Manga Xanadu

Last year, I talked about a bunch of the manga that was out that I thought was most appropriate to read on a dark and spooky nights of Halloween. This year, I want to narrow my focus some, and look at some manga that isn’t particularly spooky, but features some traditional monsters, both eastern and western.

I learned about this title from a review on a podcast of the live action j-drama tv series.  My husband and I watched the j-drama and enjoyed it a lot.  It’s 11 episodes and was filled with great action and dramatic scenes, and lots of unexpected twists to keep the story moving.  Having enjoyed the j-drama, I had to find out about the manga. The manga, complete at 11 volumes, is about Fujimaru Takagi, a second year high school student and member of the Newspaper Club.  Unknown to everyone but his father, the PSIA (Public Security Intelligence Agency) and the newspaper club, Fujimaru is also known as Falcon, a prodigy hacker who exposes corrupt people’s crimes to make them pay.  The series starts with Fujimaru being recruited by the PSIA to help them decode a memory stick that may have information on an incident in Russia where a segment of the population was killed off by a possible poison gas.  And that gas may be now in Japan. The story follows Fujimaru as he gets pulled further into the investigation and conspiracy.  His father is accused of murdering his superior.  A teacher at his school is trying to stop him…

Viz’s SigIkki website isn’t just an experiment in manga for mature readers.  Going to the site does more than let you read some great manga.  You, the reader, can make a difference in which manga will get published.  Your clicks and reviews can make all the difference in the world for a title seeing print. In Japan, the fate of a manga is decided not just by circulation, but also by what the readers say.  Survey cards are checked and titles can live or die by what readers say in these.  Viz has taken this idea and applied it to the web.  The titles at SigIkki are not guaranteed to see a print edition unless enough people show interest through page views and reviews that readers can leave.  While this is a good idea for a small market as these Ikki titles will attract, that also means that your favorite title manga get a print edition unless YOU do something. Just like pre-ordering, this is putting your money were your mouth is, just without so much of the risk.  Going to the site and reading chapters is easy, but if you really love a title, so much so that you…

Manga Publishers Go APE! Even though APE, the Alternate Press Expo, is mostly for comics and graphic novels, a couple of manga publishers showed up to pawn some of their less mainstream wares.  Vertical, Inc. had a table there, with Ed Chavez hocking their books, and selling out titles left and right.  By the end of Sunday, the last report from him was Guin Saga manga and Black Jack v2-7 were all that was left.  Not bad!  Viz was there too, with titles from their Signature line, and reports from the floor sounded favorable to them.  They also had a panel on Sunday for their Ikki line.  Deb Aoki was on the floor both days reporting, so check out her twitter page if you don’t follow her already.

Recently over at Anime News Network, artist Bettina Kurkoski was featured in their The Gallery column.  I read this, as I like Bettina’s work.  I really enjoyed her OEL manga, My Cat Loki, buying the volumes after reading the first volume on line.  Yes, I like it that much.  In the article was of course links to Bettina’s home page and Deviant Art page.  Of course I had to check those out.  In the updates of the Deviant Art page at the time, Bettina was asking about KA-BLAM, a printer that specializes in comic books.  She is doing this so her fans can finally get the rest of My Cat Loki. I think this is so awesome, that Bettina is looking for ways to finish My Cat Loki for the fans.  Even though Tokyopop is giving some fans a chance to read the end of their favorite titles with their Wednesday online comics, it’s even cooler when the creator does this.  She’s already put out some MCL works with sketchbooks for sale at cons (that I can’t go to), but seeing this title complete would be the best.  It’s such a wonderful and touching story that it really deserves a…

I found this link while searching for an item for my This Week in Manga column.  I was looking for manga subscription services, when I came upon a link for an extension to Firefox that watches OneManga for new updates of manga.  Now, I’m not endorsing either this extension or OneManga.  Instead, I want to suggest that manga publishers, such as Viz and Tokyopop, who put up online manga chapters, maybe look at doing something similar. I have a hard time keeping up with the online manga, often forgetting about them until someone on twitter mentions one went up.  Having something in the browser that could check and tell me when a new chapter is out, AND what the last chapter I read was would be sooooo awesome! I sometimes spend more time trying to figure out where I left off as I do reading the actual chapters.  It would make a great promotional tool if it was made into a Shonen Sunday or Ikki toolbar and could be used in more browsers. And since scanlators are always “borrowing” from publishers, I think some turn around is fair play.

