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Takehiko Inoue MMF Roundaup: Part Four

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It’s the fourth quarter, and your co-hosts have banded together to take you through the final stretch!

Anna joins me for a special Let’s Get Visual column dedicated to Inoue’s artwork, where we discuss pages from Real and Vagabond.

And speaking of Vagabond, we both weigh in on the series, with Anna tackling the two most recent VIZBIG editions to be released (nine and ten) and me checking out the first one. Ultimately, it looks like neither of us has found a new favorite over the course of the MMF, but we still both enjoyed branching out!

A big thank you once again to everyone who contributed and left comments. MJ of Manga Bookshelf will be hosting the next MMF, which will focus on works by CLAMP.

Women Write About Comics: Interview

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Good morning, Manga Bookshelf readers! I have a quick link to share this morning, to a not-so-quick interview I gave last week to Claire Napier at the blog carnival Women Write About Comics. Claire asked me some really great questions about manga, blogging, female representation, and storytelling in general. It was a real pleasure to talk with her.

The interview is here.

I hope you’ll check it out if you have a moment (or, uh, twenty). And if you’re a woman who writes about comics (or a man who has our backs), take a look at the blog carnival in general and how it works. It’s a great opportunity for us to really expand our conversations, blog-to-blog, and I’m hoping to participate soon myself. The latest topic is Harassment in the Geek Blogoshere, which will be running through July 7-8. You can also check them out on Twitter and Facebook.

Takehiko Inoue MMF Roundup: Part Three

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What started as a trickle has become a steady stream as the Takehiko Inoue MMF begins drawing to a close!

At Experiments in Manga, Ash brown checks out the second Vagabond VIZBIG omnibus, particularly praising the way battles in the series have lasting repercussions for the characters.

At Manga Report, Anna digs into the past for highlights from the Inoue archive page.

Animemiz posts about Inoue’s artwork at the New York City Kinokuniya location.

At Manga Village, the gang collects a bunch of quotes in praise of Inoue’s Slam Dunk and Lori Henderson gives Vagabond a try but ultimately concludes it’s just not her thing.

Lastly, be sure to check out this really interesting article at Manga Therapy that ponders the notion of strength, as depicted in Vagabond.

My thanks to all the contributors!

Takehiko Inoue MMF Roundup: Part Two

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I’ve got a few more Inoue-riffic links to share with you today!

First up, Lori Henderson at Manga Village looks at volume 22 of Slam Dunk, the most recent volume to become available in English, and points out that this is one sports manga where the sport itself is perhaps more important than the typical shounen theme of striving for improvement.

Next, MJand I devoted last night’s Off the Shelf column to a discussion of Inoue’s seinen wheelchair basketball series, Real, which we pretty much rave about unreservedly.

Lastly, my lovely cohost Anna contributes another review (love the Peter Sellers reference in the title!), wherein she shares her thoughts on the first six volumes of Slam Dunk. You might recall from our introductory post that she had yet to try the series, but I am happy to report that she likes it! She also writes really good concluding paragraphs, like this one:

One of the reasons why I liked it so much is that there’s a general feeling of warmth that you get when reading this manga. Sakuragi is often made fun of, but he’s portrayed with affection. He even inspires a bit of grudging respect from his teammates as his basketball skills keep getting better. As a bonus, the reader also gets treated to a variety of ’90s fashions and hairstyles. Inoue’s enthusiasm and love for the game informs the manga, making it seem more personal and interesting than a shonen manga that is developed by committee with the aid of magazine polls. After reading Slam Dunk, I can understand why it was one of the top-selling manga in Japan. If you haven’t tried reading Slam Dunk yet, don’t be an idiot like me and wait for several years—just pick up a few volumes as soon as possible.

What she said!

Takehiko Inoue MMF Roundup: Part One

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The Takehiko Inoue MMF is underway and submissions are beginning to come in! I’ve got three of them to share this morning.

First up is a post from Matt at Matt Talks About Manga , where he talks about the first VIZBIG collection of Vagabond, comprising the first three volumes of the series. I have to admit that my favorite quote is, “The art. Oh, God, the art. It’s beyond fantastic.”

Next up is Ash at Experiments in Manga, who looks at the first two volumes of Inoue’s Slam Dunk for the My Week in Manga column.

Lastly, my cohost Anna checks out the first five volumes of Real at her site, Manga Report. She’s written the post as a volume-by-volume synopsis, pointing out the particular highlights of each, but my favorite observations are right at the end:

While Real centers around the wheelchair basketball world, it uses that setting as a way of exploring the underlying psychological issues of the protagonists. Nomiya desperately searches for a form of redemption. Hisanobu’s toxic habits of personality and thought patterns threaten to derail his rehabilitation. While there is no question that Togawa has the drive and personality to be an elite athlete, his lack of people skills while playing a team sport might threaten his bright future. Real is just an absolutely gripping manga, and I know I’m going to be seeking out the remaining translated volumes of the series as soon as possible.

Thanks to all contributors! And remember, if you want to participate… the MMF is running through June 30th and you can email me (swanjun at gmail dot com) with links to your submission!

Belated Introductions

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Hello readers! I’m terribly overdue with this, but I just wanted to take a moment to introduce a couple of recent additions to our roster of regular contributors here at Manga Bookshelf.

First, long-time reader and occasional guest contributor Sara K. has just come on board as a regular columnist! Her weekly column, It Came From the Sinosphere, will cover “comics, novels, TV shows, films, and who knows what else from the Chinese-speaking world.” Living in Taiwan, Sara has access to a lot of creative content we rarely see over here, as you may recall from her previous posts such as The Geeky Heart of Taipei and her recent series on The Condor Trilogy.

Sara begins her new column with a look at the Taiwanese idol drama The Outsiders.

Secondly, please welcome Megan Purdy, who has joined Manga Bookshelf specifically to provide us coverage of western comics! Elsewhere, Megan runs the Women Write About Comics blog carnival and reviews Toronto’s comic book stores at the Toronto Comics Review. Here, she has revived Manga Bookshelf’s ailing monthly column, Not By Manga Alone, and is plotting out her own individual column as well. Recently, she also provided us with this delightful coverage of TCAF 2012.

Be sure to check out this month’s installment of Not By Manga Alone, in which Megan looks at The Strain, Channel Zero: The Complete Collection (both from Dark Horse) and Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?

Welcome, Sara and Megan!

Announcing the Takehiko Inoue Manga Moveable Feast!

