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License request day: Junji Ito josei

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As we approach the horror-tinged Manga Moveable Feast, I’m extremely happy that I can kill two license request birds with one stone: more Junji Ito, and more josei. I don’t know that publishers make a lot of money off of licensing Ito’s work, but they keep trying, bless them, so they must love his twisted, meticulous tales as much as I do.

When compiling The Josei Alphabet, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there’s a josei magazine that specializes in horror, Asahi Sonorama’s Nemuki. The fact that Ito has published a lot of stories in Nemuki made me like the idea even more. They’ve been collected in at least two volumes.

Yami no Koe came out in 2002. The mere fact that it has a story in it called “Blood-sucking Darkness” should be evidence enough of its merit, don’t you think?

Shin Yami no Koe – Kaidan started giving people nightmares in 2006. I suspect the highlights of this collection are probably provided by a horrible little boy with a mouth full of nails. French publisher Tonkam has published these stories as Le journal de Soïchi and Le journal maudit de Soïchi. For bonus points, this collection also seems to include a story about an accursed library.

I’m obviously not made of stone, and I would also love to read Ito’s comics about his cat and his one-volume look at Rasputin, but josei horror is just too enticing a prospect not to provide a starting point, you know?

 

Gate 7, Vol. 1

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I have good news and bad news for CLAMP fans. The good news is that Gate 7 is one of the best-looking manga the quartet has produced, on par with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic. The bad news is that Gate 7‘s first volume is very bumpy, with long passages of expository dialogue and several false starts. Whether you’ll want to ride out the first three chapters will depend largely on your reaction to the artwork: if you love it, you may find enough visual stimulation to sustain to your interest while the plot and characters take shape; if you don’t, you may find the harried pacing and repetitive jokes a high hurdle to clear.

Art-wise, Gate 7 most closely resembles Tsubasa. The character designs are elegantly stylized, rendered in delicate lines; though their proportions have been gently elongated, their physiques are less giraffe-like than the principle characters in Legal Drug and xxxHolic. The same sensibility informs the action scenes as well, where CLAMP uses thin, sensual linework to suggest the energy unleashed during magical combat. (Readers familiar with Magic Knight Rayearth will see affinities between the two series, especially in the fight sequences.) Perhaps the most striking thing about the artwork is its imaginative use of water and light to evoke the supernatural. As Zack Davisson observes in his review of Gate 7, CLAMP uses a subtle but lovely image to shift the action from present-day Kyoto to the spirit realm, depicting the characters as stones in the water, with soft ripples radiating outward from each figure.

The story, however, is less satisfying. The plot revolves around high school student Chikahito Takamoto, a timid dreamer who’s obsessed with Kyoto as a place of “history, ancient arts, temples, and shrines.” While exploring the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, Chikahito is transported to an alternate dimension, where he encounters three warriors: Sakura, Tachibana, and Hana, an androgynously beautiful, child-like figure who possesses even greater spiritual power than the other two. Chikahito watches the trio dismantle a ribbon-like serpent, but before he can question what he’s seen, poof! he finds himself eating noodles with them in a Kyoto apartment as Sakura and Tachibana debate the ethics of erasing Chikahito’s memory.

Hana astonishes Chikahito with an awesome display of power.

The biggest problem with this introductory section is that the subsequent chapter traces a nearly identical trajectory: Chikahito returns to Kyoto, encounters Hana in the streets, then is whisked onto the spirit-plane for another round of magical combat. As soon as the monster is defeated, Chikahito once again finds himself eating a meal with Hana, Sakura, and Tachibana. (This time around, however, they gang-press him into cooking and cleaning for them.) CLAMP even recycles the same gags from the prelude: Hana’s fragile appearance belies a monstrous appetite for noodles, an incongruity CLAMP mines for humor long past the point of being funny.

Other problems prevent Gate 7 from taking flight in its early pages. As we begin to learn more about the Kitano Tenmagu Shrine, for example, various characters take turns explaining its history. These narratives are clearly intended to set the table for a more complex plotline, but have the unintended consequence of stopping the story dead in its tracks. The script also makes some maddening detours into mystical clap-trap; in trying to understand how the seemingly ordinary Chikahito can enter the supernatural realm, characters lapse into Yoda-speak. “We’re alike,” Hana informs Chikahito. When asked, “In what areas?” Hana cheerfully replies, “In areas that are… ‘not.’ Where he’s the same is… ‘not.'”