If you’ve been following Tokyopop’s Boys of Summer online releases, you’ll notice there hasn’t been an update for a couple of weeks.  No, I don’t know why.  All Tokyopop has said is that it “won’t be back up for several weeks.” What I want to bring attention to though is the title they’ve moved up to fill in.  Earthlight.  This wasn’t supposed to be going up until January 2010, but now it’s been pushed up to this Wednesday, October 21.  So, if you’re one of those rare sci-fi manga fans, and had given up on this series (like a friend of mine), take heart!  You’ll finally get the finish of your series!

Inside Scanlation ComiPress, one of the first manga new reporting sites is hanging up it’s news hat and has moved over to a more timely topic:  Scanlations.  There has been a lot of talk about scanlations, especially since the economy took a dive, but do you really understand what scanlations are or how they came to be?  Inside Scanlation seeks to answers these questions and more.  The site looks at the history of scanlations, interviews scanlators and publishers for their takes and even explains some of the nuances of the community.  I think this is an interesting project.  And while people don’t agree with what the scanlators do, I think it’s worth the time to find out why they do it.  It’s the anthropologist in me.

I was listening to the Doctor Who podcast Podshock, and the hosts were talking with a con organizer about some informal one night get-togethers he organized to build up interest in the con.  They featured a guest of some sort and were held in a pub-like setting, allowing the guest and fans close and informal interactions.  And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if manga publishers did something like this? I’m not going to suggest doing this with Japanese guest, but for the creators here in the US.  Writers and artists of OEL manga as well as the editors, translators, and more out spoken personalities of manga publishing could be potential guests for these events.  Right now, most of these people are just names on a book or a press release, and a few show up at cons, accessible only at panels.  How cool would it be to be able to just sit down, have a drink (alcoholic or non) and just talk (or listen) to these people?  Ask them questions and hear inside stories about the production of our favorite titles, I think that would be totally cool! By their very nature these gatherings would be small and limited,…

A quick glance through the manga solicitations for this month revealed a title I’ve been waiting quite a while for.  I first learned about this series when I heard about the anime.  The first series ran in 2008 in Japan, and went 13 episodes.  The premise and the picture of a fat, rolly-polly cat on the series’ promotional art got me interested.

I have three more eBay auctions up, for some older manga. Those Who Hunt Elves v 1-7 Lupin III v 1-7 Lupin III v 8-14 Please take a look, and happy bidding! I also still have Inuyasha v6-10 and 11-15, and Buso Renkin v5-8 available for sale or trade.  Contact me if interested.

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy manga trading.  It’s a great way to try out a series or find volumes of older titles.  I’ve been fairly active on Mangatude and usually check for new trades every week or so.  While doing my usual check this week, there was a trade offer titled “Manga series on cd many rare ones.”  Yeah, scanlations.  This didn’t really feel right.  When I go looking to trade, I’m looking for same to same.  It might seem like a great deal, to get a bunch of different manga for one print volume, but it seems to violate the spirit of the site. Anyone can go out and find scanlations, download them, and burn them to a CD.  It’s not the same as going out, finding and buying a manga volume.  Getting a CD full of titles doesn’t seem to have same value.  It becomes a bunch of  files that can get tossed to the wayside.  Because no work went into getting them, there’s no real value in reading them.  With trading, there’s the offer and counter trade, sometimes working out, sometimes taking more work, so even a trade that ends just costing the amount…