Manga Bookshelf

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Fannish News & Links

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I’m feeling very fannish these days, with so much going on in the manga blogosphere (and related circles) that pings those particular sensibilities. And when I’m feeling fannish, I want to link. So here’s a little linkblogging with a decidedly fannish hue.

sparklermag-issue02c_saturated-422x543First, I have to make some noise about the recent launch of Sparkler Monthly, a new, online magazine featuring original English-language fiction aimed at “girls and women aged 15-30, or anyone interested in the rough ballpark of Female Gaze.”

There are a number of reasons why this publication should be of interest to manga fans, not the least of which being that its publisher, Chromatic Press, boasts an editorial staff helmed by industry veterans Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Lianne Sentar, and Rebecca Scoble. It’s no coincidence that one of the magazine’s headlining series is the continuation of Off*Beat, a particularly tragic casualty of TOKYOPOP’s ill-fated OEL manga initiative, originally edited by Diaz-Przybyl (you can read my review of Off*Beat‘s long-awaited 13th chapter here). From format to content, Sparkler Monthly is heavily modeled on Japanese-style popular fiction including manga, light novels, and Drama CDs.

Of even deeper interest to me, however, are these women’s fandom roots, evident everywhere, from their general sensibilities to their submission guidelines, which specifically include fanworks as legitimate elements of an online portfolio. Having come out of fandom myself, I’m keenly aware of both its incredible wealth of talent and its raw passion for fiction, the likes of which I’ve rarely experienced outside fandom circles. On a very basic level, Chromatic Press is My People, and that’s an undeniable draw.

The inaugural issue of Sparkler Monthly is free to read right now. Paid members have access to downloads (in multiple formats) of all new chapters in the magazine and other premium content—including online access to previous chapters of older series like Off*Beat. Though the free online reader is slick and works well, high-quality PDFs have me already feeling grateful that I decided to spring for a paid membership. The newest chapter of Off*Beat looks pretty great on my iPad.

801mmfIn other fannish news, Khursten Santos is currently hosting the BL Manga Moveable Feast at her blog, Otaku Champloo. Khursten is a truly excellent MMF host, and she’s posted a large number of wonderful articles herself in addition to other Feast contributions. Some of my particular favorites include a look at the BL “New Wave” (From the looks of it, “New Wave” means “BL MJlikes.” Who knew?) and this countdown of 40 artists she deems part of “The Fujoshi Bible.” She also addresses the question of “BL” vs. “yaoi,” which I personally found quite enlightening.

I’ve always struggled a bit to reconcile my roots in slash fandom with my current interest in BL manga, as my early experiences with BL were dramatically opposed to the sensibilities I’d developed over the course of my fandom participation. But I’m glad I stuck with the genre, because it’s so much richer than I originally thought. Khursten’s Feast is particularly compelling, not just because she’s so knowledgable (she is), but also because she thoroughly embraces the genre as a whole. She’s a true fan, and that’s what makes the MMF really work, in my opinion.

Whether you’re a BL fan or not, you should be following Otaku Champloo this week. She’ll undoubtedly have something to teach you about the genre.

Michelle and I will be posting our (somewhat unorthodox) contribution later this week, so keep an eye out for that, too!

Silver_spoon_mangaLastly, manga fans everywhere rejoice as Deb Aoki (formerly of About.com) returns to the blogosphere with her own new website Manga Comics Manga. The site launched last month, offering the same deep industry knowledge and journalism chops Deb displayed throughout her years at About.com, but in a much less restrictive format.

Why is this news making me feel fannish? Well, it’s Deb who made me aware of a recent French interview with Hiromu Arakawa, author of Fullmetal Alchemist. And if you’re not aware of my intense love for Fullmetal Alchemist, you’re most likely a newcomer to Manga Bookshelf. Even as I’ve become less and less interested in shounen manga over the years, Fullmetal Alchemist remains an enduring favorite. It made my top ten list just a couple of years ago, and spawned a piece of jewelry that I still wear every day. Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s a thing.

