Due to illness, I was unable to do a roundup last week, so this week combines the two weeks. So what’s in store? More licenses found and announced from Viz and Vertical, several digital manga stories, some news from Japan and Korea, 2 weeks worth of best seller lists, podcasts and the Manga Village roundup.
In this week’s post: News from Kumoricon, free manga online, manga by subsciption online, manga in libraries, respect for shojo, or the lack thereof, New York Times Best Seller list, second opinions, podcasts, and the Manga Village weekly roundup.
Manga Movable Feast: Kid’s Table This month’s Manga Movable Feast started this week and doesn’t feature just one title. It’s actually about all all ages titles, with Yotsuba&! as the focus, as well as another all ages title mainly just so the pun “Yotsuba & …” could be used. Thank Ed Sizemore of the Manga Worth Reading blog for that. It’s being hosted this time at the Good Comics For Kids blog, which specializes in news, reviews, articles and interviews about and with the people who make manga and comics for kids 16 and under. The introduction article is here, and the archive is here. Interestingly, a lot of the reviews and articles are about how Yotsuba&! isn’t really a kid’s title. I myself didn’t see it appealing much to a kid, but I think that’s because the appeal I found in it was the way it reminded me of my kids at that age. But if kids are anything, they are surprising. Check out the links for reviews of Yotsuba&! and other all ages manga. Rolling Out Online Manga Deb Aoki of About.Manga.com spoke with Crunchyroll CEO Kun Gao to get the low down on Cruchyroll’s announcement of capital…
Open Mouth. Insert Foot Get a bunch of creative people together for a gripe session, and sometimes magic happens! That’s what happened on Twitter recently as several manga creators through out their own two cents (yen) about not just illegal uploading, but the people doing it. When someone posted on twitter of having uploaded Rei Hiroe’s entire manga Black Lagoon, the mangaka, in jest, wished pancreatic cancer on the uploader. Fellow mangakas Kazuki Kotobuki and Kouta Hirano joined in, coming up with more imaginative forms of death on the uploader. Bet that guy is sorry he tweeted that. I still don’t get all this disrespect people want to show the creators of the books they claim to love. While I don’t think they need to be worshipped, how about just some common decency? Or is that to outmoded for the 21st century? Not As Easy As It Looks People are always complaining about the translations in manga, that it’s not literal enough, or that it’s too “Americanized”. At SDCC, several translators in the industry got together for the panel Manga: Lost In Translation panel. It features many well known translastors and was moderated by William Flanagan, who is about as…
Hetalia: Axis Powers Does Digital Tokyopop, who has tried to be a leader in digital manga, takes a step to try to reclaim that title. Hetalia: Axis Powers is a title that been highly anticipated by fans, but the print copy won’t be out until Sept 21. But if you don’t mind reading manga on a computer screen, you can get it now through the Zinio service. Tokyopop has made this title available early through the download service and for about half the price, $5.99. But that not all! Hetalia will also be available through the Overdrive, the digital checkout service for libraries. If you’re library uses Overdrive, but doesn’t have Hetalia, tell Tokyopop. They get a digital copy to them for free! I was going to pass on this title initially, but if I can check out a digital copy from my library, yeah, that would be worth it. It would be nice if publishers made more titles available digitally through Overdrive. With libraries budgets getting slashed by cities, online will be about the only way 9-5 workers can get library books. I know I can’t get to my local library now with their hours slashed to closing at…
Too Much Good Stuff! Deb Aoki of Manga.About.com continues posting her coverage of panels from SDCC. This week she adds an entry for the Best and Worst Manga panel including comments from the panelists. There are more Best and Worst and a whole page dedicated to Most Anticipated. It’s interesting that Twilight made the Best list, but Maximum Ride got put in the Worst. Both make tons of money for Yen Press, so yah there. And the cat manga Chi’s Sweet Home and Cat Paradise both definitely deserve to be in the Best list. I don’t know what I would add to this list. I have hard time saying something is the Best or Worst. Except One Piece. That’s definitely a Best! Also added to her coverage is a complete transcript of the Online Piracy Panel. It’s NINE PAGES. The front page to it give the topics covered in the discussion, but getting the full transcript is almost the same as being there! Definitely thank Deb for her hard work in getting this up for everyone to read. This is a very relevant topic right now as fans and publishers bash heads over the best way to get comics and…
And the Con Goes On It’s been two weeks since Comic-Con, but reports are still coming out with video and transcripts from the manga panels that were held that. While that might be bad (and stressful) for the writing and transcribing them, it a bonus for those us of who couldn’t go! Deb Aoki posts about the manga events on Friday and takes a closer look at the Yen Press announced titles. Comics Journal has video of the Manga for Grown-Up panel and Carlo Santos from Anime News Network talked with guest Moto Hagio. And yes, there will be more links coming. But if you couldn’t make it to the con, they will be worth it. Stuck in SDCC’s Shadow One week after SDCC was Otakon over on the East Coast, in Baltimore, MD. There wasn’t a huge manga presence there in either publishers or journalists. Ed Sizemore of the Manga Worth Reading blog not only held his own panel on Anime Journalism, but he also did writes up on Manhwa at the con for Manhwa Bookshelf, and days Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Audio from his panel can be found here, a transcript from Anime Diet here, and a report…
