Along with the announcement that Funimation would begin streaming the One Piece anime simultaneously with the Japanese showing, waaaaayyyy down at the bottom of the announcement, tucked in the About One Piece section, it was also announced that the US edition of Shonen Jump would start running the manga in line with the Japanese releases. Just like Naruto. Huh? How are they going to do that? Naruto‘s catching up seems to be doing well for Viz and Shueisha, if the Japanese publisher has agreed to this. But, Naruto took two years and a mass release of 22 volumes in order to get caught up with the Japanese releases. One Piece, which missed it’s bus thanks to 4Kids raping it and it taking a few years for Funimation to do a proper anime release of it, has a lot further to go. Volume 53 was just published in Japan, and volume 21 will be released here in June. That’s a 32 volume jump. And Viz plans to have the new chapters start in Shonen Jump in the fall of this year! There is no way they will be able to publish and sell 32 One Piece volumes! Not unless they plan…
Lunar Legend Tsukihime is about Shiki Tohno. Eight years ago, he was in an accident that left him weakened, and with a mysterious power. He can see the hidden lines, or death lines, in all things, organic or inanimate. By cutting along these lines, he can destroy or kill anything, or anyone. While in the hospital he meets a woman who claims she is a magician, and gives him some special glasses that make it so he can’t see the lines as long as he wears them. After recovering, Shiki was sent away from the main Tohno family home to live with relatives. Now, after the death of his father, his younger sister Akiha has asked him to live in the big house again with her. Shiki accepts, but on his way home from school the same day he is to move in, he sees a woman in the park. Something seems to take over him, and he cuts the woman into several pieces. Then he faints. He awakens the next day, in his new home. Believing the events from the day before a dream, he goes to school, and meets the woman again, who then berates him for killing her….
I was channel surfing last weekend, and happened upon the first episode of Buso Renkin on the Funimation Channel. I like to see manga I’ve read as anime. Reading static action scenes are okay, but seeing them move can really bring it to life. So, I try to at least see some episodes of an anime. I stopped to check out the first episode and see how Viz did with it. I have a habit of hoping for the best about these things. Sometimes I’m rewarded, sometimes not. The opening started as a good sign. It was the original Japanese opening “Makka Na Chikai” with subtitles. I liked the opening song, and the animation was well done. I especially liked at the end of the opening with Kazuki and Tokiko holding the Sunlight Slasher, and it switching from color and then to black and white with speed lines. Like a switch between anime and manga.
Mamotte! Lollipop Volume 4 By Michiyo Kikuta Publisher: Del Rey Manga Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance Price: $10.95 Rating: The Magic Exams have arrived and changes are on the way. Nina will no longer have the cute boys Zero and Ichi to look after her. What’s a girl to do–perhaps go out for a lollipop? But which flavor should she choose? It’s the end of the Magic Exams, and everyone and their brother (or sister) is after Zero and Ichi. Nina finally gets the potion to remove the Crystal Pearl, but because she doesn’t want to be separated from Zero and Ichi, chooses not to drink it. She has second thoughts as the competition stiffens. She stays with them to end though, with new complications arising. The light-hearted romance of the last volume gets tossed out the window, as the final days of the Magic Exam grow closer. The first half of this volume shows that the Magic Exam isn’t supposed to the game the first three volumes made it out to be. Examinees get tougher, and no one is pulling punches. The entire end of the Magic Exam feels completely different from the story so far, and very out…
Amazon.com isn’t resting on it’s laurels with the Kindle. The Kindle 2.0 was only just releases in February, but less than 3 months later, they already have a new model out, the Kindle DX. It features a larger screen, 9.75 in, integrated PDF support and auto rotating from portrait to landscape.
Stacymay asks: Do manga have to have a complex plot? If someone is trying to write a romance manga, does there have to be fantasy and stuff in it or can it just be a love story? Thanks! That’s a great question! When looking at shojo or romance manga, there does seem to be a lot of fantasy themed stories. But they aren’t all like that. There are plenty of titles that are based in reality. Nana, Sand Chronicles, and Honey and Clover for older readers and Monkey High and High School Debut for teens are some examples. A well written love story is a perfect theme for a manga. As for how complex the plot is, well, that up to the writer and the plot. A story can have several twists and turns to keep the reader engaged, but if there are too many, the story can become too confusing. A frustrated reader will not continue reading the story. It’s best to keep the story relatively simple with just a twist or turn here and there to keep the reader interested enough to read the end. Keep those questions coming!
