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TOKYOPOP Is Shutting Down

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It’s with a heavy heart that I direct you to this piece at The Beat, which reports that TOKYOPOP is shutting down at the end of May. I have a feeling the worst of the sadness is yet to come, as I start to fully process which beloved series will be left in limbo.

Rather than dwell on that depressing thought, I figured I’d outline what is left on TOKYOPOP’s production calendar through the end of May, according to Amazon. Hopefully we will still get all these books. Maybe we won’t.

APRIL RELEASES:
(already in stock)
V.B. Rose 12
Silver Diamond 9
Gakuen Alice 16
Ratman 4
The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko 2
Future Diary 10
Karakuri Odette 6 (at least this one got an ending!)
NG Life 9
Shinobi Life 7
Neko Ramen 4
Priest Purgatory (Volume one? There’s another one in May…)

(forthcoming)
Saving Life 1
Foxy Lady 4 (still says pre-order though its release date has passed)

MAY RELEASES:
Hetalia: Axis Powers 3
Maid Sama! 9
.hack//G.U. 4 (novel)
Priest: Purgatory
Happy Cafe 8
Fate/Stay Night 11
Sgt. Frog 21
Maid Shokun 1
Sakura’s Finest 1
Samurai Harem 8
Deadman Wonderland 5
AiON 3
Hanako and the Terror of Allegory 4 (an ending!)
Butterfly 2
Ghostface 1
The Stellar Six of Gingacho 3
Clean Freak, Fully Equipped 2 (another ending!)
The Qwaser of Stigmata 2 (see comments)

Series finales that had been scheduled but will now not materialize include V. B. Rose, Portrait of M & N, Alice in the Country of Hearts, and The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko.

UPDATE: Sean Gaffney of A Case Suitable for Treatment has compiled a similar list, but also rounded up releases that will now never come to pass. You can find his post here.

UPDATE 2: A look at the (extremely depressing) list of removed items at RightStuf suggests that those May titles are not going to be released after all. This means that Karakuri Odette and NG Life were the last series TOKYOPOP actually managed to complete.

UPDATE 3: Several of the releases originally scheduled for early May have begun to appear in comic shops. No Hetalia or Maid Sama!, unfortunately, but we’ll at least get the final volume to Hanako and the Terror of Allegory.

I Am All Asquee

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KODANSHA USA ANNOUNCES THE RETURN OF SAILOR MOON
I don’t ordinarily post publicity announcements, but when it’s something this awesome, I simply must. Thank you a million times, Kodansha Comics. You may look forward to a lot of my money.

Update: Kodansha USA Publicity confirms that there will be a new translation, although they can’t comment on specifics just yet.

NEW YORK, New York – March 18, 2011 – Kodansha USA Publishing, a subsidiary of Kodansha, announced today the exciting return of Naoko Takeuchi’s SAILOR MOON, one of the most significant names in comics and manga, to US publishing. Brand new deluxe editions of the acclaimed series will be released by Kodansha USA’s Kodansha Comics imprint in September 2011. Out of print for six years, SAILOR MOON re-launches along with Takeuchi’s two-volume prequel series CODENAME: SAILOR V, in print in the US for the first time—making this one of the most highly anticipated manga releases in years.

The SAILOR MOON manga, which originated in Japan in 1992 and debuted in the US in 1997, follows Usagi Tsukino, a young girl who transforms into super heroine Sailor Moon to combat evil and fight for love and justice in the name of the Moon and the mysterious Moon Princess. The first successful shôjo (girls’) manga release in the US, SAILOR MOON changed the book landscape and helped establish the foundation for the manga craze; in particular drawing attention to the popularity of comics among female readers.

Prequel series CODENAME: SAILOR V, the first of Takeuchi’s “magical girl” manga, will make its highly anticipated debut in the US alongside the SAILOR MOON re-launch. In CODENAME: SAILOR V, teenager Minako Aino fights as Sailor V against the villains of the Dark Agency before she discovers Sailor Moon.