In the interview, Arakawa talks about Fullmetal Alchemist, of course, and also her newest series Silver Spoon, currently running in Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday, which sits higher on my personal license request list than nearly anything (topped maybe by Yumi Tamura’s 7 SEEDS or Fumi Yoshinaga’s What Did You Eat Yesterday?). Whatever journalistic restraint I may have acquired over the past few years (little though that may be), my feelings for Arakawa’s storytelling are undeniably fannish, as fierce and passionate as anything I ever felt during my active years on LiveJournal and its many successors. I’m a Hiromu Arakawa fangirl, and that’s the simple truth of it.

You can find a link to the full, translated interview at Manga Comics Manga. Thanks, Deb, for the heads up!

One of the things I love most about running Manga Bookshelf, is that it allows me to be both a critic and a fan, without having to draw clear lines between the two. But there’s no denying that, this week, I’ve mostly been a fan.

What’s been making you feel fannish lately?

Holiday Happenings at Manga Bookshelf

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snowflakes2Happy New Year, Manga Bookshelf readers and friends! Thank you so much for being here with us and giving us so much encouragement and support over the past year. Since many of us are just returning to our regular daily lives after the holidays, here’s a quick rundown of everything that happened here at Manga Bookshelf over the last week!

The “Best of” lists have begun! Sean, Michelle, Anna, and I each made a Pick of the Year and I posted the first two installments of my three-part series here at Manga Bookshelf:

MJ’s Best Manga of 2012, Part 1 (“Best New Print Manga” & “Best New Digital-Only Manga”)
MJ’s Best Manga of 2012, Part 2 (“Best Continuing Manga” & “Best Concluding Manga”)

Look for Part 3 sometime over the next week!

I also posted a holiday edition of My Week in Manga, featuring all the manga I found under the tree this year.

At the Manga Bookshelf forums, reader Gerichan and I discussed all four current volumes of Odagiri Hotaru’s The Betrayal Knows My Name. Our holiday book club schedule ran through the week, but please feel free to chime in anytime and continue the discussion! Also in the forums, I asked “What’s your most anticipated manga of 2013?” and Matt Blind wants to know about your 2013 Manga Resolutions!

Sean posted a slew of reviews last week, including: Kaoru Mori: Anything and Something, Blood Lad, Vol. 1, Higurashi When They Cry, Vol. 20, and Nisekoi, Vol. 1. Meanwhile, the Battle Robot collaborated on two new batches of Bookshelf Briefs (12/24/12 & 12/31/12). We also checked out this week’s new print manga and the next two weeks’ worth of offerings from JManga.

And finally, writing from Taiwan, Sara K. shared two new installments of her column “It Came from the Sinosphere,” first on Lai An’s manhua series Angel Hair and then on the Taiwanese idol drama Full Count.

More to come as we dig into the New Year! I hope you’ll join us!

Upcoming 11/30/2011

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There’s really only one item of interest to me on this week’s ComicList, but it makes the trip to the local comic shop worthwhile.

It’s the second volume of Nicolas de Crécy’s Salvatore, An Eventful Crossing, from NBM. Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey and I discussed the first volume at some length and found it intriguing if a little bit unnerving. I’m looking forward to this one, even if it puts me a bit on edge in ways I can’t quite describe.

You can check out what my Manga Bookshelf colleagues are eagerly anticipating this week, and you can read our thoughts on some recent releases in a heaping helping of Bookshelf Briefs.

 

Upcoming 11/23/2011

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Okay, so clearly this is not going to be a hugely productive week for me, blogging-wise. But I can still muster a look at the current ComicList.

It’s pretty easy, since there isn’t a lot of new material. The highlight is Natsume Ono’s Tesoro (Viz). Here’s a bit of what I had to say about it in my review:

I can see why Viz saved Tesoro for last. It’s charming, but it benefits from having a larger view of Ono’s body of work. It contains some of her earlier short works for magazines like IKKI and some self-published stories, and I can see it gaining a non-manga audience. It’s very much in an indie-comics vein, especially if we’re talking about recent indie comics where the creators seem to feel freer to indulge in some genial whimsy.

You can find links to several other reviews at the post repository for the recently concluded Manga Moveable Feast on Ono’s work, hosted by Manga Widget.