The most disappointing aspect of Gate 7 is the flimsiness of the characterizations. CLAMP seems to be relying on readers’ familiarity with other titles — Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Tsuaba, xxxHolic — in establishing each character’s personality and role in the drama. Hana, for example, slots into the Mokona role: Hana refers to himself (herself?) in the third person, repeats pet phrases, and behaves like a glutton, yet proves surprisingly powerful. Chikahito, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of xxxHolic‘s Watanuki, a nervous, bespectacled everyman who unwittingly becomes the housekeeper and magical errand-boy for more supernaturally gifted beings. The frantic pace and abrupt transitions between the mundane and supernatural world further complicate the process of establishing Hana and Chikahito as individuals; with so much material stuffed into the first two hundred pages, CLAMP leans too heavily on tics and mannerisms to carry the burden of the characterization. (Cute finger-wagging does not a character make.)

The dramatic introduction of a new character in the volume’s final pages suggests that CLAMP may finally be hitting its stride in chapter four. As promising as this development may be, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m reading a Potemkin manga, all surface detail and no depth. Let’s hope volume two proves me wrong.

GATE 7, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • DARK HORSE • 192 pp. • NO RATING

Gate 7, Vol. 1

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I have good news and bad news for CLAMP fans. The good news is that Gate 7 is one of the best-looking manga the quartet has produced, on par with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic. The bad news is that Gate 7‘s first volume is very bumpy, with long passages of expository dialogue and several false starts. Whether you’ll want to ride out the first three chapters will depend largely on your reaction to the artwork: if you love it, you may find enough visual stimulation to sustain to your interest while the plot and characters take shape; if you don’t, you may find the harried pacing and repetitive jokes a high hurdle to clear.

Art-wise, Gate 7 most closely resembles Tsubasa. The character designs are elegantly stylized, rendered in delicate lines; though their proportions have been gently elongated, their physiques are less giraffe-like than the principle characters in Legal Drug and xxxHolic. The same sensibility informs the action scenes as well, where CLAMP uses thin, sensual linework to suggest the energy unleashed during magical combat. (Readers familiar with Magic Knight Rayearth will see affinities between the two series, especially in the fight sequences.) Perhaps the most striking thing about the artwork is its imaginative use of water and light to evoke the supernatural. As Zack Davisson observes in his review of Gate 7, CLAMP uses a subtle but lovely image to shift the action from present-day Kyoto to the spirit realm, depicting the characters as stones in the water, with soft ripples radiating outward from each figure….

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Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking, Vols. 1-10

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By Koji Kumeta | Volumes 1-8 published by Del Rey, Volumes 9-10 published by Kodansha Comics

When I first set out to read Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, my goal was to finish the first eight volumes in time for Kodansha’s June 2011 release of volume nine.

You can see how well that worked out.

The problem was that this series simply doesn’t benefit from a marathon read. After four volumes, I burnt out and switched to reading it a chapter at a time as the mood struck me. Obviously, it took a lot longer this way, but turned out to be the ideal manga to read on breaks at work or while sitting around in the lobby of the doctor’s office. Interestingly, I found the most recent volumes to be so good that devouring them in their entirety was no problem at all!

There’s not a whole lot of plot to Zetsubou-sensei. Nozomu Itoshiki, the fourth son of a wealthy family, is a high school teacher with a penchant for nineteenth century garb. The title of the manga refers to the fact that when the characters of his name are written too closely together, they can be read as “zetsubou,” or “despair.” Which is convenient, since despairing over various things (and occasionally trying to kill himself) is Itoshiki’s specialty. His class is full of a variety of quirky students, whom we meet gradually, including a girl who sees everything positively, a methodical and precise (and possibly homicidal) girl, a girl who speaks only in text messages, a stalker, a fujoshi, an impoverished housewife, etc. We also meet a few members of his family, including his brother Mikoto, a doctor whose name can be read as “zetsumei,” or “certain death.”

Each chapter follows more or less the same pattern: the first couple of pages establish where the characters are, then something sets Itoshiki off on a rant. (For example, a hinamatsuri display inspires a diatribe about heirarchical societies.) Eventually he spews out a list of items that correspond to the topic of the day. Then the positive girl (Kafuka) will put forth a different opinion and, a couple of pages later, the chapter ends. As I’ve described it, this sounds tedious, but it’s often quite clever and absurd.

Some chapters are more Japanese-centric than others, with copious references to entertainers and public figures or topics specific to Japan, like tanabata or fukubukuro. These can be somewhat less fun to read, especially in earlier volumes when the (admittedly thorough) end notes provide so much information that one ends up reading the book with a finger permanently lodged in the back to reference the explanation as needed. With a change in translator for volume five, most of these notes disappeared.

At first, I was bothered by knowing there were all sorts of references I was missing, but in the end I think I prefer to just cope with ignorance; it helps that more recent volumes have dealt with some universal topics like dream endings, assumptions, jokes you’ve heard a million times, how we perceive the passage of time, modern conveniences leading to inconvenience (“Thanks to Amazon,com, we’ve got piles of books that we haven’t had time to read”), skewed priorities, gifts you feel obliged to accept, and getting sucked into other people’s drama. Somewhat to my surprise, it feels like we’re beginning to learn a little bit more about the characters, as well.

