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Manga Xanadu » Entries tagged with "scanlations"

Ask Manga Mom: The “Are These Safe?” Edition

A Mom writes: Hello, I have learned that my daughter is getting on a site and reading manga when she is on the computer. She is almost 13, and I need to please know that the manga that she is reading is not sexually explicit. I just really want to know how far they go and I have a list for you. Legendary Kang Do Gekkano Kimi Innocent World Kindai Renai Mahou Sensei Wegima! The Prince Who Fell In Love Full Contact Psychic Academy Mucha Kucha Daisuki Prism Palette She was on some of these for many pages, and others just for one or two. Please let me know if there are specific ones she should not be reading. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Ask Manga Mom

This Week in Manga: 8/14-8/20/10

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 … Read entire article »

Filed under: News, Weekly Roundups

This Week in Manga: 7/17-7/23/10

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 … Read entire article »

Filed under: News, Weekly Roundups

This Week in Manga: 7/9-7/16/10

Manga Factory Direct Anime News Network was able to talk to company representative Mika Ogata and get some more details about Manga Factory and their prior relationship with Aurora. Despite having been former employees and having volumes of the defunct publishers books for sale, there is no connection between Manga Factory and Aurora. They are completely new company. The books are just a way to get some funds in. They won’t be making any announcements for licenses for the summer, but considering they’ve just started, that’s understandable. And I think it makes total sense for former employees to band together like this and create their own company. They no doubt have the contacts and the knowledge of the US manga market, that executives back in Japan that were calling the shots … Read entire article »

Filed under: News

This Week in Manga: 6/19-6/25/10

Movable MANHWA Feast This week started the June edition of the Movable Manga Feast, with one slight change. The manga is actually a manhwa, or Korean comic. The title chosen was The Color of… Trilogy. These three books are about a young girl growing up in turn of the century Korea. This edition’s host is Melinda Beasi of Manga Bookshelf. This Feast has turned out to be different, and not just because the books are from Korea. There were a lot more unfavorable reviews this time compared to other feasts. Most participants had more things they didn’t like about the trilogy than did, and were more than happy to express them. Some of the conversations spilled over onto Twitter. While I had my own problems with the trilogy, I just didn’t … Read entire article »

Filed under: News, Weekly Roundups

This Week in Manga: 6/12-6/18/10

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 … Read entire article »

Filed under: News, Weekly Roundups

This Week in Manga 6/5-6/11/10

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 … Read entire article »

Filed under: News

This Week in Manga 5/22-5/28/10

May Movable Manga Feast This month’s movable manga feast featured the Vertical title To Terra… a sci-fi shonen from the 70′s. It was hosted by Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic blog. Reviews for the title were a lot more varied than on previous titles. People definitely had their opinion of this series and had no problem expressing it. You’ll find an introduction to the series and all the links to the participating reviews at the top link. Well, That’s a Surprise Here’s something that shouldn’t shock reader of Hunter x Hunter. It’s going on hiatus. Again.  What is this? Once a year at least, this title has to stop? Is this something in Togashi’s contract? If he hates writing this series so much, why doesn’t he just cancel it. Or hand it … Read entire article »

Filed under: News

This Week in Manga 4/17-4/23/10

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 … Read entire article »

Filed under: News

This Week in Manga 3/20-3/26/10

Nature vs Nurture The scanlation debate continues this week.  The first salvo fired was by Kate Dacey of the Manga Critic blog.  Spurred by a tweet that pointed to a link to a review of a Chrome plug-in for OneManga, she explains why a aggregator site like Onemanga is illegal.  Johanna Draper Carlson replies with a post that readers of scanlations know perfectly well what they’re doing is illegal, and just don’t care.  So is it the nature of the net, or a learned behavior?  I think it’s a combination of the two, since a lot of kids are either hearing about the sites from their friends, or searching Google, and the aggregator sites always come up on top.  And it’s going to take more than a “Just Say No” campaign … Read entire article »

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Why Not?

I was reading the comments on this post at Anime Vice.  Most of the debate over justification for scanlations didn’t interest me, as I’ve seen them all before, but one comment did sort of bother me.  Fellow Manga Village reviewer and blogger John Thomas had joined the conversation and made a simple statement.  “Why not just learn to read Japanese?”  It was the response to this that made me go “Huh?” I have to confess, that is the one answer I loathe seeing in scanlation debates, and it appears every time. He goes on to give excuses of no time, too expensive, too difficult, etc., which then steers the conversation toward learning Japanese. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Articles

This Week in Manga 2/27-3/5/10

And the Battle Rages On The debate over scanlations continued this week, coming out of the brouhaha over Nick Simmon’s “homage” (his words) to Bleach.  It grew out of the post by Deb Aoki at Manga.about.com, where comments exploded, with readers of scanlations coming to scans defense, while anti-scans tried to convince them otherwise.  This “debate” led to a post on Anime Vice by a guest writer who tried to defend his reason for reading scans.  More debate continues in the comments there as well.  Watching people’s reactions to the scanlation debate has been interesting to say the least.  It’s like discussing religion, politics, or “dubs vs subs” in the anime community.  There is no real debate going on, because there are two groups with a set of beliefs that they … Read entire article »

Filed under: News