Other than that, it’s pretty much all Sailors, all the time, which is the focus of the current Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week.

 

Undiscovered Ono

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I keep meaning to write up a license request for two of the comics that Natsume Ono has created for Kodansha’s Morning 2, Danza, which ran for one volume, and Coppers, which is ongoing. They’re dramas about police officers in New York, which is certainly unexpected subject matter for this particular creator, and I’ve enjoyed lots of comics that were originally published in Morning magazines. The thing is that, by most accounts, they aren’t very good, at least by Ono’s standards.

Here’s what Khursten Santos said about them in her marvelous overview of Ono’s work:

Danza is a collection of stories although she eventually focused on two NYPD detectives before eventually dedicating Coppers to an entire squad. Her venture into this copland ain’t no NYPD blues. It’s simpler, if not, less dramatic than that. I would have to admit that these two are the weakest of her works as her brand of storytelling kills the excitement in police stories. It’s still a good read. Just not as great as the others. If you sincerely love her sense of melodrama, then you might find some fun in Danza and Coppers.

Personally, I’ll read anything by Ono, and even lower-tier Ono is still pretty awesome. But if I’m going to devote my energies to begging for more of her work in English, I’d be more inclined to bend my energies towards her Basso work.

She started a new series in Shogakukan’s IKKI called Futugashira, but there’s next to no information available on that one. I’m quite intrigued by what little I’ve seen of her other ongoing, an historical drama called Tsuratsura Waraji that’s another Morning 2 title. But if I were to pick one non-yaoi Ono title that I really, really want to see, it would be Nigeru Otoko.

It ran for a single volume in Ohta Shuppan’s Manga Erotics F, which is a constant source of surprises, mostly in the “I can’t believe this comic ran in the same magazine as that comic” vein that makes me love a magazine. (Hi, Comic Beam!) The description makes it sound like a moody, grown-up fantasy, which is very much in my comfort zone. And it reinforces Ono’s standing as the queen of the Fifth Genre prom, so it’s hard to see how something could go really badly wrong in a single volume.

 

Upcoming 11/16/2011

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I feel vaguely like Tom Sawyer, sitting back and watching other people do my work for me, at least in terms of an evaluation of this week’s ComicList. Instead of hacking out my own rundown of the new arrivals, I’ll simply point out this week’s Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week post. By now, you all know how I feel about Manga Moveable Feast star Natsume Ono’s Tesoro (Viz), and you’re only a click away from seeing why MJ and Kate Dacey share my enthusiasm for new volumes of Takehiko Inoue’s Real and Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments.

You’re also only a click away from this week’s round of Bookshelf Briefs. This week’s theme, at least for me, is finding that I quite enjoyed two books in spite of their clear intent to pander to specific audiences that don’t generally include me. (Those would be the second volume of A Certain Scientific Railgun from Seven Seas and the first volume of Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf from Digital Manga.)

But wait! There’s more! The Manga Bookshelf Battle Robot also assembled for a new installment of Going Digital, in which I beg iPad users to give Oishinbo a chance.

 

MMF: On Ono

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Alexander Hoffman has launched the latest Manga Moveable Feast over at Manga Widget, an examination of the fetching and varied comics of Natsume Ono. I’ve got a few pieces in the pipeline for this week, but I thought I’d point to a few things I’ve already written:

Can’t wait to see what everyone has to say about this versatile, very distinct creator!

 

Housekeeping

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Thanks to everyone who voted in this month’s Previews poll. A Devil and Her Love Song (Viz) and Durarara!! (Yen Press) pretty much tied, and plenty of people suggested that Devil is something I should read even without the prompting of democracy, so I’ll just go for both. I love it when a plan comes together, and when a plan falls apart in interesting and useful ways.

Speaking of plans, Alexander (Manga Widget) Hoffman is gearing up for the next Manga Moveable Feast. This installment focuses on the work of Natsume Ono. I believe I may have expressed a fondness for her work once or twice. I’ll have to check my files.