In addition to following the established formula in terms of chapter progression, there are also several recurring gags in Zetusbou-sensei. I’m not very fond of the poor dog with a stick in its butt who appears on occasion, but the creative ways Kumeta finds to insert a panty shot from a particular character are kind of fun, and I’m quite fond of Itoshiki’s stalker, Matoi, who suddenly pops up in the middle of scenes, surprising the characters. “You were here?” And the way in which the characters continue to fail eleventh grade and must repeat it pokes fun at those series—Ouran High School Host Club is the most notorious example to come to mind—where seasons pass but the characters inexplicably fail to graduate.

Artistically, Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei has a very unique look. Kumeta uses very little screen tone, and all of his characters (except one) have pitch-black hair and eyes. There are many girls in the cast, but they all have distinctive hairstyles. Even if I can’t remember someone’s name, her hairstyle will clue me in. “Oh, that’s the delusional self-blaming girl!” Kumeta’s got a recurring trick for page layout too: frequently, a character will be drawn full-length to one side of the page and depicted with extremely skinny ankles and extremely large feet. In more recent volumes it seems that facial closeups are happening more often, or that characters are being viewed from some new angles, which is a welcome development.

On the whole, I enjoyed Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei a great deal. I felt that it improved as it went along, and I look forward to remaining current with the series henceforth. It may not have made me laugh aloud continuously, but it was always amusing enough to make me smile, and it’s to its credit that it was still capable of making me giggle in its 100th chapter.

Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking was originally published in English by Del Rey, who put out the first eight volumes, but is now being published by Kodansha Comics. The series is ongoing in Japan; volume 27 came out there earlier this week.

Review copies for volumes five, seven, eight, and ten provided by the publisher.

Drifting Net Café, Vol. 1

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By Shuzo Oshimi. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Manga Action. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

Of all the titles released so far by JManga, no magazine has more examples of its wares than Futabasha’s seinen magazine Manga Action. It’s a bi-weekly magazine that caters to the same sort of reader as all of the ‘Young’ magazines, which is to say each edition features a hot Japanese gravure model on the cover. Now, to be fair, the content is just as varied as any other magazine for men. You have bento manga, medical manga, sports manga, and even Star Protector Dog. That said, you also have manga about guys trapped in loveless marriages who end up with the hot girl of their dreams.

Drifting Net Café stats off with this basic plot. Toki is a salaryman with a pregnant wife, and is dissatisfied with how he got there. Yukie, his wife, is having mood swings; he’s incredibly horny but unable to have sex; and he keeps thinking about the girl he had a crush on in high school, whom he hasn’t seen since then. Then one day as it’s raining he goes into a net café to ride it out, and runs into none other than his old crush!

So far so normal, and the entire first volume is set up so that you’re supposed to root for the adultery. Yukie is cute, and he loves her in that ‘yeah, whatever’ sort of way, but with Tohno it’s clear he still has chemistry and an undefinable spark. Unfortunately, they can’t immediately hook up because the café they’re in is suddenly transported to the middle of a hostile swampy desert in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, that’s right, this isn’t just an adulterous salaryman romance manga, it’s also a takeoff on Kazuo Umezu’s classic horror title The Drifting Classroom. Instead of children, we have bored and jaded young twenty-somethings cast adrift, and the conflict between then erupts almost immediately. We’re only one volume in, so we don’t really get to know the whole cast, but the characters we’ve seen get in the spotlight have issues. I honestly can’t even remember their names, I define them by their roles. The huge guy with some sort of rage disorder. The shallow girl who whines about wanting to go home. The psycho guy.

Speaking of the psycho guy, this is another manga rated M for mature. For most of the volume, that’s due to the occasional bout of violence, with folks beating up other folks because they’re all confused at being transported from Tokyo to a strange swamp in the middle of nowhere. Then right at the end, one of the meek characters, who’s been bullied by his boss since the start, goes nuts. He stabs his boss with a penknife, then grabs the shallow girl and forces her to go down on him at knifepoint. It’s as sordid as it sounds, and made me feel ill. Then another guy pulls out a taser… and that’s our cliffhanger. Didn’t take long for morality to erode, much like its older counterpart.

So we’ve got a wannabe cheating hero, a heroine who through one volume is still somewhat faceless (in flashbacks, she’s shown to be the cool mysterious beauty, but in the present she seems very passive), a lot of violence, and we end with sexual assault. Is there something to like about this title? Well, it’s certainly very good at setting a mood. From the moment we enter the net café, there’s a creeping feeling of horror that is conveyed very well on the page. I’m just… not sure I want to read the mood that this story is good at setting. If you want to see a horror/mystery title with a side of sex and violence, this may be for you. As for me, it lost me by the final chapter.