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What: A multi-blogger event focused on the works of Takehiko Inoue. (Those published in English include Slam Dunk, Vagabond, and Real.)

When: The week of June 24-30, 2012.

Who: Co-hosted by Michelle Smith and Anna Neatrour, participation open to all!

Why: Because we are both major Inoue fans and want to spread the love!

Where: Soliloquy in Blue (that’s here!) and Manga Report (that’s here!).

How: Anna will be maintaining the archive at Manga Report, so if you’ve written anything Inoue-related in the past that you’d like to be included, just send her an e-mail. Michelle will be posting daily MMF wrap-up reports at Soliloquy in Blue, so if you’re contributing new stuff, drop her a line. You can also post your link on Twitter using the hashtag #inouemmf. If you don’t have a blog of your own but would like to contribute, just let us know and we can make that happen!

‘Mouse Chronicles: A Chuck Jones Collection’ Announced

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And here I was thinking that we wouldn’t get any Looney Tunes news until San Diego Comic Con. No doubt that will feature an announcement of the 2nd Platinum Collection (at least I hope…), but for now we have this: a new collection of 19 of Chuck Jones’ cartoons from 1938-1951 featuring his stars who were mice: Sniffles; and Hubie & Bertie. The collection is out August 28th on both DVD and Blu-Ray.

Jerry Beck notes that it was originally part of the ‘Super Stars’ sets we’ve seen the last few years, which is why you don’t see any other one-shot mice here, just the ‘stars’. Of course, I put stars in air quotes for a reason. Sniffles and Hubie & Bertie are not exactly Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The name that’s selling the discs here is Chuck Jones.

A list of the contents:

Naughty but Mice
Little Brother Rat
Sniffles and the Bookworm
Sniffles Takes a Trip
The Egg Collector
Bedtime for Sniffles
Sniffles Bells the Cat
Toy Trouble
The Brave Little Bat
The Unbearable Bear
Lost and Foundling
Hush my Mouse
The Aristo-Cat
Trap Happy Porky
Roughly Squeaking
House Hunting Mice
Mouse Wreckers
The Hypo-Chondri-Cat
Cheese Chasers

The first 12 cartoons on this set range from 1938 to 1946, and star Sniffles. Sniffles was named from his debut, Naughty but Mice, where he has a cold. Despite lacking the cold in his other cartoons, the name stuck. Most of the first 9 cartoons on here feature Chuck’s ponderous, slow, Disney-imitating style. Sniffles is cute rather than funny, and a lot of his more cloying cartoons can be very trying for the adult viewer – or indeed anyone over the age of two.

That said, there are some interesting cartoons here. Sniffles and the Bookworm is a ‘things come to life’ cartoon, albeit a more serious example of the form. The Brave Little Bat features Sniffles trying to deal with a loudmouth bat who absolutely won’t stop talking. And Sniffles’ final 3 cartoons, made in the mid-40s after a three year break, are much funnier and Chuck Jones-ish. Ironically, Sniffles undergoes a personality transplant in them, going from cute and adorable to being unable to shut up or go away – that’s right, exactly like the bat in his last cute cartoon.

The real treat here, even if it involves the most double dipping from prior Golden Collections, is the 2nd half of this set, featuring seven cartoons with Hubie & Bertie (from 1943-1951). These are Jones near the top of his game, and are some of my all-time favorites. They only have a cameo in Trap Happy Porky (one of Jones’ rare mid-40s Porky efforts), but the other 6 have them taking center stage. Hubie & Bertie get what they want, not by violence or cute mischief, but by psychological damage. Seeing them break the mind of Claude Cat is a thing of beauty.

As I noted above, there’s some double dipping here. Four of the seven Hubie & Bertie cartoons have been on prior Golden Collections – Trap Happy Porky, Roughly Squeaking, and House Hunting Mice are new to DVD. Sniffles fares better. Only Sniffles Takes A Trip has shown up (unrestored) on a prior collection. This means 14 cartoons here are new to DVD.

The reason I like this collection so much is because Jerry Beck had noted previously that Warner Brothers had asked them to focus their restoration only on cartoons made after 1953 (as they could be released widescreen). The cartoons on this collection feature precisely zero from that period, and 3 from the 1930s. Given my goal is every cartoon restored and on DVD, this is a big step in that direction. (I am presuming they will also be uncut – though there’s very little to object to here. Hubie & Bertie have some typical cartoon violence. I think Toy Trouble has a blackface gag.)

Buy Warner Brothers cartoon DVD/Blu-Ray sets and support restoration of even more classics! Sniffles will thank you. Probably in a cute, adorable way.

EDIT 7/27/12:

They’ve announced a list of bonus cartoons that will come with this set. it’s not clear if they will be restored or not, but most of them are quite rare these days, so it’ll be great to see them anyway.

The Country Mouse (1935, Friz Freleng) – A mouse dreams of being a boxer, but the big city proves his undoing.
The Lyin’ Mouse (1937, Friz Freleng) – A mouse, trying to save his skin, tells a cat the story of the Lion and the Mouse. Freleng is starting to find his feet here – great WB-style cynical ending.
The Mice Will Play (1938, Tex Avery) – One of Avery’s attempts at doing a ‘cutesy’ musical cartoon, this gets away with it mostly thanks to the end gag.
Little Blabbermouse (1940, Friz Freleng) – The first of two shorts featuring a W.C. Fields mouse and a kis mouse who never stops talking. Influenced the later Sniffles cartoons.
Shop Look & Listen (1940, Friz Freleng) – And this is the 2nd of those.
Mouse Mazurka (1949, Friz Freleng) – Sylvester chases after a mouse while the cartoon is set to various Eastern European musical themes. Friz timed to music is best Friz.
Mouse-Warming (1952, Chuck Jones) – Claude Cat without Hubie and Bertie, interfering with two teenage mice nd their romance. Some gunplay, edited from TV, should return here.
Mouse-Taken Identity (1957, Robert McKimson) – This is a Hippety Hopper cartoon, set in a museum. It features the gags you see in all the Hippety Hopper cartoons, as well as Sylvester, Jr. Also had edited gun scenes that should be restored.
Mice Follies (1960, Robert McKimson) – The last of McKimson’s Honeymooners parodies with mice, and the only one not yet on DVD.
It’s Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House (1965, Friz Freleng) – The first cartoon pairing Speedy Gonzalez with Daffy Duck, for better or worse. Also has Sylvester in a cameo. At least Freleng directs this.
Merlin the Magic Mouse (1967, Alex Lovy) – One of Warner’s late 60s attempts to create new marketable characters, and probably one of the better ones (though still not that good). Another WC Fields parody.

