Manga Xanadu

January has come and gone, and I have completed my next series. Chibi Vampire was one of Tokyopop’s moderate successes. At least it usually hit the top 10 when a new volume came out. I originally picked it up because I liked the premise; a vampire that gave blood instead of taking it. I read the first 7 volumes and then got distracted. Volume 7 was the end of an arc, so it was at least a good place to stop. Volume 8 starts a new arc, focusing the vampires of Japan and the truth behind Karin’s blood loss. The story continues with the lightness of the last previous volumes. Karin and Kenta have worked out their issues and are trying to be a normal High School couple. But the appearance of a half human/half vampire, and Anju’s early awakening throw more emotional obstacles in their path. Still they find a way to keep going. Finally, the truth behind Karin’s blood loss is revealed and she is kidnapped by another vampire clan, prompting the Markers and Kenta to work together to get Karin back safe. Chibi Vampire gets to join the growing list of titles that has brought me to…

Here we are at week four of the great Manga Wrap Up, and thanks to being sick on Monday, I was able to get through four volumes of the next series I’ve decided to finish, Black Cat. I was off by how many volumes I had to read. I thought I had to start at volume 14, but I actually had to go back to volume 10 to find anything I remembered, so the extra time came in good use, but the being sick sucked. Black Cat is about Train Heartnet, a former Chonos assassin who gives up his life of killing turns Sweeper, or bounty hunter. His weapon of choice is a gun that he can make fast and impossible shots with. His partner, Sven Vollfied, a former IBI agent also turned Sweeper. He possesses a “Vision Eye” that allows him to see a few seconds into the future, and makes all kinds of gagdets to help them catch their quarry. Joining them is Eve, a young girl whose body is filled with nanites that she can control and transform into any kind of weapon. She was created as an ultimate weapon, until Train and Sven freed her. Now,…

Three weeks into the new year and I’ve wrapped up my second series. Bizenghast is an eight volume series that was among Tokyopop’s first original titles, and was also the longest. I first discovered it when Tokyopop ran the first few chapters online. It’s a fantasy mystery series about a young girl, Dinah, who lost her parent when she was young. With her only friend Vincent, she discovers the Mausoleum, and accidentally enters into a contract with it, and must solve riddles to free trapped spirits. It’s a coming of age story for Dinah as she learns to live again and starts to become someone who can rely on herself. Both the story and the art are uneven, especially at the beginning, but improve as the story goes on. The improvement in the art is very telling, especially in the last volumes. I enjoyed watching Dinah’s journey overall, but did have some problems with it. It felt rushed at times and dragged at others. I would have liked to have seem more about Bizenghast’s past more in the first volumes, so that it doesn’t seem like a thrown on after thought at the end. I also didn’t really care for…

Week two ends on a better note than last week. After so much talk, I finally finished reading Rurouni Kenshin. I can’t really say I cared much for the last arc. I liked all the flashback scenes and Watsuki did a good job of balancing it’s telling with the present. But there was so much fighting, and lot of it seemed pointless. The big battle with Enishi and his “allies” was just to show how powerful everyone had grown over the series. And the battle against the 4 Stars felt like it was just filler. The ending did tie up everything nicely. I liked that everyone went their separate ways, following their own paths instead of staying together in Tokyo. I was glad to see some hope for resolution for Enishi as well. That is one of the things I liked about the series overall. There was feeling of hope and redemption all the way through the series. Kenshin never gave up one anyone, and redemption was always in reach, if one chose to reach for it. The ending did have a cliché feeling to it, especially with Kenshin and Kaoru’s son Kenji being such a crybaby, mama’s boy, the…

“Manga wrap-up, manga wrap-up Let’s finish up these series Manga wrap-up, manga wrap-up Cause there’s no more room in here!” “Manga wrap-up, manga wrap-up Let’s finish up these series Manga wrap-up, manga wrap-up Cause there’s no more room in here!” “Cause there’s no more room in here!” Hey! Welcome to my first post of the new year chronicling my attempt to catch up on all the titles I’ve fallen behind on and may even give away! I even have a theme song! (Bronies will recognize the tune. I blame my youngest daughter for its creation. 🙂 ) Anyway, this first week didn’t go quite the way I had planned, but that should come as no surprise. I started 2012 by preparing for the January Manga Movable Feast. This month features the works of Usamaru Furuya. I’ve been saving Genkaku Picasso for this and finally read volume 1. I will have to get 2-3 now. I really liked it. Too bad it’s not available digitally, but at only 3 volumes it won’t be so hard to fit on the shelf. I hadn’t planned on reading Furuya’s version of No Longer Human from Vertical, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check…