BL Bookrack: October 2011

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Welcome to the October installment of BL Bookrack! This month, MJand Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Yakuza Café, Sky Link, and volume three of A Strange and Mystifying Story.

Sky Link | By Shiro Yamada | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated YA (16+) – Ritsuki Ban is a troubled young man just starting university. On his first day, he collides with a man who praises him for being his type, and who (of course) turns out to be one of his professors. The professor, Takagi, pursues Ritsuki vigilantly, despite his surface apathy. How does Ritsuki really feel?

Truthfully, there’s a lot more going on in this story than what I’ve just described, but I sort of wish there wasn’t. This story, more than any other I’ve read recently, really suffers from the limitations of being a one-shot, which means that all of its best character development amounts to nothing more than false promises in the end.

Things start out pretty well. Ritsuki is a sullen guy with a mysterious past, written just subtly enough to be more intriguing than cliché. Takagi is aggressive and over-confident, but with enough sensitivity to dodge that cliché as well. Their relationship develops slowly (and reluctantly) in the beginning, with just enough real sexual tension to allow us to root for it. Then, perhaps pressed for time, the mangaka suddenly rushes them to being “in love,” eliminating all their troubles and sending them off on a world adventure. None of the volume’s early tension is meaningful by the end, and even the characters’ title-inspiring bond over their love for the sky deteriorates into sentimentality of the most cloying kind.

Believable romance is incredibly difficult to write in a single volume, and many BL mangaka don’t even try. But while I might criticize those stories as being simply “not for me,” Sky Link actually would be, if only it succeeded, and that’s what I find so heartbreaking about it. I love a happy ending as much as the next romance-addict, but I prefer ambiguity (or even sadness) over unearned happiness any day. Ultimately, Sky Link is attractive but disappointing. – Review by MJ

A Strange and Mystifying Story, Vol. 3 | By Tsuta Suzuki | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated Mature (18+) – The first two volumes of this series are the story of a sickly fellow named Akio who is cured of his illness thanks to the sexual healing provided by his family’s guardian beast, Setsu. These volumes are pretty good, but volume three beats them by a mile.

That’s because mangaka Tsuta Suzuki is wise enough to know when a story is played out and brave enough to risk angering her fans by taking things in an entirely new direction. Akio and Setsu appear but briefly, therefore, as Suzuki devotes the first half of this volume to the absolutely adorable love story between two of Akio’s coworkers and the second half to a teenager named Tsumugi who has just encountered a guardian beast of his own.

We’ve met Akio’s coworkers—cheerful middle-aged boss Keiichiro Minamiura and stoic twenty-something Tetsushi Hatoki—before, and there have been hints that something might be going on between them. The first chapter devoted to the pair reveals their history before Akio was hired, with Tetsushi being drawn in by Keiichiro’s personality (“Surely it’s a gift, such hearty, carefree laughter”) but unable to make a move because he is convinced he will be rejected, since others have pursued Keiichiro with no success. The second chapter seems to take place in the present. I loved both unstintingly and without restraint. Tetsushi may seem impassive, but he’s really straightforward with his emotions, and Suzuki adeptly captures the qualities that make Keiichiro simultaneously warm and enigmatic. I could seriously read about these guys forever.

The second half of the book pales in comparison somewhat, but is better than expected. Tsumugi Shirota—who, as it turns out, is Keiichiro’s former step-son—is one of those manga guys who excel at all manner of domestic tasks, especially cooking. On his 16th birthday, he finds out that he’s been assigned these chores as a means of training to become the “bride” for the family’s guardian fox-beast, Kurayori. Kurayori is displeased to find that his bride-to-be is male, but Tsumugi’s diligence wins him over and he decides to continue protecting the family until such time as Tsumugi is grown and can provide for them. It’s a little weird how accepting Tsumugi is of this arrangement (though I suppose that’s better than inflicting a lot of spastic flailing on readers), but I am overall intrigued and glad that this setup did not immediately lead to sexytimes.

As a final note, the volume’s mature rating is likely due to content in earlier volumes, because this one is markedly chaste. Suzuki writes in her afterward, “On a personal note, I am quite disappointed that I was not able to portray for you the panting of a middle-aged man.” Hee! – Review by Michelle Smith

Yakuza Café | By Shinano Oumi | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated M (18+) – When Shinri Irie receives an invitation from his father, absent from his life for many years, to come live with him, he decides to accept. As it turns out, his dad (Daigo) is the former head of the Fujisaki clan, a yakuza group he disbanded in order to devote himself to being a better father. Many of his former devotees have been cast out, but a select crew remains to help the boss in his new venture: running a café.

