St. Lunatic High School Volume 1 By Majiko! Publisher: Tokyopop Rating: Teen Genre: Horror/Comedy Price: $9.99 Rating: ISBN: 1-59816-944-7 Forced to attend the prestigious St. Lunatic High School, Niko Kanzaki discovers a haunting secret in her demon-filled night-classes! She applies higher learning to find out the differences between humans and demons, but the handsome and mysterious Ren shows her that the races also share some things in common… When I read in Previews that the mangaka of this series also wrote the manga adaptation of Code Geass, I was excited to read this series. Code Geass is an awesome story. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t this… Tokyopop once again uses the genre horror for this series, very inappropriately. There is nothing horrific about this series. It might have helped if it had. Niko and her brother Atchan are poor. But Atchan gets a job teaching at the prestigious St. Lunatic High School, so they think their worries are over. Think again. One rundown apartment is skipped out on for a rundown shed on the school’s grounds. And the night classes that Niko gets to attend? Full of demons. None of them look normal, except…
Viz has been a great supporter of manga in the US. They were among the first companies to bring translated manga here in the form that would best reach it’s audience; flipped (read left-to-right), and in floppies. They were also smart enough to snag one of the most popular manga artists to translate; Rumiko Takahashi. Viz’s Urusei Yatsura was among the first manga-comics I ever bought. I missed out on the comic versions of Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha, as I wasn’t reading comics at the time, but when they started to collect them as graphic novels, I gave them a serious look. The biggest problem I had, and still have, is that these titles continued to come out as flipped after they discontinued the floppies. All their other books were coming out unflipped. Dragonball and Dragonball Z, titles that also came out as floppies first, got second edition reprints as unflipped. Why not Ranma and Inuyasha? Michelle Smith, blogger for soliloquy in blue, in her twitter feed, pointed out an entry at Simon and Schuster website for a VIZBIG edition for Inuyasha, scheduled for November 2009. All I can say is, ABOUT TIME! I dropped Inuyasha, even though I was…
These are just quick impressions of manga I read during the week. I’ll come up with full reviews some day. The Rating scale for these quickies are as follows: Must buys, Would trade for, or Good way to waste an hour or so. Fairy Tail Volume 5 – Gray’s past is revealed and Ezra, who came to retrieve Natsu, Lucy and Gray instead ends up helping them. There is some awesome battle action as Natsu tries to save the villagers, Gray and Lyon continue their grudge match, and Lucy goes against a giant rat and her goth-loli owner. Must Buy. Rave Master Volume 2 – Haru arrives at Punk Street to find Musica the Blacksmith to fix his sword. Demon Card is there and in control, of course, and he has to not only battle them, but figure out who the real Muscia the Blacksmith is. This second volume seems rather bland as typical shonen fighting. But what really made if hard to get through was the translation. What is up with the constant cry of “Snap!”? This book was painful to read, even though it shouldn’t have been. Would Trade For Translation: Epic Fail
Yes the economy is bad, but tax refunds are going out (got my Fed already), so Bookcloseouts.com is ready with a sale to help you spend it! From now until March 26th (that’s next Thursday), they are selling manga titles for .99! Admittedly, they are all Tokyopop titles, and nothing newer than last summer, but at a buck a piece, who can pass this up? Definitely check this out!
Trinity writes: How can we make a manga online? And is there any deccent free things that teaches you how to draw at your best? Thanks for the question Trinity! It’s not exactly my area of expertise, but I’ll do my best. To get your manga online, you first need to make it digital, so that means that you either drawn it and scan it in, or you draw it on the computer. Let’s assume it’s already in files on your computer. Now, where do you upload it? Well, if you have your own website, you can post it there. But if you don’t, there are plenty of places you can go to get it online. Tokyopop.com is free, and lets its users post their own manga that is easily searched on the site. Drunkduck.com is a webcomic community that provides free hosting as well. Virtual Hosting also has a resource guide for starting a webcomic that includes hosting. These are some good places to start. A google search for manga tutorials brings up tons of sites with tutorials to improve you drawing. Two of the top results come from good resources and are free: Manga Tutorials and Manga Universtiy. …
I was pleasantly surprised when I got this month’s Previews catalog. There are actually books (not just manga) that look interesting enough to get this month! OMG! Marvel, the company that we had just finished dropping ALL our titles for (mainly because they killed the Ultimate Universe) has two titles we’re going to check out this month.
