone (one more way to while away the time while I’m driving) and for dinosaurs like me (“In my day, all we did was talk on our phones…”) they have a demo up on their website. It’s a nifty idea, and it would be even better if it actually worked. I’m not sure if it’s me or them, but I tried with Safari and Firefox and couldn’t get it to go. And yes, I have Flash/Java/whatever enabled.

Technical glitches aside, this comment in their press release bothered me a bit:

GoComics Books presents comics in a panel-by-panel format for quick viewing and a simple interface that offers a great user experience.

I know they’re just adapting the originals and “optimizing” them to work better on a cell phone, but it also loses one of the most important aspects of comics: the way the frames are arranged on the page, and the relationship of the panels to each other. To see what I mean, check out this series on timing in comics by Roadsong artist Joanna Estep. All that is lost on the cell phone.

I doubt that cell phones will ever replace dead-tree manga, but I hate to see the good stuff get diluted. Sigh.

The manga world seems to be teeming with activity lately.

A new manga studio has sprung up in … New Jersey. Lime will produce two manga series for Tokyopop Germany, Evergrey and Ouija, and will be peddling its wares at the NY Comic-Con. Samples are online. (Hat tip: ANN.)

Ed Chavez at Anime on DVD looks at how 2005 shook out for two newcomers to the North American market, ICE Kunion and BLU. Ed gives ICE Kunion points for bringing over some good titles and doing a good job of translation and production, but faults them on communication. BLU is like the Unknown Manga Publisher; they appear to be affiliated with Tokyopop but tend to be quiet, other than bringing out the books on time. And Ed likes what he sees:

The eight titles range from quasi BL (Earthian) to hot and sexy Wild Rock (that cover even had me sweating), but mixed in the romance is action, comedy and a good amount of drama in case you want meat with your bishies.

Speaking of manwha, Buzzscope takes a look at Netcomics, the brand-new kid on the block—they launched in January. Netcomics offers many of their titles as webcomics as well as books, meaning you can read them for about $1 per volume, but be warned that their website only supports Internet Explorer. I’d be more bothered by that if they offered something I wanted, but so far I’m unimpressed with what I’ve seen. Check out the previews on Buzzscope to see if you agree.

Finally, Renae Geerlings has a new job and Top Cow has a new editor in chief. Johanna at Comics Worth Reading has a good summary of the reactions (and an interesting reaction of her own).

… something borrowed, but nothing Blu! That describes my reading for the past week. I made two trips to Borders, and on the second one I spotted a bunch of random manga volumes marked 75 percent off, so I bought them all. Meanwhile, several books I had ordered through inter-library loan came through. I wound up with about two dozen new manga and spent much of the holiday weekend reading. Here’s a sampling:

Naoki Urasawa’s Monster: Well drawn psychological thriller about a Japanese doctor in Germany, both before and after the fall of the Berlin wall. Predictable in places but plenty of twists. I’m counting the days until volume 2.

Hikaru no Go: I thought the premise seemed a bit improbable—a manga about a game I know nothing about—but this book is a great read. I particularly like Sai, the fluttery, emotional ghost of a former Go player who haunts the grumbling but likable Hikaru.

Crossroad, vol. 2: Manga-ka Shioko Mizuki pulls back the curtain a little at a time on her characters in this absorbing family drama. No sophomore slump here; volume 2 is even funnier and more gripping than the first.

Planetes: This one took a while to warm up to. I don’t much like sci-fi, and the characters change appearance a few times so they’re hard to follow. But once I locked in on the storyline I couldn’t put it down.

Love Roma: I bought this chiefly because David Welsh really liked it, and our tastes usually correspond. Unfortunately, not this time. It’s a schoolkid love story; he thought it was cute and funny, I thought it was shallow and overdone. De gustibus…

At the moment, I’m reading volume 2 of FAKE, a love story between two New York cops, which is quite entertaining if not great literature, and volume 2 of Cantarella, which is simply wonderful.

Meanwhile, my 13-year-old is really enjoying Shutterbox, which I’m looking forward to reading if she ever lets it go, and both girls liked Crimson Hero, causing me to regret ever thinking that a manga about volleyball was a weird idea.

As for my husband, he claims to be burned out on manga but kept swiping books from my stack. Despite being a sci-fi fan from way back, he didn’t like Planetes, but he did seem to like Monster.

No new news on the arrests of three Tokyo men for putting scanned manga on the web, but there’s an interesting conversation going on on the Anime On DVD forums.

Several posters observed that the publishers seem to be concerned with stopping scanning and posting in Japan. Peter Ahlstrom observes

I wouldn’t compare this to fanscanning…I’d say this is more like those people selling bootlegs on eBay (of which there are tons, and I don’t know why companies don’t go after them a lot more than they do).

The biggest threat to manga right now is probably the cafes and the used bookstores. In Korea, manhwa cafes have decimated the industry—sales today aren’t a tenth of what they were 5 years ago.

This may be true; certainly inter-library loan has saved my family a lot of money. Meanwhile Libertus makes this ominous prediction:

There are technical ways to prevent printed matter being scanned. They are very rarely implemented these days, but I foresee them becoming much more prevalent in the future, especially as companies realise the dollars potentially being lost to the bootlegging market.

Meanwhile, Manga News brings a press release from a store in Finland that is offering free manga to “established scanlators,” no strings attached. One commenter wonders if it might not be a sting.

On a tangentially related subject, Comics Worth Reading has links and commentary on Otakon’s new fan art policy. Johanna summarizes:

Handcrafts are allowed, as are artistic variations on existing characters; buttons and t-shirts featuring character pictures aren’t. Original art is allowed; prints aren’t (unless they’re of your characters). These are sensible guidelines that fit in with the usual understanding of copyright law at conventions.

Which seems fair enough.

New blogger alert! Graphic Novelties is the third blog (now that’s ambitious!) of Alabama-based journalist Franklin Harris. He starts right off with a trenchant observation about manga:

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the dearth of manga news of late? Is this an indication that the industry has found a happy level, down from its peak but still healthy enough to suggest that fears (hopes?) of a bubble bursting are unfounded? We still must see how the Suncoast/Musicland implosion shakes out, but I think manga is now chugging along at a respectable and sustainable pace.

Actually, there seems to be quite a bit of manga news lately, but I agree that the market seems to have settled down a bit.

At Comic Book Resources, Calling Manga Island columnist Tony Salvaggio hearts School Rumble and likes the idea of the Dark Horse Harlequin manga, although he finds the colored ink a bit jarring (so do I).

Over at Anime on DVD, reviewer Ed Chavez really likes the third volume of Ray, a 16+ manga about a woman with X-ray vision who uses her gift to help others. The series sounds intriguing, but Chavez notes that it’s hard to find in stores.

Meanwhile, there is much rejoicing in my house as Viz announces it will release the anime of Full Moon, my daughter’s favorite manga of all time.