The café’s décor is rather abysmal and their tea is even worse, so Shinri works together with the business manager, Zaouji, to whip the place into shape. Everything’s going smoothly on opening night until the disgruntled former clan members return with mayhem on their minds until they are quelled by the sight of Daigo’s phoenix tattoo. Really.

The romance angle comes in the form of Shinri’s relationship with Mikado, the leader of the henchman. He has reportedly loved Shinri for years and is dedicated to protecting him, but he has a weird quirk: whenever anyone touches the dragon tattoo on his back, he goes into savage mode—seriously, he has a line of dialogue translated as “rawr”—and, on one occasion, this leads to a nonconsensual encounter with Shinri. Not only is Shinri forgiving about this, he actually gets kind of wistful about it. “Even though it hurt and I was scared…. I didn’t hate it, either.”

The comedic element of a group of yakuza attempting to run a café is kind of fun, and I did like the scene where Shinri and Zaouji are dazzling some coeds with their looks and tea-making skills. But the business with the tattoos is just ridiculous, and Shinri’s acceptance of Mikado’s violent assault grates on my nerves. Worst of all, though, is the characters themselves. Mikado has almost zero personality. And if I told you to think of the most generic uke in the history of ukes, you’d probably come up with someone just like Shinri. I don’t believe in their relationship at all, but it’s not just them: a side story about Zaouji and his lover’s death has no impact at all because the characters are so flat.

If you want to read about yakuza and tea, I recommend Crimson Snow or I Give to You. There’s no need to read something this tepid. – Review by Michelle Smith

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: MJ is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by MJin her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Manga Bestsellers: 2011, Week Ending 16 October

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Comparative Rankings Based on Consolidated Online Sales

last week’s charts
about the charts

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Manga Bestsellers

1. ↔0 (1) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [472.7] ::
2. ↑2 (4) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [454.5] ::
3. ↓-1 (2) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [440.3] ::
4. ↑1 (5) : Vampire Knight 13 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2011 [435.0] ::
5. ↓-2 (3) : Naruto 52 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2011 [412.0] ::
6. ↑3 (9) : Rosario+Vampire Season II 6 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2011 [394.8] ::
7. ↑1 (8) : Blue Exorcist 4 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2011 [375.1] ::
8. ↓-1 (7) : Skip Beat! 25 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2011 [363.9] ::
9. ↑4 (13) : Maximum Ride 1 – Yen Press, Jan 2009 [325.8] ::
10. ↑1 (11) : xxxHolic 17 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [314.1] ::

[more]

Top Imprints
Number of volumes ranking in the Top 500:

Viz Shonen Jump 83
Viz Shojo Beat 70
Yen Press 68
Viz Shonen Jump Advanced 38
Kodansha Comics 35
Vizkids 31
Tokyopop 25
HC/Tokyopop 20
Del Rey 18
DMP Juné 15

[more]

Series/Property

1. ↔0 (1) : Sailor Moon – Kodansha Comics [1,081.5] ::
2. ↑1 (3) : Vampire Knight – Viz Shojo Beat [786.3] ::
3. ↑1 (4) : Maximum Ride – Yen Press [703.0] ::
4. ↓-2 (2) : Naruto – Viz Shonen Jump [677.4] ::
5. ↑1 (6) : Black Butler – Yen Press [632.3] ::
6. ↓-1 (5) : Negima! – Del Rey/Kodansha Comics [585.2] ::
7. ↔0 (7) : Blue Exorcist – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced [553.1] ::
8. ↔0 (8) : Pokemon – Vizkids [525.5] ::
9. ↑5 (14) : Skip Beat! – Viz Shojo Beat [485.1] ::
10. ↑6 (16) : Rosario+Vampire – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced [465.6] ::

[more]

New Releases
(Titles releasing/released This Month & Last)

1. ↔0 (1) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [472.7] ::
2. ↑2 (4) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [454.5] ::
4. ↑1 (5) : Vampire Knight 13 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2011 [435.0] ::
6. ↑3 (9) : Rosario+Vampire Season II 6 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2011 [394.8] ::
7. ↑1 (8) : Blue Exorcist 4 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2011 [375.1] ::
8. ↓-1 (7) : Skip Beat! 25 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2011 [363.9] ::
10. ↑1 (11) : xxxHolic 17 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [314.1] ::
12. ↓-6 (6) : Negima! 31 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [303.8] ::
15. ↓-1 (14) : Black Bird 10 – Viz Shojo Beat, Sep 2011 [272.8] ::
16. ↑1 (17) : Bakuman 7 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2011 [272.4] ::

[more]

