Love Manga

It’s a Monday again which means David has a new Flipped column out at Comic World News.

After swashbuckling through the raft of new licenses and other such joyful manga announcements David sits down to contemplate three future offerings from CMX.

First up is Emma by Kaoru Mori, and which I have to say is probably the most appealing of the lot, partly I suspect because of the English aspect but also for a point that David makes;

In a very funny, illustrated afterword, Mori’s editor bemoans the fact that she spent a full page having Emma put on her glasses. “That’s an important action,” Mori insists in response. She’s right. It’s moments like that that drew me in and made me want to know more.

I do love that sort of thing. Okay not all the time, but to me there is always room for slow considered pacing. I’m more than willing to give this a try.

The other two titles The Empty Empire by Naoe Kita and Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu are less so enticing. Not to say they are bad or anything, I’ve not read them, but nothing really grabs me. Oh apart from this bit;

Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu doesn’t have the visual familiarity of The Empty Empire. Tanaka’s illustrations are flavored with a scratchy, scruffy, low-fi charm that perfectly suits the quirky characters and story.

Madoka Tsutsumi is in the thick of college entrance exams when he comes upon an altercation between his dead neighbor and a man in a bunny suit.

Actually, that does sound worth a quick peek. ^.^

(more…)

All that talk of Linda ero-manga made me realise just how far behind I am with new licenses from Icarus Publishing.

The last time I left it there was;

Relish by Yutakamaru Kagura
Any Way I Want It by Kei Matsuzawa
Masquerade by Takushi Fukada

but now in the paperback section a whole raft of new titles have appeared all in various stages of coming soon;

Kaerimichi: The Road Home by Tahichi Yamada
Council of Carnality Unlimited by Yanagi Yuki
Anzu: The Shards of Memory by Kirikaze
Taboo District by Yuuki
The Spirit of Capitalism by Maguro Teikoku
Juicy Fruits by Yumisuke Kotoyoshi
Setsunairo No Negai by Kirikaze

and most recently and probably one of my favourites;

Heat by Makoto Fujisaki

which is such fantastic news.
I was amazed really to see Icarus quietly racking up a fair few titles, I mean that lot takes their total up to 24 paperbacks planned, which I like to think is pretty darn impressive.

Whilst checking out the latest 10 top according to bookscan it had occurred to me that I’ve not posted a recent update of any bookscan figures for a good few weeks.

Which is odd for me, considering my penchant for creating tables everywhere, but I think it has something to do with Naruto. All credit to Viz Media, they’ve created a monster in terms of sales and just about everything really and it is showing little sign of abating. It appears week in week out on the bookscan chart, it can’t leave the Diamond’s direct market charts and USA Today flirts with it on the side in their weekly Top 150. It’s worse then a bad penny.

That’s eight out of the entire ten volumes already in the Top 10, if your remotely curious where volumes 7 and 8 are, take a wild stab in the dark. Yes, they are sitting at #11 and #12 respectively. Even the Naruto Anime Profiles vol.1 debuts at #14 and that’s not even a manga.

Okay so that chart isn’t a surprise to anybody really, but the interesting part I wanted to just look at was the “Weeks in chart” column.
47 weeks! Is that even remotely normal? Right a quick flick through the entire 2005 top 10 and a title which done very well would last up to between 11-16 weeks in the chart, in particular I’m looking at Sin City here. Then of course you had the ultimate seller of last year Fullmetal Alchemist, which when it disappeared out of my records was only pushing 24 weeks. Every Naruto volume has beaten that record and the most recently released volume 10 is already halfway there with 10 weeks in the chart.

Now I’m not a Naruto fan, more Bleach myself and I’ve written before that I’d like to see Bleach emulate some of the success that Naruto has had when it’s own anime debuts on Cartoon Network this coming September, but could I survive talking about Bleach owning the top 10 all the way till December 2007? Frankly, that’s quite a scary thought.

Ed over at Mangacast has a quick roundup of those title announcements which slipped through the con coverage, or just weren’t plain announced at all.

Little Queen by Kim YeonJu	Utopia’s Avenger by Oh SeKwon

Eternal Alice Rondo by Kaishaku	Chinese Hero by Wing Shing Ma	Purgatory Kabuki

Comic by Ha SiHyun

I’d have to say that the two DGN properties from Dr Master do sound most intriguing, especially Chinese Hero. Hey it’s Wing Shing Ma, can’t go too wrong there. ^.^

David Welsh has been racking up the posts over at Precocious Curmudgeon all about the internet according to Manga Publishers.

First off we had the big manga publishers and a quick fire verdict on how successful or not they were. Of course this just made everyone want an examination of all the other manga publishers, David was only too happy to oblige.

It was in fact David’s final post on the matter which to me bears the most need to be read. A cross between pure common-sense and a how-to on creating a manga website just about all the publisher could read it and come away with improvements to their site.

I’m not going to talk in-depth too much about it, because a) it is virtually all so self explanatory and b) it really is worth a read; but there was just 2 parts I wanted to highlight.

My first thought is that the lowest common denominator of all these sites is (or should be) encouraging visitors to purchase the products on display, or at least leaving them wanting to learn more about them. With that in mind, there’s one element I think all of these sites should contain: a comprehensive, up-to-date list of titles currently in print.

Since when did this cease to become the ultimate ideal and get replaced with as David calls it “chibi ninja dances”. There is no reason why we cannot have dancing ninja’s or glorified myspace communities on a publishers website, but they shouldn’t be the first or only focus of the site. Extra flash works like that should always be a secondary consideration if at all.

One thing that I haven’t really addressed here is on-line community development. It’s not really a priority for me as a user, so I’ll leave it to others to talk about those issues if they’re interested. I will say that it never hurts to provide a venue to interact with your customers and for them to interact with each other. That said you might want to make sure you have adequate resources to deal with moderation issues that will inevitably crop up.

Well without being too pointed and looking at Tokyopop’s rather sorry affair at the moment. I’ll have to agree with David on this, this is so far from a priority for me as a user that it is almost quite funny, if it wasn’t so tragically bad. I’ve not doubt that the Tokyopop site will eventually get sorted out from the mess it is in, the moderation part being the most immediate concern.

On a slight tangent I was shown last night a direct response to the whole art stealing process which is rampant on the Tokyopop site at DeviantArt’s site.

But if you find all that too critical, then you can voice what you want the Tokyopop site to be like at.. one of the Tokyopop blogs. Entitled What is a Manga Publishing Site Exactly it attempts to provide an explanation of what they are trying to do, and you know… its for our benefit. The Manga Lifestyle indeed. ^.^

Lyle over at Crocodile Caucus has an interesting observation on the whole Tokyopop affair too.

The IMAF held in London each year isn’t just a fun convention it also has what is fast becoming one of the best known manga and anime competitions in the world. If your unsure about Tokyopop’s RSOM then this is the place to go. (more…)