Now there’s even ore reason to buy it!

PR: Viz Media Offers Substantial May Digital Manga Update

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Normally I tend to leave the press releases to my colleagues here at Manga Bookshelf, Kate and Brigid, who are much better at that sort of thing than I am. But I cannot simply sit back this time. Viz is finally releasing Excel Saga in digital form! Sure, it’s just Vol. 1, but if it does well, we might get the long out of print, selling for $150 at times Vols. 7 and 8! This is HUGE! (At least if you’re in North America. Sorry, keep nagging the Japanese companies, non-NA folks.)

Latest Digital Update For The First-Half Of May Also Features The Launch Of HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT, MISTRESS FORTUNE, SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL And EXCEL SAGA

Manga publisher VIZ Media encourages fans across North America to visit VIZManga.com and the VIZ MANGA App for the Apple iPad®, iPhone® and iPod® touch every Monday throughout the first-half of May to take advantage of a special 40% off discount on select Volume 1 digital titles (Reg. MSRP: $4.99, Sale Price: $2.99). Five different opening volumes from various manga series will be offered each week, from the hit debuts of BLEACH and BAKUMAN｡, to the non-stop action of DRAGON BALL Z and psychological tension of DEATH NOTE, to the romance of BLACK BIRD and DENGEKI DAISY.

Discount Manga Titles for May 7th Include:

BAKUMAN｡ Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens
DEATH NOTE Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
DRAGON BALL Z Vol. 1 · Rated ‘A’ for All Ages
ROSARIO + VAMPIRE II Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
TORIKO Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens

Discount Manga Titles for May 14th Include:

ABSOLUTE BOYFRIEND Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
ARATA: THE LEGEND Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens
BLACK BIRD Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
DENGEKI DAISY Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
HYDE & CLOSER Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens

VIZ Media also delivers a substantial digital manga update during the first-half of May with the announcement of the launch of 4 new series. The new series include the romantic shojo fun of MISTRESS FORTUNE, HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT, and SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL, as well as the zany sci-fi comedy action of EXCEL SAGA.

The VIZ MANGA APP is available for free through the iTunes Store and all manga volumes are generally available for purchase and download in the U.S. and Canada within the application for $4.99 (U.S. / CAN) per volume. More than 55 series and 500+ volumes are currently available for download.

MISTRESS FORTUNE · by Arina Tanemura · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 7th
Fourteen-year-old Kisaki Tachibana has psychic powers. She works for PSI, a secret government agency that fights aliens. She’s in love with her partner Giniro, but PSI won’t allow operatives to get involved. Just when Kisaki thinks she may be getting closer to Giniro, she finds out she’s going to be transferred to California!

HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT Vol. 1 · by Kazune Kawahara · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 14th
Hapless Haruna needs help finding a boyfriend! After failing to win the eye of any guy in high school, Haruna enlists the help of cute upperclassman Yoh to coach her on how to make herself more appealing to the male species. Yoh agrees, with one catch: Haruna had better not fall for him!

SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL Vol. 1 · by Kaeneyoshi Izumi ·
Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens · Available May 14th
Remote, lonely and surrounded by the ocean – this isn’t Alcatraz we’re talking about – it’s Seiho Boys’ High School, where the student body is rife with sexually frustrated hunks! How can these young men get girlfriends when they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere? These are the stories of the students of Seiho High and the trouble they get into as they awkwardly pursue all girls who cross their paths.

EXCEL SAGA Vol. 1 · by Rikdo Koshi · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 14th
Question: What happens when you try to act like an anime character in real life? Answer: EXCEL SAGA. Two groups of neighbors in an apartment building lead secret lives. One thinks they’re trying to take over the city of Fukuoka. The other thinks they’re trying to defend it. Only their bosses, would-be conqueror Lord Il Palazzo and obsessed bureaucrat Dr. Kabapu, know the truth behind this increasingly dangerous private game. Too bad neither lets their underlings in on it!

VIZ Media’s multiple digital manga platforms allow for universal access to read manga from an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and now, on VIZManga.com for desktop/laptop PC-enabled computers as well as Android-powered devices with built-in web browsers. The free VIZ Manga App is the top application for reading manga and features a rapidly growing library of the most popular manga series in the world. For more information, please visit VIZManga.com or www.VIZ.com/apps.

Manga Radar: 4 March 2012

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First up, as usual, are the Database Additions — older titles I somehow previously missed.

Sweet Revolution – DMP Juné, Mar 2006 ::
Laugh Under the Sun – DMP Juné, Dec 2007 ::

Kino no Tabi (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Oct 2006 ::
Kino no Tabi (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, TBA ::

Someone (or rather, likely several someones) was ordering yaoi from buy.com – I saw *a lot* of titles and actually expected more of them to be new to my charts. As it was, we only had two pickups – both older Juné titles.

More interesting (to me) are the Kino no Tabi books – these are from the much-neglected TokyoPop Fiction line, which also included The Twelve Kingdoms and a few other books no one remembers, sadly. Kino no Tabi vol 1 is selling for $50 on Amazon, used; vol 2 can not be had for love or money.

Most of the New Releases for the week are ebooks — a trend which will continue for the foreseeable future. I don’t know if it’s because ebooks are “impulse” purchases or merely a side effect of e- — there’s not much lead time on ebooks, as they are either ready to go (and to purchase) or, well, they’re not.

Oh, & A Bowl of Moxa Is Coming (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
The Boyfriend Next Door (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Clumsy Child (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Tweeting Love Birds (ebook) 2 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Renji Jumonji’s Hardship (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Again Tomorrow (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
The Conqueror’s Chalice (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Cheap Chase (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Mar 2012 ::

Cage of Eden 4 – Kodansha Comics, Feb 2012 ::
Itazura na Kiss 7 – DMP, Mar 2012 ::

I don’t attempt an exhaustive listing of DMG titles, only tracking those that sell; part of that is because I have no clue, really, just how many volumes these teams are putting out, mostly though it’s because tracking _all_ of them would require as much effort as the whole rest of the chart. I add more than a few to the database each week, though.