Preorders

3. ↓-1 (2) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [440.3] ::
13. ↓-1 (12) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [288.3] ::
17. ↑10 (27) : Sailor Moon 5 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2012 [269.2] ::
19. ↑1 (20) : Sailor Moon 3 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2012 [265.5] ::
25. ↑3 (28) : Sailor Moon 4 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2012 [240.3] ::
65. ↑19 (84) : xxxHolic 18 – Kodansha Comics, Dec 2011 [137.7] ::
67. ↓-8 (59) : Negima! 32 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [136.0] ::
71. ↑92 (163) : Maximum Ride 5 – Yen Press, Dec 2011 [127.4] ::
75. ↑69 (144) : Naruto 53 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2011 [123.8] ::
102. ↑78 (180) : Fullmetal Alchemist 27 – Viz, Dec 2011 [98.8] ::

[more]

Manhwa

104. ↑676 (780) : March Story 3 – Viz Signature, Oct 2011 [97.3] ::
405. ↑new (0) : Black God 14 – Yen Press, Oct 2011 [26.9] ::
521. ↓-235 (286) : Pig Bride 5 – Yen Press, Jul 2010 [19.3] ::
555. ↓-107 (448) : Goong 12 – Yen Press, Sep 2011 [17.3] ::
706. ↔0 (706) : Priest vols 1-3 collection – Tokyopop, Jun 2011 [11.2] ::
744. ↑919 (1663) : JTF-3 Counter Ops (ebook) – RealinterfaceStudios.com, Mar 2011 [10.0] ::
745. ↑58 (803) : March Story 1 – Viz Signature, Oct 2010 [10.0] ::
773. ↓-444 (329) : Evyione: Ocean Fantasy 2 – Udon, Sep 2008 [9.4] ::
838. ↑120 (958) : March Story 2 – Viz Signature, Apr 2011 [7.9] ::
920. ↑261 (1181) : Bride of the Water God 9 – Dark Horse, Oct 2011 [6.3] ::

[more]

BL/Yaoi

44. ↓-15 (29) : Finder Series 4 Prisoner in the View Finder – DMP Juné, Aug 2011 [185.9] ::
70. ↑7 (77) : Maelstrom (Kindle ebook) 1 – Yaoi Press, Jun 2011 [127.5] ::
123. ↓-4 (119) : An Even More Beautiful Lie – DMP Juné, Jan 2012 [85.2] ::
134. ↓-11 (123) : About Love – DMP Juné, Nov 2011 [79.1] ::
142. ↑171 (313) : Border 2 – DMP Juné, Oct 2011 [72.8] ::
145. ↓-40 (105) : Finder Series 5 Truth in the View Finder – DMP Juné, Dec 2011 [71.1] ::
148. ↑1 (149) : Secrecy of the Shivering Night – DMP Juné, Dec 2011 [69.8] ::
152. ↓-2 (150) : Mr. Convenience – DMP Juné, Nov 2011 [68.3] ::
165. ↑73 (238) : Private Teacher 2 – DMP Juné, Jan 2012 [63.9] ::
225. ↓-14 (211) : Maelstrom (Kindle ebook) 4 – Yaoi Press, Jul 2011 [47.8] ::

[more]

The Favorites Alphabet: H

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Welcome to the Favorites Alphabet, where the Manga Bookshelf battle robot gaze upon our respective manga collections to pick a favorite title from each letter of the alphabet. We’re trying to stick with books that have been licensed and published in English, but we recognize that the alphabet is long, so we’re keeping a little wiggle room in reserve.

“H” is for…

Here Is Greenwood | Yukie Nasu | Viz Media – Again, I could pick any number of ‘H’ titles – Hayate the Combat Butler, High School Girls, Higurashi – but I have a soft spot in my heart for Greenwood, which was first seen in North America in the mid-1990s as an anime. Viz brought over the 9 volume manga in 2004, and to be honest it did not sell well. This is a shame, as it’s part of that classic genre of shôjo manga – BL tease. There are many people (including myself) who may read Greenwood for Hasukawa, and seeing him struggle with his temper and with the hijinks that surround him at the Greenwood dorms. Seeing him eventually win the heart of the girl he’s trying to win is a highlight of the entire run. But if I were honest, I’d admit that 98% of all Greenwood fans read it to see Mitsuru and Shinobu not be lovers at each other. The two best friends complement each other perfectly, and even the Japanese audience demanded, at the end, that Nasu show the two of them kissing. (She did not comply.) This may not have sold well here, but those female fans who had the anime be one of their gateways into BL fandom should try the manga – it’s better, and gives them even more ammo. – Sean Gaffney

