Kumoricon Kumoricon, Portland, Oregon’s anime/manga/all thins J-popish was this last weekend. John Thomas, a local and reviewer for Comics Village, was there for two of the three days and gave reports on the announcements, mostly from Dark Horse, as they are also local to the area. The big announcement from Kumoricon though came from Jason Thompson. His magnum opus, Manga: The Complete Guide will continue online. Starting September 15, a new review of a series will go up once a day for 365 days (that’s one year) at Suduvu.com. Jason will also be giving away 5 manga a day to some lucky commentor a day. Go here for all the detials.
Kodansha Letting Licenses with Tokyopop Lapse Brigid Alverson of the Manga Blog reported on Monday something that’s been suspected for a while in the mangasphere, and has finally been confirmed by Tokyopop. Kodansha, one of the big Japanese publishing houses, is not renewing its licenses with Tokyopop. David Welsh provides a quick, convenient, if possibly incomplete list of the titles affected at his own blog Precocious Curmudgeon. This news dominated much of Monday and Tuesday. Check the Manga Blog for a full roundup of commentary. This wasn’t an unexpected move, as Tokyopop’s relationship with Kodansha has been rocky at best. Two years ago, Kodansha made a deal with Random House and Del Rey Manga has been reaping the benefits. While this doesn’t come as a big surprise, it is kind of painful for those of us that were reading unfinished titles that are now left in limbo. I’ve been beating the drum loudly for Dragon Voice‘s last volume and lamented the incompleteness of Kindaichi Case Files. All we can do now is wait and see what Kodansha’s next move will be. Considering how long this took, it may be a very long wait for the next one.
Next Tokyopop Webinar Announced Tokyopop has announced it’s next webinar, and this time far enough ahead of time for people to plan for it! It’s in the evening this time, 7PM PST/10PM EST, on Tuesday, September 1 5PM PST/8PM EST on Wednesday September 2. It’s a better time though I’m going to miss the beginning. 5:15 is the best I can do getting home. East Coasters will have a better time of it. There’s nothing on worth watching at 8PM on Wed is there? Tivo it if you must! Otherwise, there will hopefully be some more good recaps around the mangasphere.
We knew it was in the works, and now Sony has unveiled it. The third e-Reader in their hardware line, the Reader Daily Edition. Sony announced the new device on Tuesday at a press conference. The Daily Edition is different from it’s older brothers in 2 important ways. One, it has a larger touch screen, coming in at 7 in. And two, it has built-in wireless capabilities, provided by AT&T. Finally, Sony has a device that can truly compete with the Kindle! ….Maybe.
New People Grand Opening Saturday marked the grand opening New People in San Francisco, CA. Located in Japantown, it’s a three story shopping center that features Japanese cinema, retail and art all in one place. Several SF peeps/tweets when there. You can find most of the coverage under the topic #newpeople on Twitter. Deb Aoki of About.com: Manga has a photo gallery of the event. AX Flashback AX Backstage has posted the Keynote from Anime Expo 2009, including the “Can Manga From the US Be Commercially Successful?” panel (aka the OEL panel). The actual video of the panel begins on Day 2, Part 2 at about 6:00 in. (link via @debaoki)
Viz Media’s solicitations for October and November seemed outrageous as I went through the latest Previews. They solicited 46 volumes of manga and novels! My jaw dropped at how much they were putting out! So, I decided to break down the releases, looking at them by imprint and how much of a difference the price increase would make, if any.
It’s another slow week for news in general, though there were some cool announcements and interesting discussions. There’s still some SDCC fallout too. That should start petering out though as NYAF starts to loom ahead. Video Recap of Ikki Panel at SDCC Over at the Ikki Blog, Viz has put together a nearly 4 minute recap of the Ikki panel at SDCC. It’s no the same as being there, but it’ll give you an idea of what went on. A full recording of the panel would have been much cooler though.
Recently, Amazon quietly announced a price drop for it’s Kindle 2 e-reader. Slashing $60 from the price to $299, the Kindle is now coming closer to the price of other ebook readers. If Amazon wants the Kindle to be competitive in any way, it had too. Sony, not to be out done, not only slashed prices, but also came out with two new devices. The E-Reader Pocket for $199 and the E-Reader Touch for $299 and will be out by the end of August. The older Sony E-Reader 505 is $279, and can be found at Staples stores now. Bebook, another competitor is also $279. Cooler Books has it’s own e-reader now, the Cool Reader, which looks a lot like an iPod and comes in different colors, and is only $249.
It’s been a slow week for news, part of which can be blamed on the Twitter DDOS attack Thursday and Friday. My reading list is way down too. I spent the week writing my Black Jack thesis and reading graphic novels for Good Comics for Kids Summer Reading Challenge. I should be back to reading more manga this week. Maybe.
San Diego is over and now everyone is preparing for the New York Anime Fest. But in this week’s round up there’s still plenty of SDCC news to get out and some real thought provoking discussions going on that you don’t want to miss out on. SDCC Days 3 & 4 Manga Blog has more roundups of the manga panels from Del Rey, Dark Horse and CMX. CMX is really working to get my money, and with the sounds of their titles, they are going to succeed. Del Rey might win a few with two of their new titles Panic x Panic and Pink Innocence. Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I know this is late, but SDCC threw everything off schedule. Everything will back by this week. I hope. Between a Rock and a Hard Place Otakon ran this weekend. Did you notice? There were no announcements from manga publishers, and really not a lot of announcements in general. Whoever planned for this years Otakon really blew it. Placing it between the biggest industry cons was a serious mistake. Attendance was barely changed from last years numbers. Even with this economy, AX showed a reasonable rise, and SDCC sold out at least two months sooner than last year. So it’s not that people aren’t going to the cons, they just need more time in between to replenish cash reserves. Otakon, stay in August.
Manga’s version of the “Sub vs Dub” debate Found this on Twitter via aicnanime: Helen McCarthy weighs in on the OEL manga label debate, and she puts into words something I’ve always thought but don’t think I’ve ever expressed properly: And that’s the reason. Semantics is the study of meanings, and to writers and historians, meanings matter. Fans and businesses exploiting the power of the word ‘manga’ are tapping in to one of the oldest magics known to man – the belief that real names have real power, and that attaching a name to a thought or act can give it weight, can bring it into being. But to me, attaching the word ‘manga’ to non-Japanese comics doesn’t change anything important about those comics, and may well dilute and weaken the power of the word in its original form.