And, on the subject of Manga Moveable Feasts, I like it when the events cast a spotlight on a specific creator like Rumiko Takahashi and Fumi Yoshinaga. So, for this week’s random question, I’ll ask which mangaka you’d like to see at the center of a future feast?

Osamu Tezuka seems like an ideal candidate, because so much of his work has been licensed and translated and lots of it comes in affordable, one-volume chunks. I kind of suspect that his individual works are so different and dense that it might take a month-long feast to cover everything. Yuu Watase would offer a reasonable amount of variety, but some of her series are so very, very long that it might pose a barrier to participation. I’d actually really enjoy a Junko Mizuno feast, since she’s such a distinctive artist, and it might poke Last Gasp into publishing another volume of Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, because I loved the first volume like I would my own emotionally disturbed child.

 

 

Where all the women are strong…

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Yesterday brought a mini-wave of mainstream media paying attention to comics thanks to DC trying to reach beyond its core audience. That’s always interesting, but, for me, yesterday’s clear “comics in unexpected places” came from noted American humorist Garrison Keillor.

In addition to his well-known radio variety show, Keillor also produces a short weekday feature for National Public Radio, The Writer’s Almanac. It provides an interesting litany of cultural milestones, biographical sketches of authors and other creative types, and poetry. I generally kind of half-listen, since it airs when I’m driving home for lunch. Yesterday’s show offered the startling aural spectacle of Lake Wobegon’s official historian using the words “shôjo manga.”

One of yesterday’s notable birthdays belonged to Yumiko Ôshima, who Keillor described thusly:

She is a member of the Year 24 Flower Group, one of two Year 24 groups of women who are considered to have revolutionized shojo manga — comics for girls — and introduced many elements of the coming of age story in their work. Oshima and the other women of her group have brought to their art issues of philosophy, and sexuality and gender, and marked the first major entry of women artists into manga.

Now, it should never come as any surprise that nerds lurk in every corner, at every outlet of National Public Radio, but this was extra cool. Ôshima doesn’t seem to be as well known as some of her Year 24 peers – your Moto Hagio, your Keiko Takemiya, your Riyoko Ikeda – so the spotlight was especially nice.

So, if you need a break from hearing familiar media figures discuss the Justice League, go give the piece a listen and read the expanded text.

As for the Justice League, I managed to resist, because if there are two members of that team that do not merit any more of my attention, those members are Batman and Green Lantern.

Upcoming 8/31/2011

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Hey, look up there! It’s the cover to my Pick of the Week! Haven’t seen one of those in a while, have we? Perhaps it bodes well for this week’s ComicList!

A week can’t be all bad when it features a new two-volume collection of Kaoru Tada’s quirky, funny Itazura na Kiss (Digital Manga), can it? Kotoko tries to hang on to the gains she’s made in her relationship with Naoki, and I think we can all guess how well that’s going to go for the poor dear.

Kodansha releases the 10th volume of Koji Kumeta’s sharp, satirical Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, promising lots of field trips and ultimately dispiriting life lessons!

And Viz rolls out a few Signature titles. The one I’m most eager to read is the fourth volume of Q Hayashida’s gritty yet strangely charming horror series, Dorohedoro. That book has really grown on me since its debut.

Sci-fi, romance, satire, and horror… a nice mix, in the end! What looks good to you?

 

Elsewhere update

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The daily-life mayhem continues to prevent me from being a productive blogger. (We just had a very mild earthquake. In West Virginia. Seriously. This is getting ridiculous.) But I am still holding forth in other venues!

I joined the Manga Bookshelf crew to discuss Fumi Yoshinaga’s ceaselessly wonderful Flower of Life (DMP) for the recently concluded Manga Moveable Feast.

I also make my pitch for the jManga title that interests me most… at the moment. I may soon be distracted by something sparklier.

I contribute a review of a smart and suspenseful horror comic for the latest Not By Manga Alone column, too.

And, if you’re curious as to what I like the look of from the current ComicList, you need only look to last week’s Pick of the Week.