Jay Karlson writes: First, a comment: THANK YOU for adding an “All Ages” section. My 8 year old daughter loves Manga, but they can get really dirty. Would she like “Peach Fuzz”? She already has read Sugar Princess and Cardcaptor Sakura. She LOVED Suihilibe. Keep up the good work! Thanks for the words of encouragement Jay! I found it frustrating trying to find appropriate manga for my girls, so I decided to make the page myself! Though I do have to update it for all the new titles coming out lately. But, that’s a good thing! Peach Fuzz, one of the first OEL manga Tokyopop published, is definitely written for a girl about your daughter’s age. Amanda, the lead character is in the 4th grade. Her new pet, Peach the ferret, thinks she is a princess, royalty among ferrets. Most of the conflicts come from Amanda and Peach learning to get along and live with each other. I think it’s definitely something an 8 year old girl would like, and a parent would have no problem with their daughter reading. If you’re still not sure though, you and she can go here to read the first three chapters of the…
Orange Crows Volume 1 By: James Perry II and Ryo Kawakami Publisher: Tokyopop Age Rating: 13+ Genre: Fantasy Price: $10.99 Rating: Five years ago, a young witch named Cierra broke the one unforgivable law of the witch society: attempting to create her own magic. Her unlawful tampering burned down a research room and injured the Mayor’s daughter, Cierra’s best friend. As punishment, she was exiled to the Wilderness, a barren wasteland crawling with witch-devouring Fairies and the bloodthirsty Forsaken…After surviving for five ruthless years, her exile has now ended, and she has been ushered back to civilization, only to discover that the world around her has changed greatly. Will Cierra be able to adjust back to a society that abandoned her? And if her freakish new ability that links her to the terrifying Fairies is discovered, she may not be let off with mere exile this time… Orange Crows is a new OEL manga from Tokyopop. I really knew nothing about it, and the cover didn’t intrigue me in anyway, but with a link to read the whole volume for free coming in my email, I decided to check it out.
I haven’t done this for a while, and last month’s Previews had some tough choices for me, so I thought I’d talk about it a little. There were a lot of titles I collect/want that were up for ordering last month. It’s very hard to keep my numbers down when publishers do this to me. (Yes, I do think they are all out to get me.) It isn’t that publishers had a lot coming out. There were just a lot of publishers that had titles I wanted. Bandai, CMX, Del Rey, Tokyopop, Viz and Yen Press all had an average of 2 books. Well, except Viz who always has at least 5-7 alone that I want. Doing a quick tape of everything (less the Naruto wave I already said I would have to pass on), if I had ordered everything I read, it would have come to over $100, and that with my 30% discount! Even in a good economy, that’s a lot for one month! 15 titles in all!
Being a reviewer isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sure, anyone can write “That manga sucks”, or “This manga totally rules!”. But to thoughtfully read a book and then put down into words not just your feelings about the book, but do it in an interesting and intelligent way that people will want to read is a lot harder than it sounds. Being too subjective: Yes, I am writing a review and giving my personal opinion about the title. But at the same time, I don’t want to go all “fan girl” either, and just go on and on about how much I like the title. I want to give enough information for readers to have a basic idea what the title is about, while at the same time expressing my likes and dislikes. If I really like a title, I will go on more about what I consider it’s good points, but it’s hard some times not to become a cheerleader for a title. That’s appropriate for a blog post, not a review. On the other side of the coin…