Cage of Eden and Itazura na Kiss are midlist? properties that didn’t really blow the doors off when they first came out, but have a few fans at least. These two most recent volumes didn’t make a mark as preorders but are selling now that they are out. Itazura na Kiss vol 7 ranks in the top 500, at #347 for the week – that puts the book in the rough neighborhood of Naruto 33, Wallflower 27, and Three P [from DMP’s Project H]

Also new to the charts this week are a real mixed bag of Preorders:

Kizuna Deluxe Edition 6 – DMP Juné, Jun 2012 ::
Dawn of the Arcana 4 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jun 2012 ::
Dog x Cat 3 – 801 Media, Jun 2012 ::
In These Words – 801 Media, Jun 2012 ::
Bad Teacher’s Equation 4 – DMP Juné, Jun 2012 ::
Same Difference – DMP Juné, Jun 2012 ::
Witch & Wizard 2 – Yen Press, Jun 2012 ::

Rin-Ne 9 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Jul 2012 ::
Flutter – DMP Juné, Jul 2012 ::
Secretary’s Job – DMP Juné, Jul 2012 ::

Yotsuba&! 11 – Yen Press, Sep 2012 ::

DMP has a very strong showing here (likely due to their very dedicated fans) but there are also books in just about every genre/flavour to be had – from shojo to shonen to Yotsuba&!.

Yotsuba&! fans are ordering six months in advance, likely just as soon as they could find a listing for the book. That says something.

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My posted results (the top ten lists, category breakouts like the ebooks list, the Manga 500) are too much for most folks to wade through, but still only the tip of the data iceberg. A ranking isn’t as important as the vector — whether a title is moving up or down the rankings, and how fast. Already, in each report, you can see if a title is moving up or down compared to the previous week, but that’s just a single blip. Unless you work with the source websites & all the numbers as intimately as I do, you miss the bigger picture — and even then, often I just have a feeling or a hunch about a title. I thought I might put in the extra effort, though, and bring at least some of that perspective to you, as well as generating concrete proof to prove (& especially disprove) my guesses. Since we’ll be looking at weeks of data, unfortunately that means graphics.

I say ‘unfortunately’ — as I am good with maths but not necessarily as adept at visualizations. I lean heavily on the built-in functionality of the spreadsheet whenever I do post a graph. Still, if you know what question you’re asking, you can set up the spreadsheet to do a lot of heavy data lifting for you, and the results don’t look that bad.

Here’s the newest part of the “Manga Radar” : a manga radar scope.

I’ll start by giving you the top 10 preorders for the week of 4 March, 2012:

19. ↓-1 (18) : Sailor Moon 5 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2012 [283.3] ::
21. ↔0 (21) : Sailor Moon 7 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2012 [260.5] ::
22. ↑1 (23) : Sailor Moon 6 – Kodansha Comics, Jun 2012 [260.1] ::
63. ↓-1 (62) : Negima! 34 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2012 [148.7] ::
80. ↑17 (97) : Black Butler 9 – Yen Press, Jul 2012 [119.8] ::
83. ↑374 (457) : Sailor Moon 8 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2012 [119.1] ::
88. ↑1 (89) : Dance in the Vampire Bund 12 – Seven Seas, Jun 2012 [110.3] ::
104. ↑7 (111) : The Betrayal Knows My Name 3 – Yen Press, Apr 2012 [94.4] ::
107. ↑736 (843) : Finder Series 6 Passion within the View Finder – DMP Juné, Jul 2012 [92.4] ::
109. ↑75 (184) : Private Teacher 3 – DMP Juné, May 2012 [91.4] ::

And here is the same list with 16 weeks of historical data attached:

Top 10 Manga Preorder 4 March 2012

Sailor Moon vol. 5, available for preorder the longest (perhaps) and certainly benefiting from the enthusiasm for the series, has some ups and downs but has been consistently outselling the other 9 for all 16 weeks… but check out the strong surges of volume 7 (from two months ago) and of volume 8, available for preorder for just the past two weeks. The only thing quite like it on this list is the 6th (and last?) volume in the “View Finder” series, Passion within the View Finder — though looking back, Dance in the Vampire Bund vol 12 and Sailor Moon vol 7 also had similar spikes in their 2nd week. Other titles in this [limited] list are showing relatively-flat-but-slowing-growing demand.

At some future point, I might post a similar chart showing how manga volumes with strong preorders still exhibit a significant spike in sales once they are actually released and available. There are a lot of fun things I can do with this data now that I have it all in one place and not spread out across 16 files. I suppose I can experiment with quite a few different ways to present the data. I know the graph above is basic (and maybe not as clear as I think it is) but it’s been a long haul just to get to this one simple graph — and to put into place the procedures to continue to track all the rankings on an ongoing, rolling 16-week basis.

Feedback, as always, is appreciated; drop your questions into the comments. [and really good questions will likely also find their way onto the about the charts page].

Manhwa Monday: Resurrection?

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

It’s been a long time since there was enough going on in the world of English-translated manhwa for me to actually type that phrase, and nobody could be happier about it than I am.

The biggest manhwa news this week comes from digital publisher iSeeToon, who, after a break with their former parent company iSeeYou, has reemerged in the iOS market with a new title, Murder DIEary from webtoon artist NOMABI. The comic, described by its publisher as “Dexter meets four-panel comics,” was given a special award from the Korean Creative Content Agency in 2011.

Currently available only for iOS, the app has 13 chapters, available for $4.99, though the first four chapters are free as a preview. Two more volumes are scheduled for release later this year.

You can read a full press release at iSeeToon’s website, or download the app from the iTunes store.

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I’m a bit tardy with the next piece of news, which was delivered to the manga blogosphere a couple of months ago by web publisher NETCOMICS.

The Seoul Animation Center, a part of the South Korean government that supports the comics, animation, and gaming industries, has hand-picked 49 manhwa titles for the new Manhwa Creator Bank. The catalogue is mainly intended to serve as a resource for non-Korean publishers who may be interested in licensing manhwa titles, but it also gives readers an idea of what kind of properties are out there, so that we might encourage publishers to pick up titles we’re enthusiastic about.

The Manwha Creator Bank also has its own Facebook page.

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By way of this blog Future Lights Productions, check out this recent discovery: COMICS,CINEMA shorts on the go a “short documentary project portraying comics artists in Korea,” available now via Vimeo.com. The project’s most recent subject is manhwa artist Kyung-suk Lee, author of Zombie Time, one of the titles listed in the Manhwa Creator Bank catalogue.

All videos include English subtitles.

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From the ICv2 blog, The Office of Intellectual Freedom reports that Kim Dong Hwa’s coming-of-age manhwa The Color of Earth was the second most challenged book in 2011. coming in ahead of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

For more on The Color of Earth and the rest of Kim Dong Hwa’s manhwa trilogy, check out the Color of… Manga Moveable Feast hosted by me at the now-defunct Manhwa Bookshelf.

