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)
I’m gonna try and make this a weekly feature, rounding up the stories from the week I found most interesting from the web and twitter. Of course, I’ll be adding my own two cents with some commentary on the news items. Anime Expo – 7/2-7/5/09 Normally associated with anime (obviously), manga pubs usually have a presence at AX, as a booth and/or panel. Though, with the tough economy, smaller pubs seem to be fleeing the crowds and expense of SDCC, in favor of a more targeted audience. Here ae some items I want to highlight.
There is a lot of speculation going on about Kodansha and it’s reasons for joining the US Manga market. I think it’s a little premature to speculate now, but I guess that’s what bloggers and fans like to do. This is obviously something Kodansha has had in the works for a while. You don’t get $2,000,000.00 in capital without some planning, and to throw in my .02 about this, I would say it’s Tokyopop restructuring that has more to do with things than Kodansha wanting to “cash in” on the US market.