High School Debut | Kazune Kawahara | VIZ Media – On the surface, this is just another shôjo high school romance. There’s the earnest heroine, Haruna, who’s got a tremendous heart and athletic ability, and the more stoic boy, Yoh, whom she taps to be her dating coach. What’s different is that they fall in love within the first few volumes and spend the rest of the time working out what it means to be a couple. I love that Yoh admires Haruna for all of her terrific qualities, and I love that Haruna trusts Yoh and truly wants what’s best for him. Although the story itself may not be new, I adore the characters so much that when the final volume came around, I was tempted to write a review consisting entirely of hearts and sniffles. I’ve loaned this series out a couple of times already and know that I will be rereading it often. – Michelle Smith

Hikaru no Go | By Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata | Viz Media – Oh, what to say about Hikaru no Go that I haven’t already said? Hikaru no Go was my first exposure to manga, and managed in one two-day whirlwind read to win me over to a medium (comics) I had previously sworn I could never, ever love. In a very real way, Manga Bookshelf exists because of Hikaru no Go. It is an epic, deeply compelling, emotionally resonant sort-of-sports manga, with some of my favorite artwork in in the medium overall. And though I later realized that the sense of non-ironic optimism that (in part) drew me to the series originally is a trait common to the genre, there is something unique about this quality as it inhabits Hikaru no Go.  It is elegant in its innocence, and in its sadness too. And though I’ve read many more moving and complex manga since, nothing can ever replace Hikago in my heart. It is that special. – MJ

Hotel Harbour View | By Jiro Taniguchi | Viz Media – This slim volume explores terrain familiar to anyone who’s watched Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, or Stray Dog: it’s a world of gangsters, molls, and taciturn killers. Though the stories unfold in present-day Shanghai and Paris (or what was the present day when Taniguchi wrote it), the mood is decidedly retro: the characters speak in a highly self-conscious, stylized language borrowed from the silver screen; they wear hats, waist-cinching dresses, and formidable shoulder pads; and they die dramatic deaths. If the prevailing sensibility is mid-century noir, the artwork owes a debt to John Woo and the Hong Kong action films of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with balletic gun fights and artfully composed kill shots. Much as I love titles like Zoo in Winter and A Distant Neighborhood, Hotel Harbour View may be my favorite Taniguchi title. – Katherine Dacey

House of Five Leaves | By Natsume Ono | Viz Media – It frankly seems wrong that we’ve gone this far in The Favorites Alphabet without me having a chance to mention Ono’s work, but it’s nice that I can start with what I think is her very best licensed series. This tale of an out-of-work samurai who falls in with a motley gang of generally benevolent kidnappers falls right in my tonal sweet spot – casual, character driven, but packed with surprising and potent emotional highlights that seem to creep up on the reader. The look of the series is essential to its success, and it’s easily Ono’s most stylish, gorgeous work. There’s a wonderfully concise quality to her illustrations here. She manages to convey a great deal with the tiniest modulations in facial expression, framed as they are by her languid, graceful staging. House of Five Leaves represents everything I like about Ono’s work, and it features those qualities at their very best. – David Welsh

What starts with “H” in your favorites alphabet?

NYCC: What’s new in manga?

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Digital distribution was the primary thread running through announcements from manga publishers at this year’s New York Comic Con, but it wasn’t the only thing to get excited about. For detailed coverage of each day’s panels, be sure to spend some time with Sean’s write-ups of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Below is a list of highlights from attending manga publishers (Note: neither Dark Horse nor Bandai Entertainment offered any new manga announcements).

Kodansha Comics

With visiting mangaka Hiro Mashima in attendance, much of Kodansha’s panel time was spent letting him woo the crowd with his charming personality and artistic skill. Happily, they offered a wealth of new manga announcements as well. Here’s the rundown:

Attack on Titan – “Humanity has been devastated by the bizarre, giant humanoids known as the Titans. Little is known about where they came from or why they are bent on consuming humanity. Seemingly unintelligent, they have roamed the world killing off humankind for years. For the past century, what’s left of mankind has hidden in a giant, three-walled city. People believe their 100-meter-high walls will protect them from the Titans, which are 10 to 20 meters tall. But the sudden appearance of an immense Titan is about to change everything.” (June, 2012)

Genshiken Omnibus – “Welcome to the world of the Genshiken, home of the true otaku – the Japanese term for ubergeek. This is the story of a group of friends who are all members of the most hardcore anime and manga fan club in all of Tokyo – and the girls who love them.” (May, 2012)

Kitchen Princess Omnibus – “Najika has always known how to cook. She understands food, and how it touches people’s hearts. But she herself has always been looking for more. When she was a child, she met a boy who touched her heart, and now Najika has set out to find this boy. The only clue she has is a silver spoon that leads to the prestigious Seika Academy. Fitting in at Seika will be a challenge. Every kid in Najika’s class has a special talent, and the girls at the school think Najika’s not worthy. But Sora and Daichi, two popular brothers who barely speak to each other, recognize Najika’s cooking for what it is — magical. Is either boy Najika’s mysterious prince? ” (June, 2012)