 

Personal best

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Sorry for the radio silence, but the day job has been kicking my ass lately. It’s not bad, just busy. To stave off charges of neglect, I thought I would share my contribution to The Hooded Utilitarian International Best Comics Poll, all of the posts of which are listed here:

I clearly had no influence on the top ten, and I think I barely had any influence on the top 115, but I’ve still enjoyed reading all of the lists people submitted, and I stand by my choices, even though they lean as much to “favorite” as they do “best.” And really, if you’re going to be totally honest, aren’t your favorite things the best things at the end of the day? These are all comics that I can read over and over, so they win.

 

 

Upcoming 8/10/2011

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I have no idea who sells this wonderfully horrifying thing, but they are doing the work of the angels. Kate Dacey very kindly tweeted this in my direction with her customary perfect timing, as my ComicList pick of the week — the 15th volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack from Vertical — relies heavily on the participation of creepy little Pinoko for some of its spectacular highs. I discussed some of those heights in this week’s Bookshelf Briefs.

And that’s really the best that Diamond has to offer this week, so why not take a look at what some people think is the best the whole comics medium has to offer? The Hooded Utilitarian continues to populate its International Best Comics Poll index, and there’s a delightful piece by Shaenon Garrity on what she deems “The HU Lady List.” Over at the Manga Bookshelf, MJ ponders the process and discusses her choices.

 

Here and there, mostly there

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It’s Monday! More specifically, it’s the Monday following the conclusion of the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast! I’m going to use that as an excuse to be a bit lazy and just point your attention elsewhere.

I did muster a couple of Bookshelf Briefs this week: Kikuko Kikuya’s Entangled Circumstances (Digital Manga) and the sixth volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz). I won’t spoil the suspense by telling you which one I liked better, though I can’t imagine it will come as an earth-shattering surprise.

Nor will I rob you of the sense of discovery involved with clicking through to my Pick of the Week! Let’s just say that I was a little resentful that I couldn’t find it at Barnes & Noble this weekend and leave it at that.

So, since I’m abdicating any responsibility to provide original content here, where might you turn for such things? Well, The Hooded Utilitarian is unveiling the results of its ambitious International Best Comics Poll. It should make for interesting reading.

And I wasn’t surprised to see Tom Spurgeon be the first person I noticed draw the comparison between DC’s delayed reaction to bad PR for the paucity of female creators in its upcoming re-launch and the flack Fantagraphics got when it re-launched The Comics Journal with an apparent paucity of female contributors. I’m a little confused by Tom’s assertion that the latter issue has actually been entirely rectified. The Cartoonist’s Diary feature as certainly put women in the spotlight, but only one of the Journal’s 13 regular columns is written by a woman. The site does have women among their roster of reviewers, which is nice, and editorial coordinator Kristi Valenti is developing content in a variety of areas. Still, it’s not exactly parity. I can totally agree that it’s better than DC’s 1%, though.

Update: Seconds after I posted this, I noticed that Deb Aoki had posted a summary of the Best and Worst Manga Panel from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Go, look, and see how their picks track with yours!

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Sunday wrap-up

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We have a couple more pieces before we officially close up this installment of the Manga Moveable Feast!

At Otaku Ohana, Jason Yadao takes a retrospective look at his relationship with Fruits Basket:

Readers loved Fruits Basket. So much so, in fact, that the hyperbole on the books’ covers gradually built over the series’ run.  Need to be reminded that Fruits Basket was “The #1 selling shojo manga in America!”? There was a blurb for that, starting from volume 5 …

And at All About Manga, Daniela Orihuela-Gruber admits that she came to Fruits Basket later than some of her peers, but she fell hard:

In short, I really could have used Fruits Basket and its complex drama about a number of well-meaning souls tormented by a restrictive and isolated society, then freed by great friendship and love. I would have loved to learn that I didn’t need to be trapped into being “friends” anyone in that school in order to have the life I wanted.

You can see a listing of all of the Feast posts here. Thanks so much to everyone who weighed in with such insightful posts. You made the week a treat!

Next up in Manga Moveable Feasts is an in-depth look at the gifted and awesome Fumi Yoshinaga, to be hosted by Kristin (Comic Attack!) Bomba an Linda (Animemiz) Yao. Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey has the full roster of upcoming events.