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That’s all for this installment! Let’s hope it isn’t the last.

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

Inside the DMG: Process, process, process (Part 1)

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Now that you’ve all read the saga of my second group’s adventures with a disappearing editor, I’m going to take you through the DMG process from an editor’s perspective (or at least mine). Then in part two of this article, I’ll take a look at how this process might compare with that of an industry professional.

Before signing on as an editor with the Digital Manga Guild, I had exactly no experience editing manga. While I think it’s clear that DMG’s targeted labor pool was the scanlation community (perhaps specifically the BL scanlation community), I came in with no background as either a professional or a hobbyist. With that in mind, it my be unsurprising to hear that my first major realization as a new DMG editor (with four deadlines suddenly looming near) was just how little I knew what I was doing.

My second realization was that I was really on my own. There was no managing editor to go to with questions or to catch my mistakes. There was no one to mentor me through my first manga editing job. Translated scripts were simply filling up my inbox, and I had to figure out something to do with them. It reminded me of the stereotypical theater dreams that haunted me (and every young actor) for years, in which I’d find myself opening a brand new show, though I’d never learned my lines or attended a single rehearsal. Only now, the clock was ticking and the consequences were real.

The first book I was assigned to work on (before the group’s original editor vanished completely) was Keiko Kinoshita’s A Lovely Day With Yuri Sensei. The translator on these books, Aaron, worked from raw pages to provide me with a translated script, which I then edited and (when necessary) rewrote while working side-by-side with the raws.

As an example, here’s a fairly simple, straightforward page (#163) from that manga, as delivered to us by DMG.

Aaron translated this page and put it into script format, thusly:

Another thing I learned pretty early on in this process, is that every translator scripts a little differently. While Leighann (translator on Career Gate and What? Sensei) usually makes a large number of editorial choices as she translates (inserting punctuation and so on) Aaron tends to leave those things up to the editor, only inserting things like punctuation when they are specifically included in the Japanese. Though this gives me a lot of leeway for interpretation as an editor, I actually found it pretty intimidating when working on my very first manga script. As I developed my own process, I eventually made a habit of doing an initial “punctuation pass” before looking at any other aspects of the script, so that when I came back to it for rewriting, I felt like I was standing on sturdier ground.

After doing my “punctuation pass,” my next real concern with this page was dealing with gender issues. Though the Japanese language allows for discussion of an individual person without indicating gender, we have no such luxury in English. And though using plural pronouns like “them” and “they” has certainly become part of the common vernacular, in this case, I felt that keeping those in place detracted from the impact of the scene, and that it would be much more effective if we chose a gender for Yuri-sensei’s old friend. After a brief discussion with Aaron, we concluded that given the military context coupled with Yuri’s sexuality, it was probably fair to assume that the person was male, so I chose to use male pronouns in the scene.

Next, there were a couple of sentences I wanted to clean up, just for cadence and flow.

Yuri’s lines in the second panel, “It’s one of those sappy songs they used to play before the war. Someone I knew used to sing it all the time,” felt awkward with the repetition of “used to.” Furthermore, I worried that the dialogue as a whole might be too long for the speech bubbles provided. To resolve my issue with flow (and at least help the issue of length) I rewrote the first sentence as, “It’s one of those sappy songs they played before the war.”

Even after this, I feared that both bubbles would be too crowded. In some instances, I’d have included one or two alternate versions, so that our letterer (Morgan) could choose which fit best, but in this case, I was really fond of the wording as it stood, so I decided to leave it to Morgan to let me know if further shortening/rewording was necessary. I also felt that the lines in the last panel were a bit awkward, and that they’d pack more of an emotional punch with a little simplification.

I submitted the following to the group’s letterer, Morgan:

As it turned out, Morgan was able to fit the longer lines in easily. Here is the final version we submitted to DMG:

Again, this is a fairly simple example, though it required at least one pretty drastic editorial decision on my part. Other pages might require lots of back-and-forth regarding SFX, continuity, translator’s notes, discussion of word length, background text, and so on and so forth.

Once Morgan and I have finalized each chapter, we ask the group’s second editor and letterer (and sometimes the second translator) to go through for proofreading and any other questions they may have, though it’s ultimately up to me to accept or reject their changes. I also do a final re-read of the entire finished volume before submission, at which point I may request small changes in my edited adaption, usually for the purposes of consistency or flow. It’s important to note here that because of the way DMG contracts groups on individual books, members doing proofreading only are not compensated for their work. They are doing it entirely out of the kindness of their hearts, and for the benefit of the group as a whole. We do this in an attempt to decrease the chances that our books are being released with errors (see Erica Friedman’s recent article for insight on how common these errors are). For though there is some kind of QC being done at the DMG level, the evidence isn’t especially reassuring.

While lighter, uh.. porny-er books like Career Gate and (even more so) the upcoming What? Sensei contain a lot of small, crowded panels crammed with as much dialogue, aside text, and sound effects as they can hold, as you can see from the page provided here, the Yuri Sensei books tend to be quieter and a bit more sparse overall. Though it was certainly necessary at times to rewrite sentences for space purposes in these books, I could more often focus on things like tone, cadence, and characterization. And while I was much, much more nervous about editing a (relatively) serious period piece like Yuri Sensei than I was about editing our other titles, the process was also significantly more enjoyable for me, and I found myself eager to do any research or extra work necessary to be sure I was doing right by the series.

However, and I can’t possibly stress this enough, no matter how much extra work and research I was willing to put in (and this was a lot), there was no real way for me to know if I was doing right by the series, because I simply am not qualified to do so.

Though I read a lot of period manga, my knowledge of Japanese history (including this period after World War II and the American occupation) is limited to what little I learned as an American high school student (where WWII and its aftermath are taught almost exclusively from an American point of view) plus whatever I’ve read on my own over the years (more than the average American, but far less than a real student of the period). My knowledge of Japan’s cultural history during this period is even less robust. Furthermore, my Japanese language skills are nonexistent, so regardless of whatever ability I possess as a writer and editor of English, I am not capable of supplementing what is given to me by the translator with any nuances of my own—at least none that are grounded in the original Japanese. And though, luckily, Morgan does have some background in Japanese and I have industry friends to whom I may pose questions from time-to-time, without another fluent professional overseeing our work, there is every possibility that some of my editorial decisions were just plain wrong. I’ve never been a control freak, by any means, but I’ll be honest—I found this prospect terrifying while working on these books and I still do, now that they are up for sale.

