From Aurora’s Ashes Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the people behind the company have banded together to create a new manga publisher. Calling themselves Manga Factory, former staffers from Aurora have created a new independent company instead of being a subsidiary of a Japanese company, as Aurora was. They have already announced one title, Teen Apocolypse: Guilstein for the Kindle and promises to do more electronic books in the same genre’s as Aurora; shojo, fantasy, josei and yaoi. This seems to tell me that Aurora wasn’t doing too bad, but maybe they just weren’t doing good enough to please the exec back in Japan. For these former employees to come together and create their own company, in this economic environment must mean they seen a reason to keep plugging at it. I look forward to see what they offer, especially in the digital format. Tokyopop + Zinio = ?? Tokyopop has been a pioneer of digital manga. They were the first to put their OEL manga on an e-reader, they feature sample chapters of new manga, and whole volumes on their website, and now they are teaming up with digital magazine and book publisher Zinio to make their…
Movable MANHWA Feast This week started the June edition of the Movable Manga Feast, with one slight change. The manga is actually a manhwa, or Korean comic. The title chosen was The Color of… Trilogy. These three books are about a young girl growing up in turn of the century Korea. This edition’s host is Melinda Beasi of Manga Bookshelf. This Feast has turned out to be different, and not just because the books are from Korea. There were a lot more unfavorable reviews this time compared to other feasts. Most participants had more things they didn’t like about the trilogy than did, and were more than happy to express them. Some of the conversations spilled over onto Twitter. While I had my own problems with the trilogy, I just didn’t see the sexism that many other bloggers did. At least, not in the way that they did. Many had strong feelings about the books, but I didn’t. I didn’t see anything to really get worked up about. And even though the book is about the daughter, I found myself relating more to the mother. But that’s probably because I’m a mother of 2 daughters myself. If you haven’t checked…
Continuing to Live Up to Their Name It was first announced over the weekend at The Yaoi Review and then found further confirmation by the end of the week. Digital Manga Publishing is looking into an online manga plan that would allow scanlators to do their work legally. President and CEO of DMP Hikaru Sasahara made it official by talked with ANN more about the online venture that would allow fans to translate manga legally, with payment coming after the book shows a profit. They have “1000s” of titles lined up, but no details beyond that. Scanlators are skeptical, many calling it spec work, and thinking DMP is looking to rip them off. What is there to rip off though? They are already doing the same work for free, only this time it will be with the blessing of the creators who work they are taking, and if they do a good enough job, they’ll get more than online kudos. I just hope it won’t be mostly BL titles. Manga Roll Crunchyroll, the streaming site that went legit, is getting some more funding, this time from a book publisher. Bitway, an e-book publisher in Japan, is looking to extend it…
About Freakin’ Time! The big news of the week was announced on Tuesday. Manga publishers in both the US and Japan have banded together to create a coalition to fight online piracy. They are starting with manga aggregator sites with make it easy for scanlators to put their titles up in one place and for readers to find and read them easily. 30 sites have been targeted, though no names have been mentioned. Though you can be sure Onemanga will be one of them, as they got a lot of press last week about making Google’s top 1000 websites. The Mangasphere had a lot to say about this, and you can find a lot of the reactions rounded up here. Bloggers have been going on about this for a while, and it’s about time publishers did something. For all we know, this might have been in the works for a while, to first get the Japanese publisher to band together, and then bring in the US publishers. While this initiative won’t complete wipe out piracy online, as long as gets the aggregator sites off as the first result in Google when searching for some titles, I’ll be happy. Looking for…
Cons for the Holiday Two cons ran over the long Memorial Day weekend. Anime North is a Canadian convention, and blogger Lissa Pattillo attended. She has two extensive posts about the con, dealer room, and panels she attended, with a third for the last day possibly on the way. Over on the US west coast was Fanime. Several west coast manga bloggers attended and had a meetup. Deb Aoki has a photo gallery of her three days there. There were no big announcements from either con, but with Anime Expo and San Diego Comic Con coming up in a month, that’s understandable. Still check out the posts for what smaller, reasonable cons are like. Stretching the Manga Buck I’ve talked about Bookcloseout.com before several times. It a great site to get remainder books for a decent price. The problem with the site has been that it’s mostly only Tokyopop manga that ‘s been available. Not that I haven’t gotten some good titles at great prices, but some variety would be nice. Blogger Tangogant recently discovered another publisher has joined Tokyopop. Yen Press titles, particularly their Korean manhwa titles have appeared on the site. The books are available at 60% off,…
May Movable Manga Feast This month’s movable manga feast featured the Vertical title To Terra… a sci-fi shonen from the 70’s. It was hosted by Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic blog. Reviews for the title were a lot more varied than on previous titles. People definitely had their opinion of this series and had no problem expressing it. You’ll find an introduction to the series and all the links to the participating reviews at the top link. Well, That’s a Surprise Here’s something that shouldn’t shock reader of Hunter x Hunter. It’s going on hiatus. Again. What is this? Once a year at least, this title has to stop? Is this something in Togashi’s contract? If he hates writing this series so much, why doesn’t he just cancel it. Or hand it off to an assistant. At least do something to give fans closure. This is like a bad relationship, and someone’s gotta stop the vicious circle. This Actually Is! Dark Horse, which has started to feature titles on Facebook, recently had one entry on Ghost Talker’s Day Dream, which included the news that the series would be returning in September. The title was previously reported cancelled, so this…
Do you “Size” Up? Inspired by a conversation on Twitter about what it means to be a fan, Ed Sizemore of the Manga Worth Reading blog tries to clarify his position. I bring this up because there has been a lot of talk about digital piracy and it’s effects on manga publishers. Ed’s view is basically that you can only call yourself a fan if you invest yourself, time and money, in the thing that you love. While I can see where he’s coming from, I can’t say I completely agree with his position. I don’t think there should be parameters put on what makes someone a fan of something. Being a fan of something, whether it’s TV, movies, or manga, shouldn’t be contingent on how much time you spend talking up a show or buying everything sight that branded with it. I’m a fan of Castle, but I don’t feel a burning need to buy the book or DVDs. I’m fine with watching the show every week. Does that make me less of a fan than someone who makes Lego Castle and Beckett figures? I don’t think so. By the same token, people or borrow manga from a friend…
Have We Lost Our Soul? Monday started out with a bang as new spread quickly on twitter and then the blogs that Go! Comi’s website had expired. Gia Manry of Anime Briefs caught the expiration first, and attempted to contact someone through voice, but couldn’t get ahold of anyone. No official word has come back from any reps of the company, which doesn’t bode well for its future. The speculation that the manga company for sale in Southern California was Go! Comi gets stronger by the minute. Even though this news wasn’t all that surprising, it is still a bit of a shock, and I hope there are some publishers out there willing to “troll” the Go! Comi licenses and give us some hope of seeing them through to the end. Jus don’t look to Yen Press for that. Another Tremor in the Manga Market And the news didn’t improve any on Tuesday, as Publishers Weekly broke the news that Viz Media had laid off 60 employees, or 40% of their total. The Doomsayers didn’t come out for this, but there was a lot of worry for the Signature/Ikki line, since it’s not a cash cow in regards to sales….