The Kodansha USA editions of SAILOR MOON will be published on a bi-monthly schedule and follow the 2003 Japanese re-release format of the classic series. The original 18 volumes have been condensed into 12 volumes covering the main storyline, and two volumes dedicated to short stories. Each volume has gorgeous new cover art, retouched interior art and dialogue along with extensive bonus material from Takeuchi, and detailed translation notes.

One of the most recognized manga and anime properties in the world, SAILOR MOON took American pop culture by storm, with mentions in music (“One Week” by Barenaked Ladies), bestselling books (The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot) and more. In Japan, over 15 million copies have been sold and the series has generated everything from animated features to live action musicals, a live action television series and countless merchandise.

“I’m very excited to reintroduce Ms. Takeuchi’s work to her American fans,” said Yoshio Irie, president and CEO of Kodansha USA Publishing. Irie is also the former chief editor of Nakayosi magazine in which the SAILOR MOON manga was serialized. “As we continue to build the Kodansha Comics manga list, a title like SAILOR MOON is the jewel in our crown. As the former chief editor of the work in Japan, I’m especially thrilled to finally release the prequel, CODENAME: SAILOR V, to the many fans who have been asking for it at long last.”

About Kodansha USA Publishing
Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Kodansha Ltd. aims to bring the best names in manga to the North American market, and partners with Random House Publisher Services for distribution. www.kodanshacomics.com

About Kodansha Ltd.
Kodansha Ltd. is Japan’s largest publisher, with its headquarters in Tokyo. Originally established in 1909 by Seiji Noma, the company is still a family-run business. Under the leadership of Sawako Noma, company president since 1987, Kodansha continues to play a dominant role in the media world, producing books and magazines in a wide variety of genres including literature, fiction, nonfiction, children’s, business, lifestyle, art, manga, fashion, and journalism. Recently, the company has ventured into digital distribution of content as well. www.kodansha.co.jp/english

Democracy in action

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Deb Aoki has launched the 2011 About.com Manga Readers’ Choice Awards:

The nominees were selected by About.com readers in January 2011. The top five nominees in 10 categories were chosen as finalists, and now it’s your turn to vote for the winner. The voting period runs from Friday, February 11 through Tuesday, March 8, 2011.

You can probably guess where my votes went. Go cast yours!

Canada is just plain cooler

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The Toronto Comics Art Festival has scored a coup:

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is excited to announce that internationally renowned manga creator Natsume Ono will make her first-ever North American public appearance as a Featured Guest at TCAF 2011. Hailing from Japan, Ono is one of the most exciting and unique women working in the medium today, and she will appear on panels and sign books in support of her English language works at Toronto Reference Library, May 7 and 8, 2011. Ono appears with the support of her English-language publisher VIZ Media.

Since I can’t resist praising Ono whenever her name comes up, I will happily repeat another paragraph from the press release:

“Ono’s fantastic work fits squarely into the ‘art comix’ idiom that’s at the core of the Festival,” enthuses Festival Director Christopher Butcher. “It’s the type of work we try to encourage. She’s a true auteur, working in a variety of styles and on different subjects, and her work is sure to find favour with fans of our other Featured Guests including Chris Ware, Jillian Tamaki, Mawil, and Adrian Tomine.”

You may recognize Mr. Butcher from his awesome blog or his work as manager of The Beguiling.

The cruelties of the calendar generally mean I can’t travel during the Festival, but I’m sure Ono’s appearances will be packed. I would certainly be elbowing people out of the way to get floor space, believe me. This is because I uniformly adore Ono’s work, going so far as to theoretically adore work that has yet to be published in English.

Other people who are excited by this news include Brigid (Robot 6) Alverson, Deb (About.Com) Aoki, and Heidi (The Beat) MacDonald. Erica (Okazu) Friedman and I were yammering on Twitter the other day about her concept of a “fifth genre” of manga that extends beyond, fuses, or ignores traditional demographic categories, and I only half jokingly suggested that you can identify a fifth-genre anthology by its serialization of work by Natsume Ono. Sure, she hasn’t had work run in Comic Beam, to my knowledge, but she’s all over IKKI, Manga Erotics F and Morning Two.