As if simply to enhance my terror, a couple of chapters in to Lovely Day, we began noticing some strange things… flashbacks to incidents we’d never seen, quoted dialogue that hadn’t appeared in the previous chapters. Eventually, as the translator worked ahead, he realized that we’d been assigned the books out of order, and that these were references to Yuri Sensei is in a Good Mood Today as Well. Though our deadlines required that we finish the books out of order (Lovely Day‘s deadline was a full month before Good Mood‘s), we requested that DMG wait to release both until Good Mood was finished, so as not to confuse readers in the same way. I still worry that editing the second book first may have caused me to miss some nuances in the text. Reading the final versions, now in order, the second book reads very differently to me than it did originally. I can only hope that I didn’t miss anything vital while editing Aaron’s scripts.

A Lovely Day With Yuri Sensei – Yuri Sensei To Itoshiki Hibi © Keiko Kinoshita. All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published in 2009 by Taiyoh Tosho Publishing, Co., Ltd. All other material © 2012 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc., All rights reserved.

Check back soon for part two of “Process, process, process”!

New Manga Licenses from Sakura Con and Anime Boston

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Been a while since I did a licenses post, but this weekend had two conventions bringing us three publishers announcing a whole bunch of titles. So what exactly is coming soon?

First off, from Vertical, a redone, re-translated, deluxe omnibus version of Ai Yazawa’s fashion romance Paradise Kiss, which first came out, not in Shodensha’s josei magazine Feel Young, but in a fashion magazine for young women, Zipper. I’ve reviewed it before for the Manga Moveable Feast, and it’s a great pick up. Yazawa went on to the even more popular Nana, of course, and fans of that series should like this as well.

Dark Horse announced several licenses that seemed obvious for them, but the one that stood out was the one that didn’t. Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (better known as OreImo, and translated as My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute) started life as a light novel, then (as with most moe light novels) quickly became a franchise, spawning two manga series, two anime series, a web animation series, two games… In any case, Dark Horse has licensed the first manga series, which is four volumes and ran in ASCII Mediaworks’s Dengeki G’s magazine. The series is best described as ‘not quite incest’, and is staggeringly popular among fans of ‘moe’ and ‘little sister’ type anime/games.

The rest of Dark Horse’s announcements look more like something we’d expect from them. Blood-C is a manga adaptation of the anime of the same name, from the Blood the Last Vampire/Blood+ series also licensed by Dark Horse. This current incarnation runs in Kadokawa Shoten’s Shonen Ace. Evangelion: Comic Tribute is a one-volume doujinshi collection featuring popular mangaka doing takes on Evangelion (I imagine it’s similar to Bandai’s Code Geass Knight and Queen anthologies). Emerald and Other Stories is a collection of several short stories written by Blade of the Immortal author Hiroaki Samura, most of which I believe ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine, home of BotI. Lastly, Yoshitaka Amano is doing a new illustrated novel, Deva Zan, which like much of Amano’s recent work seems to be written for the Western market, i.e. Dark Horse will publish it first.

Then there’s Yen Press, who made several announcements as well, and like Dark Horse it was a mix of surprising and obvious. The surprise was the announcement of Thermae Romae, an award-winning manga from Enterbrain’s Comic Beam about a Roman bath designer who time-travels to various places to see what modern bathing is like. The very definition of ‘better than it sounds’, it will be coming out in omnibus hardcover editions.

Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story has done pretty well for Yen, so they’ve decided to license Anything and Something, a collection of short stories that only just came out in Japan a couple of months ago from Enterbrain. Again, hardcover.

Also in an oversized omnibus is a license that many fans had been begging for. Umineko no Naku Koro ni is not so much a direct sequel to Higurashi as it is a thematic one. A group of people gather on a secluded island, and bad things start to happen. Generally thought to be deeper than Higurashi, it’s also more cynical and bittersweet. (For those who missed it, the final two ‘arcs’ of the main Higurashi series, which were 6 and 8 volumes in Japan, will be coming out in omnibus format here as well, starting in September with the Massacre Arc.)

Blood Lad comes from Kadokawa’s Young Ace, and is 5+ volumes. It’s a comedic take on vampires, demons and werewolves, which makes it an obvious choice for licensing over here in the West, where the mere word vampire grants a certain number of sales.

Yen is re-releasing Alice In The Country Of Hearts this June, and they’re picking up the sequels that Tokyopop originally had before they went under. My Fanatic Rabbit ran in Mag Garden’s shoujo magazine Comic Blade Avarus, and seems to focus on Elliot, the “March Hare” of the series.

Another Haruhi spinoff, The Misfortune of Kyon and Koizumi, seems to be another ‘doujinshi anthology’ similar to Dark Horse’s Evangelion one. Needless to say, Kyon and Koizumi will feature. It also seems to be another ‘alternate universe’, similar to that of the also licensed Disappearance of Nagato Yuki.

Lastly, the author of High School of the Dead also has another title, Triage X. It runs in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Age (meaning it’s another Kadokawa title), and is filled with high school assassins, violence, and fanservice. But fewer zombies.

So, what has you the most excited? (Also, anyone else noticing that 2-volume omnibuses are the new 1-volume paperback?)

Inside the DMG: Getting to work!

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It’s been quite a while since my last installment of this feature, largely due to the fact that my DMG work itself has required a great deal of my time. Now that I’ve completed a number of my current assignments, I’d like to take the next few weeks to break down my experience, and also to look into how the Digital Manga Guild is being received so far by the online community, both members and fans.

Readers may recall that Guild members finally received contracts back in June of last year. Then in late July, after great deal of angst and discussion, the group I’d joined finally fell apart, due to the others’ reluctance to sign their DMG contracts.

Though I’m not able to get into the details of my former group’s dissolution, I can tell you that the other members’ decisions were less driven by issues with the contract itself (though these certainly were a factor) and more by an ongoing dispute with DMG management about some of the group’s qualification tests, about which they’d been given conflicting information from the start. Overall, lack of effective and accurate communication between DMG’s caretakers and its members is what killed my original group, something which continues to be an issue for the Guild (I’ll talk about that more later).

In September, I put my name back into the pool of editors without a group, though I wasn’t especially hopeful about snagging one.