Shopping Alert! Deep Discount.com is having a sale on some manga titles in their book section. As well as discounting the books, they are doing a “buy 3, get 1” free promotion on certain titles. This is a comparable deal as Amazon, and better than Borders “buy 4, get 1 free”. Their shipping is free, and the books are discounted as well. The best discounted deals are on D. Gray-man from Viz, Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi from Yen Press, and later volumes of Black Jack from Vertical. Also included in the sale are several of the VizKids titles such as Pokemon; Adventures and Diamond and Pearl, Leave It to PET, and Legend of Zelda, as well as Udon’s Big Adventures of Majoko. Vampire fans can pick up most of Vampire Knight, you can catch up on the latest volumes of Skip Beat!, or pick up most of Record of a Fallen Vampire which just finished this month. BL fans can get Junjo Romantica and Loveless. If you’ve got some spare cash, definitely check out this sale. How Bad Is It? Via Twitter. Builder, a ZDNet Japan blog, has posted the second part of an interview with Misaaki Hagino, President and…
April’s Movable Manga Feast The third edition of the Movable Manga Feast began this week, with Ed Sizemore of Manga Worth Reading taking over the hosting duties. The series this time is Mushishi published by Del Rey Manga. An introduction to the series can be found here, while the full list of participates can be found here. The Feast lasts until Sunday, so keep watching for more posts on the series. I made my first contribution to the MMF with this series, which you can read here. If you have had any interest in this series, definitely check out some of the perspectives on it. You might be surprised. How Much would you Pay? Last week Yen Press announced they would be publishing Yen Plus as a digital magazine. This week Deb Aoki of Manga.About.Com has a poll asking how much would you pay for an online anthology. The results so far aren’t too surprising. I myself wouldn’t pay more than $5 for an online magazine the size of Yen Plus since I don’t enjoy reading manga online. I need it to be portable and an e-reader or tablet isn’t in my future anytime soon. What this poll does show…
Who’s Going Down? ICv2 reports that manga sales will drop to below 1000 volumes for 2010. The drop in sales was seen more in bookstores than in the direct market, and they speculate that shojo fans getting older, distracted by other things (Twilight) and lack of hit shonen anime is hurting sales more than scanlations. Some of these elements make sense. I can see the drop in sales from bookstores being more, since ordering through the direct market through Previews can often net you a 30% discount on many titles. It’s my preferred way to buy. And fans, male or female, have priorities shifts as they get older, especially in the 20’s, where kids become adults and must establish themselves in the real world. I know that’s where I stopped collecting comics and watching anime. Work and starting a family became much more important. I wonder though how much the “Cartoon Network” effect really drove sales. I can see it driving the sales for first volumes, but like the anime that they are based on them, once a series hits a lather, rinse, repeat cycle, no amount of TV promotion will keep a series selling. Personally, I’m not concerned about…
More Simon and Schuster Sightings The sharp eyes of Michelle Smith of Soliloquy in Blue has spotted some more manga listings on Simon and Schuster from Viz. Two of them we already knew about; Grand Guigol Orchestra and Cross Game. But then four new titles showed up scheduled to come out at the end of the year. Kurozakuro is scheduled for November, and the rest, Kamisama Kiss, Psyren, Itsuwaribito are scheduled for December. I can’t say any of them really inspire me, but I’ve been surprised before. I am saddened by the news of no sign of Story of Saiunkoku. I loved the anime, and am so dying to read the manga! Hopefully the new Kaori Yuki title, Grand Guigol Orchestra, will help to pass the time. Del Rey Ousts X-Men: Misfits & Wolverine: Prodigal Son The weekend ended with a bit of downer as news and confirmation of the cancellation of first X-Men: Misfits and then Wolverine: Prodigal Son came out on Twitter. This seemed to be surprising news as X-men: Misfits seemed to have sold fairly well, hitting the New York Times best seller list for a few weeks. But the creators of both series say Del Rey…