Manga News, Reviews and Commentary
Viz Media makes another move to spread its manga to other platforms as Weekly Shonen Jump finally jumps from the Vizmanga app to get on comiXology and Amazon’s Kindle. The jump to just these two platforms and not Nook, Kobo, iOS, or Googleplay is probably due to Amazon’s ownership of comiXology. Hopefully Viz will be able to announce expanding to those other platforms soon as well.
It wasn’t a major con weekend, but we still got two license announcements from Kodansha Comics and Vertical Comics. It’s almost poetic when you realize that Kodansha and Vertical are related.
Maki Minami has become another of Viz Media’s go-to creators with this, her third series to be published by the Shojo Beat imprint. It’s starting up at a perfect time as well, as Voice Over! Seiyuu Academy has just ended. I don’t know if I’ll read it, since it uses the Rich-to-Poor trope that I don’t care for, but it can some times work for me, so may be I’ll at least check out the first volume.
It has been announced that the manga, Knights of Sidonia, will be coming to an end in the November issues of Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon magazine due out in September.
The wave of Attack on Titan spin offs continues with the latest announcement that the spin-off novel, Attack on Titan: Lost Girls, is getting a manga adaptation in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. It began serialization earlier this month, and is being adapted by Ryosuke Fuji.
It seems an edition of the US Weekly Shonen Jump magazine isn’t complete with a Yu-Gi-Oh manga being serialized in it. The first Yu-Gi-Oh manga was among the debut titles, and every new title was added to the magazine for most of their runs up to Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, which just ended in June. So it’s time to load up the next one.
Ultraman is a Japanese superhero who has been getting a lot of attention lately in the US. Crunchyroll has been streaming the older episodes and now Viz Media has licensed the manga that acts as a sequel to original TV series, to attract old and new fans alike. And it’s finally out this week!
Superheroes have been all the rage lately on TV and movie screens, so it should come as no surprise that they’re popping up in manga too. My Hero Academia has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump since late last year, but this simultaneous release of both the print and digital edition of the first volume finally makes the series available to non-WSJ readers. I wasn’t wowed by the chapters that were made available in January of this year, but sales are putting me into the minority. Check it out yourself to see where you stand.
If you’ve been following my Top Ten posts every week, you will have seen that Tokyo Ghoul has been popular even before the print volumes came out. Part of this is probably because of the anime series which streamed earlier last year. If you’ve been curious about the series, but want to try before you buy, Viz Media has a deal for you. You can read an extended except of the first volume online for free. You can get almost half of the first volume to try, but only for a limited time. Check it out while you can!
Otakon is the last big convention for manga publishers before New York Comic Con in October. It’s not usually a place frequented by publishers, especially not from the west coast, but this year saw some exciting license announcements, and appearances by west coast publishers Dark Horse Manga and Viz Media with Shojo Beat.
Kodansha Advanced Media, or KAM, is going to be a big deal to those of us who want more of our manga in digital, as they have taken over managing Kodansha Comics’ digital media. This exhibit features several prominent Kodansha manga artists, and is not only free for visitors who are in San Francisco, but online as well for those of us not so fortunate.
Viz Media does a pretty decent job of spreading out its license announcements. They aren’t always big or mind-blowing, but at all three conventions in July they made sure they had something to for fans to look forward to, and I think that in itself is pretty cool.