Let’s Get Visual: Tricks of the Trade

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It’s time once again for Let’s Get Visual, a monthly feature co-written with Michelle Smith, hosted at her blog, Soliloquy in Blue.

In this month’s installment, Michelle and I take a closer look at some of the tips handed out by the editors at Hakusensha in their book, How To Draw Shojo Manga, published recently in English by TOKYOPOP. To get us started, Michelle pulled out a list of some of the book’s suggested techniques, and then we each turned to our bookshelves for examples of those in action.

To offer up some contrast in style, Michelle chose pages from Julietta Suzuki’s Karakuri Odette (Hana to Yume, 2005-2007), and I picked out some pages from CLAMP’s Tokyo Babylon (Wings, 1990-1993).

This was a particularly illuminating exercise for both of us, so please join us in conversation and let us know what you think!

A look at the Shogakukan winners

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Anime News Network lists the winners of the 56th Shogakukan Manga Awards. Only one of the slate is available in English, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz), which won in the Girls’ Category and has also previously shared the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize with Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarteroy), won the Tiptree Award, and made the top 10 in 2010’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list.

Natsumi Matsumoto’s Yumeiro Pâtissière won in the Children’s Category. It’s about an enthusiastic young baker who enters an elite pastry school in spite of her clumsiness. She meets cute boys and is helped by a magical spirit named Vanilla. You can’t make a good dessert without a little Vanilla. It’s running in Shueisha’s Ribon. Viz has published Matsumoto’s St. Dragon Girl.

Takeshi Sasaki’s King Golf won in the Boys’ Category. It’s about a delinquent whose life changes when he takes up golf. I’m now picturing its chances for commercial success in the United States, which conjures images of middle-aged white men discussing the latest volume over highballs at the country club. Yeah. It’s being serialized in Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday.

The General Category is split between two titles, the first being Shohei Manabe’s Ushijima the Loan Shark. Unsurprisingly, it’s a manga about the seedy criminal underbelly of loan sharks, the black market, and other unsavory activities, and I’d guess that it’s somewhat episodic in nature. It’s running in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. Tokyopop published some of Manabe’s Smuggler and all of Dead End, though it lost the licenses when Kodansha reclaimed their properties.

It tied with Chûya Koyama’s Uchû Kyôdai, which was nominated for a Manga Taisho Award last year. It looks very promising.

But which of the unlicensed titles look good to you?

I Wish I Wrote That!

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Welcome to the first I Wish I Wrote That of 2011! I’ve got a great batch of writing to share with you this month, which is a pretty great way to start off the year.

First off, today’s main attraction is a wonderful essay posted just last night, the latest in Jason Thompson‘s “House of 1000 Manga,” this time featuring Swan.

Published incompletely in English by the now-defunct CMX, Swan is one of those manga I am trying my hardest to collect before the volumes become so scarce that they all go for $300 apiece from skeevy Amazon sellers. I haven’t yet made it to the double-digits, something that reading Jason’s essay makes me deeply regret. Almost nobody can make me want to read a manga the way that Jason Thompson can (which is why I went immediately broke after the release of Manga: The Complete Guide), and the way he talks about Swan, I expect my bank account will suffer again. A quote:

“I didn’t expect that a shojo manga about ballet would be one of the most fiery-spirited shonen manga I’ve read in the last few years. Blood and sweat, competition, agonizing training sequences — these are things that are more common in boys’ manga, but Swan transfers them to the ballet and somehow makes it a perfect fit. It’s a mixture of rivalry and hard work, art and elegance; a combination of yûjô, doryoku, bigaku … I don’t know if this is just stereotypes, but judging purely from Swan, Japanese girls in 1976 were 10 times more badass than men in most countries today.”

Jason’s maybe not as “quotable” as some snarkier manga critics–I’m not doubled over with laughter when I read even his funniest lines. The beauty of his writing is found in the whole, and the whole is what must be read. I wish I wrote that!