Phantom Volume 5 By Ki-Hoon Lee/Seung-Yup Cho Publisher: Tokyopop Age Rating: 13+ Genre: Action/Mecha Price: $9.99 ISBN: 9-781598-167740 Rating: K and his team, after their all-out battle against Iron, are left battered and bloody. Dison calls in the Solbalow, Athena’s flying aircraft carrier to evacuate the crew when they’re suddenly under attack by Iron forces. They barely manage to escape to their base in Guam. Once he awakens, K is told where his power came from, apparently the Meteor Shower wasn’t actually a meteor shower, it was a shower of alien nano-symbiotes that invade the human body and grow in the brain. Those who cannot handle their symbiote die, the others can develop special powers, like K’s ability to imitate or react to anyone else’s battle tactics. Dison and Eaimi, on the other hand, are products of Iron’s Ice Project, altered human beings just like the female cyborg found by Eric. We jump ahead one year and the tide has turned against Iron. Repeated attacks by Athena and Rynus Corporation have cost them not only land but public opinion but Iron has a few tricks up it’s sleeve. First, the return of Colonel Kas Stein, now a cyborg in his…
Link found via twitter. Thanks aicnanime! While reading and writing reviews of manga takes up a lot of my time right now, I do have some other interests outside of that. I’ve always been a crafty person, and I got into cross-stitch maybe 14 years ago. I like to stitch things that match my interests, so I have lots of fantasy patterns (dragons, unicorns, the zodiac, etc.), lots of cats, big and small, but nothing in the anime/manga range. I didn’t think there were any stitchers that would cross the two hobbies. Boy, was I wrong! Manga Cross Stitch, originally named Manga in Stitches, over 100 designs and charts of original manga characters (for copyright reason, obviously). You can make quick pieces, or stitch a whole page, complete with lettering and sound effects! Why frame a piece of manga art when you can make your own! Don’t be limited by pens and pencils, when you can use so many different palettes of threads and stitches to put screen tone to shame! The book comes with a CD that has all the charts available to be printed in any size you prefer. It is being sold in the UK through Amazon,…
The Big Adventures of Majoko Volume 1 By Tomomi Mizuna Publisher: Udon Entertainment Age Rating: All Ages Genre: Fantasy Price: $7.99 ISBN: 1897376812 Rating: While cleaning her room, a young girl named Nana finds a mysterious diary. As soon as she opens it, out pops Majoko, a rambunctious wizard girl from the Land of Magic! Together, these two girls explore a fantastic world full of magic spells, wondrous creatures, and endless surprises. Every day is a big adventure when Majoko is around! The Big Adventures of Majoko has ever thing to please a young girl; easy to relate to characters and stories that are filled with fun and adventure. The simplistic and self-contained stories are perfect for the emerging to chapters reader, but don’t expect to see it in the hands of many over the age of 10.
I’ll jump on the band wagon and give some of my reactions to Rin-ne, Rumiko Takahashi’s new manga. I’m not completely sold on this one yet. It was a good introduction to the two main characters, but it didn’t really grab me. I like supernatural stories, so I’m hoping she’ll take the Shinigami concept into a different direction, though that is how it appears with her emphasis on reincarnation. It seems to have more of a Buddhist take on the afterlife, which is more interesting to me than Bleach‘s. I did like the ghost Chuhuahua. The buggy eyed dog. LOL. Takahashi really likes red-headed protagonists too, doesn’t she? I’m going to keep reading, and see how things go. It fits perfectly into my lunch 1/2 hour. On the Inuyasha VIZBIG new: YES! THEY GOT IT!! THEY FIGURED IT OUT!!! Okay, I feel better now, and little vindicated. I am so glad that Inuyasha is coming out unflipped finally. What I have to figure out is how to justify buying 32 volumes all over again… Now, all we have to work on is getting Ranma 1/2 and Urusei to get the same treatment.
There are manga that are based on video games and have had CCGs created about them, but this is the first time (that I am aware of), that a CCG is getting a graphic novel made about it! Alderac Entertainment has announced a graphic novel for it’s CCG Legend of the Five Rings. Titled Death at Koten, it follows Imperial Magistrate Seppun Tashime as he investigates the assassination of the Crab Clan Leader. It’s about time that Legend of the Five Rings got a graphic adaptation. The concept was just made for graphic novels, and shouldn’t have taken 15 years to get here! Legend of the Five Rings was born in the CCG boom, and it differentiated itself from other CCGs by having a storyline running through the game. The base set would set up a story, and then players could influence the direction of the story through voting and tournament play. It also set itself apart by being based on Asian culture instead of European or some fantasy/sci-fi universe. It takes place in the land of the Emerald Empire which is ruled by the Emerald Emperor, and the clans sworned to serve and protect him. The conflict comes from…
ANN has reported that the Japanese supernatural mystery manga, Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro will end this month. Starting in 2005, it’s racked up 21 volumes. The only thing I want to know, is WHEN ARE WE GONNA GET THIS?! I’m a professed lover of supernatural and mystery manga, so where there’s one that combine these two great tastes, I want to taste them together. I’ve seen some of Nogami. The anime was fansubbed, and being a mystery series, I had to check it out. And I loved it. Neuro is a demon who eats mysteries. The stranger the mystery, the better the taste. He teams up with (enslaves more accurately, he is a demon after all) a high school girl Yako Katsuragi. She loves to eat, and has an unsolved mystery about the death of her father. Neuro will help her solve the mystery if he can eat it. Neuro uses Yako as his “public face”. He solves all the mysteries, and she takes the credit. They are joined by Godai Shinobu, a yakuza who is roped into working for Yako and Neuro after he wins a bet and takes over the Yakuza’s small office, and Akane, a disembodied braid…