Given the overwhelming number of groupless editors in the mix, I thought it likely that my own reporting was pretty much done, and with that in mind, asked the active group BLBangBang if they’d be willing to write up a report on their own experiences, since I had failed to get far enough to actually begin work. They submitted their report in early October, just a few days after I was contacted by Morgan, leader of the group Purple Prose Killers, who thankfully invited me to join her team.

Though I’d finally found a group (again), it would be a while before I’d have real work—at least that’s how things originally stood. The PPK had already received their first batch of assignments, and the work had been distributed and signed off on with the DMG. I’d get my own stuff to work on the next time around, Morgan said, and in the meantime, I offered myself up for final proofreading or anything else the group might need.

A few weeks later, it became clear that the group’s existing editor was going to have difficulty making deadlines for all three of her titles, due to some unexpected personal conflicts. I agreed to take over two of these titles (Keiko Kinoshita’s Yuri Sensei is in a Good Mood Today as Well and A Lovely Day with Yuri Sensei) to help out, though we were told by DMG that I wouldn’t be able to receive credit (or payment) for them, as the paperwork had already been signed. Since I wasn’t accepting payment anyway, I did not see this as a problem. My priority was getting some real working experience so that I could continue my report. (Also, as a big fan of Kinoshita, I’ll admit I was pretty psyched.) In the meantime, DMG assigned us an additional title “for MJto work on,” so I’d have something official to show for myself.

By the end of November, the group’s original editor was entirely MIA. In early December, she was formally removed from the group, at which point DMG agreed to redo the original paperwork so that I would officially be named as editor on all three titles.

Though I’d been working on the two titles I’d taken over, suddenly I had four books on my docket, and the first deadline (for the title I hadn’t been working on) was approaching fast! I was officially named editor on Syuko Nishimura’s Career Gate on December 6th, with a final submission deadline of January 15th. Though the original editor had completed the first chapter, I decided it would be more consistent for me to start from scratch.

Much panic ensued.

Check in next week for the next article in this series, “Process, process, process”!

Recalibrating the Manga Radar

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Sorry for the recent radio silence, but in addition to non-internet demands on my time (and there are a few) I was also a tad hesitant: I posted the Manga Radar report each week (with each new set of Manga Bestsellers) but wondered if any of them [and there have been 10 so far] were accessable to readers and were of value.

I think I’m presenting some valuable information about the manga market from a unique viewpoint, but as has been pointed out to me, it is also merely another long list of manga titles without much context. *I* get the context because I spend a lot of time wading through the data to compile & post the manga bestsellers but my understanding and intuitive grasp of the market is, well, far from intuitive.

In seeking out feedback from manga mavens on twitter, the primary complaint was that long lists of manga titles tend to be eye-numbingly dull. I recognize the complaint, and the rationale behind the complaint, but long lists of manga (properly sorted) are kind of my thing. It’s what I do.

I do, however, take reader feedback to heart (especially when I specifically asked for feedback and all but cornered a few folks until they gave it up) and so I will endeavor to not only provide context for the long lists, but also to break down the lists into more manageable, digestible chunks.

There is a lot of value in the data I have. Perhaps you missed it, but these are books that fans want so much they have preordered them online—I don’t actually add a book to my database until it sells, somewhere, online. In looking at how new titles are preforming as preorders—how many volumes are preordered, how far in advance, and how strongly in relation to other available manga—publishers may get clues to the performance of titles not available from other sources, fans might get clued in on new titles that weren’t previously [cough] “on their radar”, and perhaps most valuably: retailers with limited resources have an objective source—recommendations backed by actual data—for items that they should perhaps order into their store. This was one of the points I wanted to make in the recent sales analysis post and now I’m making it explicitly: My bestsellers track online sales—following the pulse of fan demand—so if I see preorders for new volumes 6 to 9 months out it might be something worth stocking on shelves.

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All of the titles I include (and have blogged in the past) in these “Manga Radar” posts are notable because they did not previously show up in sources, to the limits of my methods. [I’ll point out here that ‘to the limits of my methods’ includes not only 7 different web sites but also the top 1000+ manga listings from Amazon, weekly.]

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Manga Radar: 11-26 February 2012

We have 3 weeks of data to cover so the lists only get longer – I’ll walk you through it all, though; it’s not so bad, stick with me.

Part of the new format is breaking the list up by date: first up are the Database Additions, older titles that somehow I missed [amazing considering I’ve been at this for close to 5 years and have more than 10,000 manga titles already in the database, but it would seem there are always new odd corners of manga publication history that continually come to light].

Candidate for Goddess 1 – Tokyopop, Apr 2004 ::
Candidate for Goddess 2 – Tokyopop, Jun 2004 ::
Candidate for Goddess 3 – Tokyopop, Aug 2004 ::
Candidate for Goddess 4 – Tokyopop, Oct 2004 ::
Candidate for Goddess 5 – Tokyopop, Dec 2004 ::
Princess Ninja Scroll: Tenka Muso 1 – DMP, Nov 2005 ::
Princess Ninja Scroll: Tenka Muso 2 – DMP, Feb 2006 ::
Shinobu Kokoro – Tokyopop Blu, Nov 2005 ::
Our Everlasting 1 – DMP Juné, Dec 2005 ::
My Only King – DMP Juné, Mar 2006 ::
Solfege – DMP Juné, Apr 2007 ::
Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law 2 – 801 Media, Jun 2007 ::
Momo Tama 3 – Tokyopop, Sep 2009 ::
Momo Tama 4 – Tokyopop, Mar 2010 ::
Navigating the World of a Purple Shoe – Sodansha CoLtd, Dec 2010 ::

Candidate for Goddess was an anime actually shown on Cartoon Network back in the day; I had no idea there was a manga. Similarly old-school are the DMP titles—quite a few of which pre-date DMP’s Juné imprint and have “DMP Yaoi Manga” on the cover dress as opposed to Juné’s familiar white rose.

I had previously logged Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law but wasn’t aware there was a second volume; similarly the last 2 volumes of Momo Tama aren’t new, per se, but are new to the database.

That last one, though: Navigating the World of a Purple Shoe [isbn 9781456441074] is a real enigma: it’s only 52 pages but it seems that there was an actual book, not just an e-manga edition. It’s not a self-published title so far as I know, but the publisher is listed on some sources as “Sodansha” and on others as “CreateSpace,” an Amazon division [purchased in 2005] that was previously known primarily for press-on-demand DVDs. It’s credited to “Shu-hey Fujisawa” (possibly author Shuhei Fujisawa) but that doesn’t tell us anything about the art. So: a mystery presented to us by the byzantine ways Amazon reports “manga” in search results, compounded by the new illogical inconsistencies in the way Amazon reports items as “books.”