A few other terrific links:

Khursten Santos has a new review up at Otaku Champloo, for est em’s gorgeous BL anthology, Red Blinds the Foolish. “There was a time when I used to dream of Spanish fiestas. La Tomatina. Hogueras de San Juan. San Isidro de Madrid. Corrida de toros. And I did not dream of this because my country, the Philippines, used to be a Spanish colony. My fascination with it lies in the romance of the activity. There was something beautiful and romantic with the order that comes with the chaos of a fiesta.”

At The Manga Critic, Kate Dacey reworked a older review of Taiyo Matsumoto’s Blue Spring, and the result is beautifully descriptive: “Matsumoto eschews linear narrative in favor of digressions and fragments; as a result, we feel more like we’re living in the characters’ heads than reading a tidy account of their actions. Snatches of daydreams sometimes interrupt the narrative, as do jump cuts and surreal imagery: sharks and puffer fish drift past a classroom window where two teens make out, a UFO languishes above the school campus. Even the graffiti plays an integral part of Matsumoto’s storytelling; the walls are a paean to masturbation, booze, and suicide, cheerfully urging ‘No more political pacts–sex acts!'”

This one’s going to get super-meta, but in my very first incarnation of this column, I praised Shaenon Garrity’s essay about Cathy Guisewite’s Cathy. Today, Noah Berlatsky did the same at The Hooded Utilitarian, and dammit, his is better than mine. “Ultimately, though, while I appreciate the insight into my own animosities, what really made this perhaps my favorite piece of the year was the insight into Shaenon’s affections … the piece is filled with affection, and indeed love. That love is directed precisely at Cathy’s fans; the Baby Boomer women. Among those women is Shaenon’s mother…and Cathy Guisewite herself.”

And speaking of Shaenon Garrity, her latest post at comiXology, about Neil Gaiman’s Sandman makes me want to finally finish the series, which I had loved until I got too bogged down in the visual overload of its ever-changing artwork. “I dreaded rereading Sandman because it was the comic that got me hooked on comic books, when I was a nerdy teenager who hung out with the goths and followed them to Kent State coffeehouses on Friday nights, and there was no way it could possibly live up to my memories. The Dark Knight Returns didn’t; the art’s still amazing, but all of Batman’s monologues now sound like they’re about butt sex, and the fact that I can’t read them without giggling indicates that I’ve somehow gotten more juvenile since I was sixteen.” Or maybe I just want to read more Shaenon.

That’s what I wish I wrote this month! Readers, what about you?

Ayako giveaway winner announced!

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With server issues finally resolved and our new collaboration off to a great start,we at Manga Bookshelf are happy to announce the winner of our Ayako giveaway!

And the winner is… John Jackson!

Congratulations, John! John is a regular reader of our Facebook page, and brand new to reading manga. We’re thrilled to be able to start him off on the right foot with a classic work like Ayako. John, please contact us with your mailing address, and we’ll have the book out to you ASAP.

Many thanks to all who entered!

2010 Reader Awards for Manhwa

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Cover for Moss Vol. 1The winners list of the Reader Awards for best manhwa of 2010 has been posted online, and I’ve provided an English translation of the winners.

Grand Prize:

First place: Moss (이끼) by Yun Tae-ho
A horror/psychological thriller manhwa originally published as a webtoon and adapted into a live-action movie that was released last year. It was briefly reviewed in An introduction to Korean webcomics. (Aladin)

Second place: 2010 Sound of My Heart (2010 마음의 소리) by Jo Seok
A comedy featuring a protagonist with a bizarre personality and originally published on Naver as a very popular webtoon. (Aladin)

Third place: Let’s Fight, Monster! (싸우자 귀신아!) by Im In-seu
A supernatural manhwa about a girl who can see monsters. Like the above two series, it was also originally published as a webtoon. (Aladin)

Best Debut Prize:

First place: Fortune* (포천) by Yu Seung-jin
A historical manhwa about a fortuneteller, originally published online at Sports Donga. (Aladin)

