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…
Some company needs to step up to plate and rescue the City Hunter manga from license hell. This series, written and drawn by Hojo Tsukasa, ran in Shonen Jump from 1985-1992, and has a total of 35 volumes. It’s about Ryo Saeba, a sweeper, or gun for hire, working in Tokyo. He is known as The City Hunter, the best shot in the Underground World, where he worked as an assassin for my years before becoming sweeper. Now, he works with a partner, Kaori Makimura, who is the younger sister of his former partner, Hideyuki Makimura. Hideyuki died, and asked Ryo to take care of Kaori. Together, they take on work to help people as body guards or private detectives. And even though he is wanted by the police, he sometimes helps out Saeko Nogami, a pretty detective wtih Tokyo Metro Police. There is alot of action in this manga, and lots of sharp shooting from Ryo, making nearly impossible shots to save the day. Ryo is a well muscled, good looking man, and the women are all shapely beauties. Sound like a typical shonen series? Well, it isn’t! This series is freaking hysterical!! What makes City Hunter so funny?…
Anime News Network featured a news story about Voice Bank, a software company based in Japan, that wants to put manga at your fingertips. Back in July, Voice Bank demonstrated software to convert digital manga to fit the iphone screen, and was seeking partners to deliver content in the US. Then just a few days ago in Hong Kong, showed off digital manga available through Safari (the iphone web browser), as the Digital Manga Project. Right now, it is still just an experiment, as they are continuing to research the best way to deliver the content over a WiFi connection as well as new hardware and software. Now, I’m not a big iphone/ipod fan. I don’t care for Steve Jobs and his totalitarian attitudes towards his customers, ie. limiting iphones to AT&T, not allowing phones to be unlocked or have third party apps and brick the phones of people who do with itunes updates. But I do have to admit what Voice Bank and the Digital Manga Project have done actually looks pretty good. The image is clean and is easily seen on the screen, unlike the conversions Tokyopop did of their OEL manga for the Sony E-Reader. Despite the…
Anime News Network has announced that the latest issue of Hakusensha’s LaLa shojo magazine has announced that the Vampire Knight manga, created by Matsuri Hino and published by Viz Media in the US will become an anime to be shown in Japan. Vampire Knight, published in Viz’s Shojo Beat magazine, is already very popular with girls here in the US. There are websites devoted to the characters and manga, as well as fans dressing up as characters at anime conventions. The bishonen (pretty) boys that make up most of the series is one reason for it’s popularity. Another is it’s school-horror theme. The story takes place at Cross Academy that has two class; the Day Class and the Night Class. Only a select few know that the Night Class is made up of exclusively vampires. We follow Yuki Cross, the adopted daughter of Headmaster, Zero, a latent vampire who keeps his urges at bay by drinking Yuki’s blood (against the academy’s rules), and Kaname, the vampire that saved Yuki, and considers her his. This is a shojo manga that has all the sexiness of vampires combined with hot boys and high school problems. Expect to see this licensed real fast.
At the opening of the new Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York, Viz announced the licensing of another of Takehiko Inoue’s manga, REAL, a sports manga with a twist; Wheelchair Basketball. With the mangaka present in a rare appearance, Viz announced that this lastest manga by Takehiko would join Vagabond and Slam Dunk in the Viz library.
Viz takes another step into the digital domain by offering one of it’s biggest sellers online. Naruto joins Bleach and Death Note on Direct2Drive , IGN Entertainment’s digital retail store, at the reasonable price of $1.99 an episode. It’s for windows users only right now, as it uses Mediaplayer’s DRM, but intel macs with windows emulators can run them too. Apparantly all the shows are also dub only, so if you like the watch your anime in the original japanese with subtitles, you’re going to have to stay with DVDs.
27 volumes of Naruto in a beautifully made wooden case with lots of extras. At $190, it’s cheaper than buying the volumes individually (sales/discounts not included), and you get a case to put them in to boot! Not a bad deal over all…. Truly a must for the die-hard Naruto fan! More after the break.
A few things I want to get off my chest first. Viz– Afros are for frogs and fists get their strength from the North Star and not nose hair. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo must Gogogo-go Go-gogo! Bleach may make your whites look good as new, but it’s not going to do the same for Shonen Jump. Recycling is for cans, bottles and newspapers, not manga! I don’t know why, but these changes to Shonen Jump have really been bugging me. Why add these two titles? Why now? Bleach has been doing just fine on its own. It’s been making the USA Today Top 150. The only real logical reason to move it is to try to build Shonen Jump sales, if they are in fact slumping. (We don’t know SJ sales figures). And Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, I really can’t believe they had a huge amount of requests to add this to the magazine. Viz only put out one volume in 2005 (which you can’t even find on their website), and they’ve started it’s serialization at chapter 110? That doesn’t sound like a serious commitment to me. It really made me think. What was so special about these two titles? Then, it hit me….