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Bookwalker, the manga website from Kadokawa added another 35 volumes spanning over 8 titles from Japanese publisher Shonengahosha.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Viz Media has announced several licenses, with a bit of “something old, something new” to them. Three of the titles are Tokyopop rescues for the Viz Select line, and two are brand new licenses from mangaka who have already had titles released in the West to quite a bit of success. From Tokyopop, Viz Media continues their CLAMP releases with two of their titles returning; The One I Love and Wish. The One I Love is a one-volume collection of 12 short stories that tell stories about the many sides of love. All of the stories are told from a woman’s perspective, and deal with the doubts, insecurities and ultimately the joy of love. It sounds like a fun series, though perhaps best taken in smaller doses. The romance may get monotonous, even for romance lovers. It will be released February 10th. Wish is a four volume series that follows Shuichiro, who after saving an angel, Kohaku, from a tree one moonlight night, is offered a wish as a reward. Shuichiro refuses the wish, saying he can get what he wants on his own. But he and the angel soon find out there are…
Yen Press has been pushing out the licenses hard and fast this year. Their last big license announcement a month ago featured mostly light novels for their Yen On line. This last weekend at New York Comic Con it was time to spotlight the manga. Nine titles were announced, most of them being new, with one surprise/not so surprising license rescue. As Yen has been want to do, two of the manga titles are adaptations of light novels they have already announced. A Certain Magical Index light novel series got a lot of cheers from fans for Yen with its license, and now its manga adaptation is joining the party. This adaptation started a while ago, back in 2007, and there are 13 volumes so far. It follows Touma Kamjou, a boy made remarkable by his complete lack of ability in a city filled with super powered students. Touma just wants to keep a low profile, but when a nun named Index stumbles into his life, things get more complicated and dangerous than ever! I’d give this first volume a shot. Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is another light novel series adaptation. It’s…
New York Comic Con, or NYCC, was this weekend, with all the manga publishers making appearances and announcements. Vertical, Viz, Yen Press, even Kodansha and Jmanga had panels to announce their new titles and new alliances.
What a wonderful treat to find in my mailbox! Viz Media has rescued 07-Ghost, a title originally published by Go! Comi before they went out of business. I know 07-Ghost wasn’t a popular title with everyone. Even I had a few difficulties with the first volume, but I was still sucked into the story and absolutely loved the character designs. I’ve only been able to get a hold of the first three volumes, the third being a lucky find at a Borders not long before every store was closed. I’ve wanted so much to read more, but never though anyone would pick it up. This is a wonderful Spring gift, and just before Wondercon. I wonder if Viz will have more surprises there. November can’t come fast enough! Thank you Viz!
It’s been awfully slow in the news department lately. Maybe everyone is busy with holiday preparations. But fear not! All is not lost as the news this week features unexpected licenses as well as confirmations of some found in the wild. Half confirmations of rumors, and trying to reach out to the casual manga fan join regular features of best sellers, podcasts and roundups.
It’s been a tough last few years for the manga industry. Companies have either stopped publishing manga or have disappeared altogether. For us fans, the thing we tend to lament most is the loss of titles, and the pleading to the remaining companies that they pick up them up so we can keep reading them. But there are other things lost when a company goes under, namely the people who worked there and put so much into their love and passion for manga. Most of the time, we don’t know who these people are, as they often go unnamed, just one of a number of people who have to find new employment now, in an industry that is shrinking. So, I think it’s worth pointing out when one of those people who reached out to the manga community then finds work again with a manga company. I am of course speaking of Asako Suzuki, formerly of CMX Manga, and who has recently joined Tokyopop as a Manga Line Editor, according to ICv2. Essentially she will be handling the majority of Japanese licenses, including acquisitions. This really is fantastic news. Asako was very active on Twitter, engaging fans and finding out…
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…
Anime Boston/Wondercon Roundups Two comics/manga related cons occurred this last weekend. On the West Coast was Wondercon, the smaller, younger brother of SDCC, located in San Francisco. While more comics based, it seems Hollywood is taking every opportunity to jump on the popculture bandwagon. Manga related, Viz Media had a booth, as did CMX, Last Gasp, and EigoManga. Deb Aoki of Manga.About.com has an overview of the con as well as links to other coverage. Over on the East Coast, Anime Boston took place. While mostly an anime con, many manga bloggers attended and even held panels. Vertical, Inc. had a panel, and Ed Chavez, marketing director for Vertical as well as creator of Mangacast hosted a panel of manga bloggers. The big news from the Vertical panel was the license of a title from a mangaka once published by Viz Media. Calling it “Manga Series R” the clue is that the “R” refers to either the mangaka’s name or manga’s title. I voting (hoping) its Leiji/Reiji Matsumoto. Brigid Alverson has a full rundown of the Vertical panel at Robot 6, and you can hear the audio from the Manga Mania panel by scrolling down to the Ninja Consultant’s like…
Last night, on my way home from work, I was listening to the ANNcast podcast, episode 28, the one with the interview with Kurt Hassler of Yen Press. Near the end of the episode, they read off some questions take from fans on Twitter. One of the questions was about license rescues. Kurt’s response to it really bugged me. He started going off about why fans think they (Yen Press) would go “trolling” for titles from other publishers. The hosts of the show weren’t much better, basically likening license rescues to dumpster diving. Really? This is what Kurt Hassler and Yen Press think of fan requests and the titles they love and want to see completed legally? Does he really think that fans consider Yen Press to be a dumping ground for lost titles? Or could it possibly be, that fans respect what Yen Press does with their titles and are hoping to see a title they love, but wasn’t completed because the original publisher went out of business or cut back to their cash cow titles, completed with a publisher they know will do it justice? Do they really think everything published by other companies is just trash, and…