Manga Xanadu

Just before the Labor Day weekend, Yen Press sent out the announcement that the new issue of Yen Plus was available and subscriptions were being accepted. I immediately forked over my $2.99. At that price, and with no bulky magazine to take up more space I don’t have, it’s totally worth it. Just as I do with Shonen Jump, I will be giving a brief report of the chapters each month. I will not be reading Maximum Ride or Gossip Girl though. Neither story interests me. If this were the print mag, I might page through them because they were there, but online, I have no problem with just skipping them. Even without reading those two titles, Yen Plus still beats out Shonen Jump with a total 368 pages, most of which are manga chapters and not news on anime, video games or card games. Already a big plus for me! It also keeps it’s origianl format of a side “A” and “B”. The “A” side is for the Manhwa/OEL titles and the “B” side is for the Japanese titles. First up is Jack Frost, a title I haven’t been impressed with over the last three volumes. But, since I’ve…

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…

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…

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…

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…

E-books have been in the news a lot lately, what with the iPad, Amazon vs Publishers, and the Nintendo DSi XL all relating to e-books or e-readers in someway.  But none of this news has really had much of an impact on manga readers except to build up hope that we might one days see manga on these platforms.  Well, finally news comes from Japan through mobile manga provider NTT Solmare, that 3 publishers will not only be bringing out manga magazines for mobile devices in Japan, but that they plan to release these for the US as well. These magazines won’t just be re-releases of previously printed material, as most mobile manga has been.  These will have new titles premiering on the mobile platform.  NTT Solmare has released some mobile manga already, but only on the Apple apps store for iPhone/iTouch users only.  This new inititive intends to reach out to other mobile platforms and to e-readers such as the Kindle. What really makes this announcement exciting is some of the creators that are being tapped for the debut.  One of the creators is Sakura Kinoshita.  I love her work even through it hasn’t done so well over here. …

I knew I shouldn’t have done it.  I saw the con report for the State of the Manga Industy panel from NYAF at Manga Recon, and knew I should skip it.  But, being a masochist, I didn’t.  So now I have to write another rant about the ignorance of Michael Gambos.  Now, I don’t know if it’s just that no one else cares, but the panel was happy to let Gambos speak for them on digital distribution and make his silly little comment about the Kindle.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was pretty disgusted by what I read about the State of the Manga Industry at NYAF 2008 (how come every convention BUT SDCC has one of these?).  When the topic of digital distribution came up, it’s nice to say the panelists were “skeptical, at best”.  If transcriptions of their statements are accurate, I would consider them closer to downright ignorant!  Just because older men who’s livelihood depends on the print industry don’t like the idea of digital distribution doesn’t mean their target audience, teenagers that do more online in an hour than most of them probably do in a day would agree!  Guess what guys, it’s not about YOU! The sheer ignorance they display is in the assumption they have that digital distribution will replace book.  Even as a firm believer in the digital model, I don’t believe that is going to happen.  Audio books hasn’t done print in, digital isn’t going to either.  And Gambos’ poor attempt at humor about holding “your Kindle up and wave it in the air” was just plain asinine.  The Kindle as a lot of potential, yes, but it isn’t the “ipod of books”.  Yet. Digital books, and…