Second Place: Let’s Fight, Monster! (싸우자 귀신아!) by Im In-seu

Third Place: The Unbiased Fairytale (실질객관동화) by Invincible Pink
As the title suggests, a revisionist retelling of fairy tales, with satirical commentary about the morals they teach. Yet another webtoon that was originally published on Naver. (Aladin)

Published Manhwa Prize

First Place: Gourmet (식객) by Heo Yeong-man
Bestselling manhwa series about a chef by one of the most well-known manhwa-ga and adapted into a television drama as well as two movies. (Aladin)

Second Place: Castella Recipe (카스텔라 레시피) by MASA+PnH
A fantasy manhwa series about the adventures of a new student at a magic academy. (Aladin)

Third Place: Gangteuk High Kids** (강특고 아이들) by Kim Min-hui
A school manhwa about a high school for children with psychic abilities. (Aladin)

Online Manhwa Prize

First Place: With the Gods (신과 함께) by Ju Ho-min
A Naver webtoon about a man undergoing judgment in the afterlife and a man haunting this world as a ghost after his death. (Aladin)

Second Place: Cheese in the Trap (치즈인더트랩) by Sun-kki
A Naver webtoon about a college student and her relationship with a mysterious upperclassman. (Naver)

Third Place: Welcome to Room 305 (어서오세요. 305호에.) by Wanan
A Naver webtoon about two roommates and their everyday lives. (Naver)

Judges’ Choice

First Place: Yongsan Where I Lived (내가 살던 용산) by various
Six manhwa-ga produced six stories about the everyday lives of people now passed away, based on stories from their families. (Aladin)

Second Place: Moss (이끼) by Yun Tae-ho

Third Place: Nothing to Cry About*** (울기엔 좀 애매한) by Choi Gyu-seok
A slice-of-life manhwa about the hardships and struggles of a working-class man who does not deserve his bad luck but bears it with good grace. (Aladin)

Translation Notes:
* I translated this title as Fortune because the title is meant to be wordplay on the English word “fortune” while the hanja characters given mean “to embrace the heavens”. (↑)
** The summary suggests that the full name of the school is “Gangwondo Special High School”—Gangwondo being a province of South Korea—but I left it untranslated in its abbreviated form as “Gangteuk”. (↑)
*** My translation of the title is not quite correct, as the nuance is “I haven’t done anything wrong to cry about.” (↑)

(H/t to Kim Nakho of @capcold and capcold.net for the link.)

Previews review January 2011

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There isn’t a wealth of exciting new product in the current edition of the Previews catalog from Diamond Comics Distributors, so I thought I would try a little experiment. I’ll put forward three (uninspiring sounding) debuting titles and let you vote on which one I should try.

First up, from Digital Manga, we have the potentially odious The Beautiful Skies of Hou Ou High, written and illustrated by Arata Aki. When Kei’s mom finds out her daughter likes girls, she sends Kei to an all-boys’ high school to presumably de-gay her or something. Will it be charmingly subversive, or just gross? It originally ran in Mag Garden’s Comic Avarus, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. (Page 281.)

Are you perverse enough to subject me to the sparkly incoherence of Arina Tanemura? Is that even a question? Anyway, her new title from Viz is Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura, and it’s about “the granddaughter of a mysterious moon princess who slew demons with her Blood Cherry Blossom sword.” Please don’t do this to me. It originally ran in Shueisha’s Ribon. (Page 321.)

There’s something about Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist (also Viz) that looks like trouble, and not the fun kind of trouble. It’s about an orphaned boy raised by a priest who learns that he’s one of Satan’s bastard children. (The orphan, not the priest, at least as far as I know.) So the orphan decides to become an exorcist so he can fight his dad. Manga plus Catholicism is always… awkward. It originally ran in Shueisha’s Jump Square. (Page 322.)

Please vote for one of the above in the comments before January 15, 2011, and I will dutifully order the title that garners the highest number of votes through my local comic shop.

