The nominees for the Japan Expo awards are out, and they include some interesting titles. Japan Expo is a European event so all these manga are licensed over there; in some cases, they have different titles than the American editions. Here is a nice page from the Expo site with the covers of all the nominees. (Image of Vinland Saga lifted from Manga Curmudgeon, where it was a featured license request a while ago.) In other awards news, the L.A. Times Book Prizes have added a graphic novel category, and GoGo Monster is among the nominees. Simon Jones speculates ...
David Welsh and Kate Dacey make their picks from this week’s batch of new comics, and the Comics Village team picks the best of the last week’s releases as well as their November manga of the month. You could read all the best-manga-of-2009 lists, or you could let Deb Aoki boil them down into a single list of critics’ recommendations for you, since a lot of books are being mentioned over and over this year. Deb also lists her choices for the best continuing series of the year. Erica Friedman lists her top ten yuri manga of 2009 at ...
East Coast Rising artist Becky Cloonan is the featured artist in the latest edition of The Gallery at ANN. Lori Henderson rounds up the week’s manga news and announces the winner of her The Color of Earth giveaway at Manga Xanadu. Deb Aoki presents her list of the 25 best new manga released this year at About.com. At Comics-and-More, Dave Ferraro lists his choices for the 10 best manga of 2009. Reviews: The Manga Recon team has a new set of Manga Minis to start the week. Megan M. on vol. 2 of Bamboo Blade (Manga Bookshelf) Connie on ...
As I noted yesterday, the Good Comics for Kids gang posted our picks for the best comics for kids and teens of 2009, and there were quite a few manga on the list. Gia linked to it at Anime Vice, and her fans have some suggestions of their own for younger readers. Gia also wonders if digital distribution would work for a manga magazine in the U.S. Are manga and anime dying in Japan? Roland Kelts makes that bold assertion in a recent blog post at the new Comics Journal site, and he enlarges on that point in this ...
I didn’t get to listen in on the latest Tokyopop webinar, which featured CEO Stu Lefy and senior editor Lillian Diaz-Pryzybl but Daniella Orihuela-Gruber liveblogged it and then offered some additional thoughts, and ANN summarized the high points. Apparently Tokyopop is considering using “fan translators” to finish up series that are on hiatus due to low sales. It’s hard to know what this means—is “fan translators” a synonym for “unpaid labor”? Because from what I hear, professional translators aren’t paid that well to begin with. Anyway, they are in negotiation with a scanlation site, and they mentioned Crunchyroll, a ...
Just a quick update today as I’m heading out for what I anticipate will be a busy day at work. One important reminder, though—if there’s an election going on where you live, get out and VOTE! We’re having municipal elections today, and although we all pay more attention to the president, local officials have a much more direct effect on everyday life. So take a minute to pull that lever or fill in that bubble. OK, on with the manga news… Lissa Pattillo and Deb Aoki write up the most recent Tokyopop webinar, which featured Domo creator Tsuneo Goda. ...
Lori Henderson has a thorough roundup of the week’s manga news at Manga Xanadu, and Erica Friedman checks in with the latest edition of Yuri Network News at Okazu. The Comics Village clan makes their picks from this week’s new releases. David Welsh, meanwhile, contemplates the upcoming titles featured in the September Previews. Gottsu-Iiyan posts some Naoki Urasawa sketches from a Japanese magazine at The Eastern Edge. The Daily Yomiuri reports that Japanese publishers are putting more of their works online to beat scanlators, since legal means have had limited success. Things were looking kind of bleak at Deux ...
Touka Gettan is part of the “WTF am I watching!?”-series. From the creators of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito comes an equally eccentric series that will have just about everyone confused as hell in the first five episodes. Its big selling point is of course that the episode aired backwards: it starts with the conclusion and ends with the introduction. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! In any case, it’s definitely an interesting and unique experience watching this series. The first five episodes are a complete mindscrew, with just about everything not making any sense because ...
My in-box is overflowing with press releases, so I’m going to try to post a few. I do this for two reasons—to organize a lot of information in one place, and more importantly, to hear what you have to say about it. So feel free to comment away, or send in bulletins from the floor about the events listed here. Read on for the Viz schedule: VIZ MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS FOR 2009 COMIC-CON Array Of Notable Personal Appearances, Events And Activities In Booth 2813 Showcase ULTIMO And New Imprint SHONEN SUNDAY AND SIGIKKI.COM San Francisco, CA, July 15, 2009 – ...
Aw, what a heart-warming episode. I’m really glad that Kobato managed to get exactly the time it needed in order to tell its full story. I’ve said this many times before, but there are too few series that try to go beyond 13 episodes, and it’s series like this that show the heights you can reach with a little character-development. This episode wasn’t exactly the most realistic… but hey. ...More
Excellent, this episode did exactly what I hoped it would do. While the tongue-in-cheek storytelling of the first two episodes was fun, it was bound to get old after a while. this episode drops the comedy (aside from one scene, perhaps), and instead takes itself seriously. The result is my favourite episode of this series so far. Unlike the first two episodes that made a bit of fun of ...More
Fantagraphics has signed a deal with Shogakukan to publish a line of manga edited by Matt Thorn. First on the list is a volume of Moto Hagio short stories, A Drunken Dream. At his own blog, Matt lists the stories he has chosen for that volume, reveals that Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son will also be in the series, and shows us the covers. Simon Jones speculates a bit as ...More
The main reason why I wasn’t too happy with Rio during the past number of episodes is the lack of attention she got. I mean, from out of nowhere she suddenly turned out to be a princess and started angsting. It sounded so cliched. However now that she got an episode properly dedicated to it, my opinion of her turned to the complete opposite. This was an excellent episode ...More
The best episode of Hanamaru Youchien yet! I’m not sure whether this is because I just watched Working!! today, but it did make me think: Hanamaru Youchien is currently doing a lot of things right at which Working completely fell flat. It’s a show about a job in which we actually see adults working. The characters all have their quirks, and yet they’re also just actual people: their quirks ...More
Did you know that a Precure Movie is going to premiere in a number of weeks? Well, if you didn’t know, the OP is here to remind you. In any case, while the previous episodes have all focused on the lead characters themselves, this was the first episode to completely focus on a random kid who feels down. It’s a staple of most mahou shoujo, and especially the thing ...More
