“On the third day of Christmas, Tokyopop gave to me….Holiday Avatars?!” Okay, this seems more like a stocking stuffer than a present. You get a choice of 5 “holiday” avatars. Undertow teddy bear with a santa hat, I Luv Halloween skull with mistletoe, Gothic Sports with dreidels, Bizenghast with mistletoe, or Princess Ai with a santa hat. They look pretty cheesy if you ask me, but hey, they’re free and do have a holiday theme to them. Go to Tokyopop.com to get them. You have until 5pm PST.
“On the second day of Christmas Tokyopop gave to me…imanga mp3!” I guess it’s not all just manga. Though this is one of the things I’m liking about Tokyopop. They are trying to expand manga beyond the printed page, and use the available technology. I just wish they would stop with the Princess Ai over-promotion. Anyway, the mp3 from the Princess Ai imanga, Broken Leash is available to download at Tokyopop. (I would have preferred the song from Bizenghast, but I prefer that manga too.) Once again, it is only available until 5pm PST tomorrow (Wed, 12-12-07). Check back here or on Tokyopop.com tomorrow after 5pm to find out what’s next!
“On the first day of Christmas, Tokyopop gave to me…Fools Gold Vol. 1!” For the holidays and in honors of it 10 year anniversary, Tokyopop is making available full volumes of their original manga through their manga reader. Starting today until 5PM PST, you can read the first volume of Fools Gold by Amy Reeder Haley, a previous RSoM winner. Every weekday after, a new volume will be available to read. This is a good time to check out some of the OEL manga that Tokyopop’s been doing without risking your pocketbook. The manga reader is easy to use, and works in both IE and Firefox. And how can you say no to free manga? I know I can’t! And you never know, you might actually find yourself liking a title! So keep checking here or the Tokyopop website for updates!
Five and a half years ago, Viz put out a sampler at the San Diego Comic Con for a new manga anthology; Shonen Jump. Anchored by Dragonball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh!, Shonen Jump introduced us to new titles such as Naruto, Shaman King and One Piece at only $20 for 12 issues. Ah…those were the days. The December Issue featured some important milestones. Besides heralding in the 5th year of the magazine, it had the first Naruto story Masashi Kishimoto wrote. This Naruto and his world was very different from the one we know now. A “Proto-Naruto” is you will. Instead of being a ninja-in-training with the spirit of the 9-Tails Fox Spirit in him, Naruto is the son of the 9-Tails Fox. He has been raised by the last living warrior that fought his father, who is also a Yokai. Naruto has not been able to make any human friends, as he has been a mean-spirited trickster to them. The warrior sends Naruto from the mountain temple where they have been living, and tells him he can not return until he has made a human friend and brings him back to the mountain. The rest of the story is following…
Whatever happened to this old adage? It tells us that looks can be deceiving, and by making a judgment based on what’s on the outside will make us miss what’s on the inside, which is what really counts. ANN has just reported a story from South Carolina about a mother that complained to a Books-a-million store about a manga being the children’s section based solely on the cover. What makes this a story is that the bookstore acquiesced to the parent’s complaint and is now moving the manga section away from it’s core audience. All because ONE parent complained. The book in question, Absolute Boyfriend vol 1 by Yuu Watase, feature a boy in a gift box. The only parts of the boy that can be seen are his chest and knees, with the nudity only implied. What galls me about this story is that it was the mother that was offended. The mother of a boy, that came in to shop for her son. She wasn’t offended after her son picked up the book and she looked at what he picked. No boy would pick up a series called Absolute Boyfriend. And once again a rush to judgment is…
It’s time to play Matchgame! Let’s meet our contestants! Seven Seas Entertainment has teamed up with big publisher Tor books according to this press release. The company will release licensed, and original manga as well as light novels under the Seven Seas imprint beginning in March 2008. Of course, this alliance is nothing new in the manga world. Big “respectable” publishers seems to be looking for ways to get in on the manga revolution. Tokyopop and Harper Collins made a mutually beneficial deal. Del Rey created it’s own division, as did the Hachette Book Group, which created Yen Press. All these pubs license manga of course. But there seems to be more going on here. Both Del Rey and Yen Press will be publishing original manga as well. Tokyopop, of course, led the way for OEL. By teaming up with Seven Seas, which initially started as an original content only publisher, Tor can jump into this market with a ready made imprint. Is this a new trend now? Do publishers see a future in original content manga? Del Rey announced a new series based on the popular novel series “Odd Thomas”. Yen Press has promised to premiere an anthology of…
Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.
I’ve already gotten the newest issue of Shonen Jump, but I don’t want to read it until I’ve read the intervening Naruto volumes (17-27)! So, Naruto’s next story arc will have to wait. I think I need more doctor’s appointments to catch up.
I’ve been writing reviews for the website Manga Life for a few months now. I will be posting reviews here as well, though not the same as what goes to Manga Life, so the content remains fresh. But I will be alerting everyone when my reviews go up there. If you have any comments about my reviews, please feel free to leave comments here. I’d really like to hear what you have to say. Zombie Loan Vol 1 – Yen Press – Older Teen (16+) Genju no Seiza Vol 4 – Tokyopop – Older Teen (16+) Edit: Due to disagreements over managerial decisions and Manga Life being put to the side during site upgrades, several staff and myself have decided to create a new review site: Manga Village. We can be found at Comics Village for now, until our own site can be completed.
The Japanese are doing it again. According to ANN, am3, a maker of data cards with anime movies of them for the Gameboy Advanced and DS in Japan, has announced a new system that will allow DS owners to download anime, manga and other content to SD cards and be viewed on the DS. This new system, to be called DSvision will include a starter kit consisting of a micro SD card, micro card adapter for the DS, and USB card reader. There will also be an online store that will start with 300 titles at start up in March of 2008, that will be expanded to 10,000 by 2010. And, unlike other addons for the DS, this one is the first approved by Nintendo, and the first to have an online store tied to it. This is definitely an interesting idea. The DS is already well established as an entertainment machine, and users have been coming up with their own hacks to put their own games and other applications on the DS. I can actually see reading manga on it as being more plausible than on an iphone. The DS has 2 LCD color screens, each 3 inches in…