Mercifully, there are tons of new volumes of great ongoing series, which I will now dutifully list:

  • Itazura na Kiss vol. 5, written and illustrated by Kaoru Tada, Digital Manga, page 280
  • Salt Water Taffy vol. 4: Caldera’s Revenge, written and illustrated by Matthew Loux, Oni Press, page 302
  • V.B. Rose vol. 12, written and illustrated by Banri Hiaka, Tokyopop, page 313
  • Cross Game vol. 3, written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi, Viz, page 324
  • Twin Spica vol. 6, written and illustrated by Kou Yaginuma, Vertical, page 327
  • Bunny Drop vol. 3, written and illustrated by Yumi Unita, Yen Press, page 329

By the way, Viz’s new web site is terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Update: Lissa (Kuriousity) Pattillo has some thoughts on Viz’s terrible new web site.

This year, next year

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The indefatigable Deb (About.Com) Aoki has rounded up and ranked critics’ choices for the Best Manga of 2010, and it’s a fine and varied list. I’d also like to point you to Deb’s picks for Best Continuing Manga of 2010, since there’s a lot of overlap between her favorites and mine. I’m particularly pleased by her inclusion of Kaoru Tada’s Itazura na Kiss (Digital Manga); I did some catch-up reading on that one over the weekend, and it just gets better as it goes along.

Looking at Deb’s previews of promising manga due in 2011, I can’t help but pick the five that sound best to me, even if some of them counted as my most anticipated in 2010:

and one that wasn’t on Deb’s list, but I’m very eager to read:

Did some of your favorites from this year not make the critics’ round-up or Deb’s list of ongoing series? What about exciting books due in 2011?

December news round-up

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‘Tis the season for press releases, or so it would seem from the looks of my inbox these days. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the news that’s come our way over the month of December.

First, Kodansha Comics finally let us in on their plans for Del Rey’s licensed series as well as announcing a few new titles for release in English. Their full list of upcoming titles can be found at their website.

“Japan Unlocked,” an NHK TV talkshow about translations of Japanese literature, manga and anime is available for live streaming at the NHK website, according to representative Ann Tomoko Yamamoto in a recent e-mail. Ann is on “a mini-mission to get the word out about the TV show amongst people with a passion for the TV show’s core theme, namely the cross-cultural journey that creative works make when they are translated from Japanese to English.” A show featuring the work of Edo-period poet Ema Saito airs today. More details available at the Japan Unlocked website.

Square Enix has officially launched their new digital manga store. According to a recent press release, ” the initial lineup in the United States will be four titles, including Fullmetal Alchemist and Soul Eater, available at the special sale price of $5.99 for a limited time. The first update is scheduled for January 11, 2011. New titles will be added bi-monthly after January.” From what I’ve seen from other bloggers since this news broke, I’m not the only one who thinks that $5.99 is too steep for manga that can only be read online, but should the price ever drop to something more reasonable, it would be a great way for new readers to catch up on great series like Fullmetal Alchemist. Registration required.

In other digital news, comiXology has just released its app (featuring comics from 40 publishers) for the Android platform. Users can check out the Android Market to pick up their copy of the free app. As an Android owner myself, I’ve already downloaded mine!

And Digital Manga is releasing the Vampire Hunter D series on the Barnes & Noble Nook and Nook Color, with each volume split into two parts at $3.99 each. Vampire Hunter D vol.1 is also available through B&N’s NOOK Apps for the iPad, iPhone, Andrioid, and for PC.

Viz Media has been adding new titles to its iPad app, including shoujo favorites Vampire Night, Otomen, Ouran High School Host Club, and shounen staple Rurouni Kenshin, all available for download by volume for $4.99 each. Viz also announces a number of print and online enhancements to their Shonen Jump magazine for 2011. Check out the Shonen Jump website for more information.

From Yen Press, Svetlana Chmakova’s new project, an adaptation of James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard, debuts in the latest online issue of Yen Plus, available (with their other currently serialized titles) for subscription here.

And finally, fans of the Gantz manga will have a one-night-only chance to catch the live-action World Premiere on the big screen, thanks to NCM Fathom and NEW PEOPLE. The event happens on Thursday, January 20 at theaters all over the country. Head over to the Fathom Events website to find participating theaters near you.