San Diego Comic Con Con’t San Diego Comic Con wrap-up dominated the news this week. But this shouldn’t be too surprising considering the size and breath of the con. Friday night ended with the Eisners, where manga may have had great representation in nominations, but in the end, it was only Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life that was able to take away anything, and saw Naoki Urasawa shut out once again. A Drifting Life won for Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia as well as Best Reality-Based Work. While I’m happy for Tatsumi and Drawn And Quarterly for their win, I think Pluto deserved more recognition than it got, and the Eisners need to look beyond tradition comic publishers for good titles. Saturday brought the Tokyopop and Viz Media: Shonen Jump panels, the only other two publishers to have panels at SDCC. Tokyopop’s panel was filled with lots of announcements, including a new title from Min-Woo Hyung, the creator of the Priest manhwa, called Ghostface. They will be making more of their titles available digitally, including through Zinio and Overdrive. They announced three new licenses, Sakura no Ichiban, Pavane for a Dead Girl and Mr. Clean: Fully Equipped…
YEN PRESS LAUNCHES THE ONLINE VERSION OF YEN PLUS WITH A FREE TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION THROUGH AUGUST NEW YORK, JULY 27, 2010 – It was announced Friday at San Diego Comic-Con that Yen Plus, the monthly manga anthology from Yen Press, is now available online at yenplus.com. And for a limited time, Yen Press will offer free access to the August issue from now through September 10th. Yen Publisher Kurt Hassler said: “It’s no secret that there is a huge demand for the digital delivery of manga content. Our responsibility as publishers is to grow and change both with the industry and the readers to meet that demand. Relaunching YEN PLUS in a digital format is our first major step in that direction, and as we look at expanding the selection that the magazine has to offer in the coming months, we look forward to not only hearing from our existing readers but reaching out to new audiences as well.” Each issue of Yen Plus includes the latest installments of popular manga such as Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Nightschool, Time And Again, and more. A new online edition will appear on the first Tuesday of each month. Subscriptions will cost $2.99…
Twitter This The week started out with a bang, and just kept on going! Seven Seas started it off with license announcements on Twitter in anagram form with one clue. All three were guessed correctly by ANN and confirmed by Tuesday, the day of the last announcement. The three titles are ToraDora, Amnesia Labyrinth, and A Certain Scientific Railgun. Two of these titles have anime tie-ins, with ToraDora having already released its first disc earlier this month, and Funimation just announcing the license of A Certain Scientific Railgun at this past Anime Expo. Amnesia Labyrinth also has ties to a previously published work. Nagaru Tanigawa, who is the author of the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi light novels, is also the author of this series. Most of these titles came from ASCII Media Works, which Seven Seas seems to be mining. I’m definitely interested in Amnesia Labyrinth, and not just because it’s by the author of the Haruhi books, which I’ve enjoyed the manga of, but it’s also a mystery. And we can’t get enough of those! One Manga Down, 1000 Manga To Go Wednesday, One Manga, the top scanlation aggregator site on the web announced it would be taking down…
Manga Factory Direct Anime News Network was able to talk to company representative Mika Ogata and get some more details about Manga Factory and their prior relationship with Aurora. Despite having been former employees and having volumes of the defunct publishers books for sale, there is no connection between Manga Factory and Aurora. They are completely new company. The books are just a way to get some funds in. They won’t be making any announcements for licenses for the summer, but considering they’ve just started, that’s understandable. And I think it makes total sense for former employees to band together like this and create their own company. They no doubt have the contacts and the knowledge of the US manga market, that executives back in Japan that were calling the shots didn’t. This is like a manga fan’s dream come true, and I hope they succeed, just to prove that dreams like this can still come true. Manga at the Harveys The Harveys are awards nominated by and chosen for people in the comics industry. Since this is for the US comics industry, manga doesn’t make a big splash except in the “American Edition of Foreign Material” category. Two manga…
Anime Expo Con’t Anime Expo continued on Saturday and Sunday, but there was only one panel the rest of the weekend of interest to manga readers. Viz Media held their panel on Saturday. Most of their news was just reiterations of previously confirmed titles through sightings on Amazon, but they did have some new titles, all from already known and published mangaka here in the US. Deb Aoki has the run down about the panel and new licenses. She also takes a closer look at DMP’s new titles. Also announced at Viz’s panel was the streaming of a new anime series, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. It’s published in Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan. Any bets on this being a new license to be announced at SDCC? Maybe it will be serialized in Shonen Jump magazine, and there will be something worth reading other than just One Piece! Am I just dreaming now? Probably. AX’s Manga Evolution Over at Robot6, Brigid Alverson takes a look at the evolution of manga publishers and their announcements at AX over the last 5-6 years. It’s an interesting bell curve, as you can see publisher attendance and announcements seem to wax and wane…