Over on her blog, The Manga Critic, Kate Dacey talks about how she’s moved away from reading longer manga titles, that now she has a “fear of committment” for titles more than 4-5 volumes long. Johanna Draper Carlson of Manga Worth Reading sympathizes with Kate and talks about some longer titles that she’s lost interest in as well. Reading these two posts made me think about how I look at the titles in my collection. I have several titles that go well beyond 10 volumes. In fact, I think I might have MORE titles that go over 10 than not. Is it because I’m really committed to these titles? Not so much. I’m a collector. I love to collect things. Books, comics, toys, if I have an interest in it and it’s part of a series, I’m probably gonna get it. All of it if possible. And in a lot of ways, that how I’ve treated my manga. It’s become something I collect more than something I get to read. Just like the toys on the shelf and the comics in boxes, manga has become in many ways something with holes to fill in and a lined shelf of different…

I sometimes wonder where my obsession for collecting manga, for in many respects that is what I do, came from.  It’s easy to assume that it started with comic collecting, but I wasn’t that big of a comic collector when I was growing up.  There were a few series I followed, but it was nothing like the “gotta catch ’em all”, feeling I sometimes get with manga.  It finally hit me, as I was driving home from work, listening to a podcast. I had grabbed the mp3 of a BBC Radio program, “On the Outside It Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box”.  It’s a radio documentary about the old Target book novelizations of the Doctor Who TV series from the 70’s-80’s.  This series of books made available all the episodes of Doctor Who long before there were VCRs or DVDs.  And I used to read them.  I was a big Doctor Who fan long before I was a manga/anime fan.  And with the show not starting in the US until the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker, there was almost 15 years of the show that couldn’t be seen, but through the novelizations, could be read. As I’m listening to this…

It’s that time of month again when I have to place my Previews order.  But now, besides my usual problems of deciding what to buy, I have to wonder if the books I order will be canceled.  Diamond Distributing has had their red pen going at break-neck speed, what with canceling the entire Yen Press solicitation from last month’s order.  They’re back again and while not the only publisher to get red-lined, they just the most jaw-dropping. So, do I chance another manga order through Previews?  I want to support what titles I can with pre-orders, but is it a losing battle with Diamond who seem happy to slash their catalog back to the stone age of  just DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and Image? If I want a manga to survive, and I want the publishers to know I enjoy the title by pre-ordering it, will the publisher still get my message even after Diamond cancels my order?  Do the publishers see the numbers before the cancellation order comes down?  Am I wasting time pre-ordering with Diamond and risking my favorite, not so popular manga to an untimely death? I ponder these questions even as I prepare my next order. …

When times get tough, and bank accounts become lean, that’s when you have to start slashing the non-essentials from the budget.  As much as I hate to say it, manga is one of those non-essentials.  With not much hope for recovery in the next six months, or if the state will be solvent (I live in California), that’s meant I’ve had to cut down on the manga I pre-order.  In happier, healthier times, my average order is 7-10 volumes, depending on who has what (ie Viz doesn’t flood me) or if there are title for others in the family (Husband and kids).  With pre-order discounts, that averages around $70 a month in manga.

I talk a lot about buying manga on this blog.  Living on a budget means that I have to make every manga dollar count, and get the best deals I can to keep up on the series’ I enjoy.  This is why I subscribe to Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat, watch for sales at Bookcloseouts.com, Deepdiscount.com, very occasionally search eBay, wait for 4-for-3 deals on Amazon.com, and trade.  So it’s no surprise, that the bulk of my collection is from Viz, because they have provided the best deals with tiered pricing that let me get more than the other publishers.  This fall, that’s all changing.

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.

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!