Here’s a second batch of Database Additions, not from the distant past—merely from last year

Red Hot Chili Samurai 4 – Tokyopop, Mar 2011 ::
Countdown 7 Days 1 – DMP, May 2011 ::
Sonic the Hedgehog 15 – Archie Comics, Jun 2011 ::
Fate/Stay Night 11 – Tokyopop, Jun 2011 ::
Ghostface 1 – Tokyopop, Jun 2011 ::
Hanako & The Terror of Allegory 4 – Tokyopop, Jun 2011 ::
Sonic the Hedgehog 16 – Archie Comics, Oct 2011 ::
Yuichi Yokoyama: Color Engineering – PictureBox, Oct 2011 ::

The Tokyopop titles came up recently at buy.com: it seems they located a cache of late-publishing Tokyopop titles from around the time of that publisher’s closing announcement last May. There are additional T’Pop titles that I was able to change from “cancelled” to “published”—but these are still dear and exceptionally hard to come by. (I won’t post a full listing of Tokyopop’s final hurrah unless asked.)

Additionally, I’d previously been tracking the Sonic licensed comics from Archie, and while these trade paperbacks aren’t brand new, this is the first time these particular volumes showed up in sources

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In this and future posts, following the database additions will be two new categories: the new releases, and then the preorders by month.

Here are the New Releases — which like the top 50 listed in the Manga 500 reports are the new manga titles released this month & last:

Kanjou Spectrum (ebook) – Animate/Libre, Feb 2012 ::
Kiss Ariki (ebook) 7 – Animate/Libre, Feb 2012 ::
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Sonic the Hedgehog 17 – Archie Comics, Feb 2012 ::
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Betting My Life with You (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Blooming Darling (ebook) 2 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Chayamachi’s Collection: Noir (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Classmate (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Indefinite Sociogram (ebook) 1 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Long Version (ebook) 1 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Jan 2012 ::
Long Version (ebook) 2 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Mad Cinderella (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Neck-Tie (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Reset (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Sadistic Boy (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Sunday’s Child (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
That Cute Kid Is Mine & Mine (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
The World Is Full of Cheating Boyfriends (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
Want to Depend on You (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
You & Tonight (ebook) 1 – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Jan 2012 ::
You Get an Angel (ebook) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Feb 2012 ::
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Three P – DMP Project-H, Feb 2012 ::
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The Secret World of Arrietty 1 – Viz Ghibli Library, Feb 2012 ::
The Secret World of Arrietty 2 – Viz Ghibli Library, Feb 2012 ::
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Toriko 8 – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2012 ::
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Ice Cage (ebook) – Yaoi Press, Feb 2012 ::

The DMG doesn’t usually dominate the list in quite this way, but since I’m playing catch-up, we have 3-weeks-worth of releases to consider—that qualifier in place: Damn, but the DMG is really pushing out manga. These are only the titles I’m tracking because they show up in sources [primarily Amazon, but some are also coming out for Nook] and likely doesn’t include every title that is made available through the program.

The Digital Manga Guild isn’t the only publisher releasing yaoi ebooks; we also have two new titles from Animate/Libre this month, and while Yaoi Press might be slower with their release schedule, each release typically ranks higher; Ice Cage is the most recent addition but there were two other releases—Zolabarth Bi and Trapped Wizard—that had stronger preorders and so aren’t “new” to the database this week (but are still new).

Past the merely new, though, are the titles now showing up as Pre-orders:

Stepping on Roses 7 – Viz Shojo Beat, Mar 2012 ::
The Earl & The Fairy 1 – Viz Shojo Beat, Mar 2012 ::
Reaper Zone (ebook) 1 – [self published, Rewat Immak], Mar 2012 ::
Blue Sheep Reverie 5 – DMP Juné, Mar 2012 ::
Is This a Zombie? 1 – Yen Press, Mar 2012 ::
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Countdown 7 Days 2 – DMP, Apr 2012 ::
Replica 2 – DMP, Apr 2012 ::
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Castle Mango 1 – DMP Juné, May 2012 ::
Good Morning – DMP Juné, May 2012 ::
Private Teacher 3 – DMP Juné, May 2012 ::
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Kamisama Kiss 9 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jun 2012 ::
Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan 9 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jun 2012 ::
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Sonic the Hedgehog 18 – Archie Comics, Jul 2012 ::
Gate 7 vol 3 – Dark Horse, Jul 2012 ::
Finder Series 6 Passion within the View Finder – DMP Juné, Jul 2012 ::
Toxic (anthology) 1 – Udon, Jul 2012 ::
Book Girl and the Wayfarer’s Lamentation (novel) – Yen Press, Jul 2012 ::
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Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee 10 – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2012 ::
Inuyasha VizBig Edition 12 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Aug 2012 ::
Tenjo Tenge vols 15-16 collection – Viz Signature, Aug 2012 ::
Heart of Thomas – Fantagraphics, Aug 2012 ::
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Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 5 – Seven Seas, Sep 2012 ::
Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden 10 – Viz Shojo Beat, Sep 2012 ::
Otomen 13 – Viz Shojo Beat, Sep 2012 ::
Bakuman 14 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2012 ::
Loveless 9 – Viz, Sep 2012 ::
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Negima! 36 – Kodansha Comics, Oct 2012 ::
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Sailor Moon 8 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2012 ::

One reason I first pitched “Manga Radar” as a column was the information above: something like Sailor Moon vol 8 won’t really show up in other reports for another 6 months at least, but how interesting to note that fans are pre-ordering it online nine months in advance—it’s a stronger indicator of fan interest than anything else I can note, especially considering each preorder is backed by a valid credit card. There are some properties here that never show up in top 10 lists: Kamisama Kiss, Book Girl, Tegami Bachi, Gunslinger Girl, Fushigi Yugi, Otomen—and yet each of these has a fan base that is not only following the title but is hungry for the new releases.

This is the kind of information that I wanted to present—the insight into the market that I hoped to share. In future Manga Radar posts, I’ll take the extra time needed to give you the context and to provide these manga properties with the spotlight they deserve. And of course, I’d like to remind you that I not only find new releases each week, I rank them. My manga bestsellers are not just mildly entertaining and of interest to the fans, I’m also providing tools that retailers can use to stock their shelves, and inform their ordering process.

I hope this “new-style” Manga Radar report is an improvement over the original; please give me additional feedback if you feel there are other areas where it could be improved.