This month’s Shonen Jump, January 2010 marks a lot of changes for the manga magazine. Yu Yu Hakusho, one of the few remaining titles from the magazine’s launch (One Piece is the only other one left), finishes it’s 7 year run. It was quite a ride, and I will miss Yusuke and friends, but not all that much. Yu Yu Hakusho has become a typical fighting manga with characters I lost interest in. I was glad to see none of the big demons won in the last tournament, but in the end I was just “meh” about it. The series ends with a whimper instead of a bang. The last few chapters were actually kind of a let down and really pointless (IMHO). It seemed like they were just thrown together to tie up loose ends.
I don’t get upset about many things. I tend to go with a “live and let live” policy. If what you’re doing isn’t against the law, and isn’t hurting anyone, then as a rule, I don’t have a problem with it. I may not agree with it, but I’m not going to tell you you can’t do it because I don’t like it. But one of the things I have little tolerance for is censorship. And that’s exactly what these two library workers colluded to do. Cook can dislike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier all she wants, but that DOES NOT give her the right to keep a book from circulation because she believes a child might find it. It’s not her job to police the library and decide what’s proper for other people’s children to read. It’s for the parents, and the parents ALONE. The library makes this responsibility clear to parents when they sign for library cards for their children. Cook challenged the book, as was her right, but acted like a sore loser when her challenge was denied and chose to keep the book to herself. To protect the children. Who cares about any of the…
I’m sure everyone’s heard by now about Viz’s insane idea to catch up One Piece with the Japanese releases. They announced at Anime Expo that they will release 30 volumes in six months starting in January 2010. That’s 5 volumes a month! Back in May, when it was first announced that current One Piece chapters would start showing up in Shonen Jump, I wrote what I thought of that decision. Viz was nuts. I thought they would try to do it in the span before the chapters came out. I was wrong about that. But their response is no better.
Dragonball: Evolution Junior Novel Adapted by Stacia Deutsch & Rhody Cohon Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: All Ages (9-12) Genre: Action Price: $5.99 Rating: Goku thought he was a normal high school student until he found out he’s actually a martial-arts whiz with all kinds of powers. Now he and his fellow teen warriors are on a quest to find all the Dragon Balls before they fall into the wrong hands. But they may already have! Goku must battle the evil madman Piccolo with all he’s got to save the planet Earth! Taking the title and character names from a manga does not make it “based on”, as it says on the front cover of this book (in very small letters). Not even the description from the back cover has much to do with the story inside. This story takes only the barest of elements from Akira Toriyama’s original manga and weaves them into a generic and boring story that has none of the charm or fun of the source material.
This title has not been solicited in Previews! I’ve been watching! Waiting!! It’s the last volume!!! Aw, come on Tokyopop! You got my hopes up by putting up this late last year, and now…what? Will it come out, or won’t it? Why do you enjoy torturing me like this?! I don’t care what kind of paper it’s printed on. I don’t care if it’s only available to read online. Just tell me the truth! Can you or can’t you? Will you or won’t you? Why do you continue with these teasings? Why are you so cruel?!?!??! WWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYY?????!!!!!!!
John Jakala found the Inuyasha VizBig Edition on Amazon and noticed something that I didn’t see on Simon and Schuster; it says it will be left to right, just what I DIDN’T want. Greg McElhatton commented on that blog post saying he heard a rumor that all Takahashi manga was contracted for left to right reading. As stupid as that sounds, I wouldn’t be TOO suprised if it was true. But this brings up a new question. Will Takahashi’s new manga, to be released simultaneously with the Japanese be flipped as well? If Viz does have this all-encompassing contract with Takahashi that keeps all her manga in L to R, then the simultaneous release will do nothing about scanalations (if that’s their reason for it). There will still be scanalators putting out the manga in it’s correct R to L orientation. And there will still be people reading them because THAT’S HOW THEY WANT THEIR MANGA! And don’t try and tell us “that’s the way Takahashi wants it”. No it isn’t. Any creator wants their work recreated as close to the original as possible, while still being sellable. R to L sells just fine. Don’t assume that just because it’s…