*Whew* that’s the news for the month! Happy Holidays, manga fans!

New Let’s Get Visual: Duds

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We’ve arrived again at the third Saturday of the month, which means of course it’s time for a brand new Let’s Get Visual with Michelle Smith at her blog, Soliloquy in Blue. For those new to the feature, each month, Michelle and I turn our rusty brains towards analyzing manga (or manhwa) artwork, in an attempt to improve our understanding of visual storytelling.

Up until now, we’ve always focused on artwork we think works especially well at telling the intended story. For this month, we decided to go the opposite direction and try our hand at discussing artwork that fails. Uh. Way to get into the holiday spirit?

For my “dud” selection, I chose two pages from Ellie Mamahara’s Baseball Heaven (sorry, BLU), a standard BL seduction scene, but one that unfortunately lacks heat.

“… there’s simply no passion in it … absolutely no sexual tension between them conveyed through the artwork … Even when their faces are so close together, Mamahara is unable to provide any magnetic reaction between them. I should feel that they *want* to touch each other. It should feel painful for them not to. Instead, it leaves me completely cold.”

Read the entire discussion here, or check out all our entries in the series so far!

New NANA Project! Vols. 15-16

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After a short hiatus, the NANA Project is back! This time around, we look at volumes 15 and 16, focusing especially on (in Danielle’s words), “Yazawa’s view of popular art, Nana and Ren’s disintegrating relationship, and loving Nana in the past, present and future.”

For my part, I go on quite a bit over the virtues of “blind love:”

“MJ: I think this is absolutely true, and maybe makes it clear that *understanding* is not necessarily the key to… well, anything. I’m reminded of one of the stories from Kino no Tabi, “Land of Visible Pain.” In the story, Kino encounters a country of technologically-advanced people who had, at some point, come to the conclusion that if only they could truly understand each other’s pain, they’d be able to live together in perfect harmony. With this in mind, their scientists develop a way for them to all be able to hear each other’s thoughts. What happens ultimately, of course, is that they soon discover that understanding each other’s pain actually makes it *harder* for them to live together, and they eventually all end up isolated in their own homes, unable to stand being even within sight of one another.

I think to a great extent, Ren’s understanding of Nana’s deepest desires may actually make it more difficult for them to stay together. If anything, it may just make it easier for them to hurt each other, as I think he hurts Nana with his stunningly accurate assessment of her ugliest thoughts and feelings. I’m not suggesting that love is best maintained through rose-colored glasses, but I’m not sure that this level of brutal understanding is always a good thing. We all need someone in our lives who is biased in our favor, and this is most often the role of a romantic partner. I think it’s okay, and even *desirable*, for love to be just a little bit blind.”

Disagree? Tell me so in comments! :D

What a pleasure it is to be back, discussing this series with such wonderful women. Speaking for myself, I’d have to say that I probably enjoy The NANA Project more than nearly anything else I do as a manga blogger. It’s a bit heartbreaking to think about how near we are to the end of the series’ available volumes.

On a lighter note, Danielle asks at the end of the roundtable for suggestions from readers on what title the three of us should tackle next! Visit this month’s roundtable to weigh in!

For those just arriving, you can find the entire NANA Project archive at CBR’s Comics Should Be Good!

New Let’s Get Visual: Of Sakura and the Sea

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It’s the last Saturday of the month, which means time for a new installment of Let’s Get Visual at Michelle Smith’s Soliloquy in Blue!

My subject this time around comes from Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea, published in English by Viz Media. My point of discussion revolves around panel size, and how Igarashi uses it to influence the reader’s experience, up to and including how we feel about the characters and what they’re telling us.

In a series that is known for its beautiful (and unusual) artwork, I found it fascinating to analyze the way the artist uses structure as a tool as well.

Following that, Michelle leads us into a wonderful discussion about the way a mangaka can use art as a kind of emotional shorthand, demonstrated in several scenes from Mari Okazaki’s Suppli.

As always, we’re seeking input from those more knowledgeable about these things than we. So please come along and let us know where we’ve gone wrong!