Kodansha Comics iPad App – Kodansha Comics joins the digital revolution with their own iPad app, which launched officially during the convention. We’ll have a full review in our next edition of Going Digital, but in the meantime, here’s the pitch: “Kodansha USA Publishing is proud to announce the debut of the Kodansha Comics app, appearing at midnight tonight in the iTunes store. The app was created by Random House, Inc.’s digital content team on behalf of Kodansha, a Random House Publisher Services division client. It will be free to download, with most volumes priced for sale at $4.99. The Kodansha Comics iPad app will launch with 34 books covering four series: Arisa by Natsumi Ando; Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima; Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei by Koji Kumeta; and Until the Full Moon by Sanami Matoh. Additional series will be added to the app in the near future.”

Be sure to check out their special launch promotion, featuring all fifteen volumes of Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail for $2.99 each.

Vertical, Inc.

Vertical may still be lagging digitally, but they announced several exciting new licenses for 2012.

5 Centimeters Per Second – Adapted from Makoto Shinkai’s anime feature, this stands out as my favorite surprise license of the convention. When I first watched this film, all I wanted to do when it ended was to start it all over again. This story of separation and loneliness may be a bit messier than Shinkai’s earlier, similarly-themed Voices of a Distant Star, but it affected me more personally.

The first of the movie’s three sections hit me the hardest, and I wrote of it at the time, “The second and third chapters resonate deeply with me too… but it is the first I keep coming back to. It is Takaki’s journey on the train that stays with me constantly. I feel that I could watch this film over and over and it would never become tired to me.” Whether the manga adaptation is as strong remains to be seen, but it ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon, which speaks well for it indeed. (June 2012)

Sakuran – There has been twitter speculation about this license for a while, and it’s exciting to see the speculation become real! I’ll let David speak for me here. “Now, how did I go through all those license requests without ever hitting upon Moyoco (Hataraki Man) Anno’s Sakuran? Looking back, the one-volume title from Kodansha’s Evening received only a scant mention in The Seinen Alphabet. Let’s pretend that I’ve been begging for it all along, because it certainly feels like a request fulfilled.” (July, 2012)

Message to Adolph – Having come into the world of manga so late, it’s a pleasure to see publishers recently re-issuing manga I missed the first time around, especially when that manga was written by the likes of Osamu Tezuka. Originally published here by Viz (as Adolph), it has been long out of print. Now, Vertical adds this tale of three Adolphs to their impressive Tezuka library. (August, 2012)

Viz Media

Viz made the trek from the west coast this year for the first time in a while, bringing with them a number of announcements, including these licenses:

Loveless – Though I’ve never read Loveless, a popular series from Yun Kouga—already a favorite of mine—it’s apparently time to start. Viz has picked up the license where TOKYOPOP left off, starting with volume nine. As Sean says in his Day Three post, “This title runs in Ichijinsha’s Comic Zero-Sum, and is another of those ‘not quite BL but has many BL elements’ series. It’s still running in Japan, and I think fans will be excited about this.” No word at this time about whether Viz might re-release the earlier volumes at any point. (June, 2012)

Jiu Jiu – From the pages of Hana to Yume, Jiu Jiu is the story of a girl who comes from a family of demon hunters and the two werewolves who protect her. This looks to be set in high school, which wasn’t what I expected when reading the initial setup. Sounds like fun! (July, 2012)

For details on all of Viz’s NYCC announcements, manga or otherwise, check out Brigid Alverson’s coverage at MTV Geek.

Now for the really big news…

Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha – Certainly one of the biggest manga revelations at the con, Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha is “a weekly serial anthology of some of the most popular manga series in the world: Bakuman｡, Bleach, Naruto, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, One Piece, and Toriko. The first issue of Weekly SJ Alpha goes on sale January 30, 2012, and will be available through VIZManga.com and the VIZ Manga apps for iPhone™, iPod™ touch and iPad™.” These chapters will be coming out just two weeks after publication in Japan. To catch fans up, Viz will be launching what they’re referring to as the “digital warp,” “a limited collection of digital graphic novel speed-ups that will bring North American readers up-to-date with Japanese releases.”

For more, read Deb Aoki’s in-depth interviews with VIZ Media Senior Vice President and General Manager Alvin Lu, Deputy Director of Shueisha’s Shonen Manga Group, Hisashi Sasaki, and VIZ Media’s Vice President of Digital Publishing, Brian Piech, at About.com.

Yen Press

In addition to a couple of new manga-style adaptations (Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunters: Infinity), Yen Press made a splash with these license announcements.

Alice in the Country of Hearts – In another valiant license rescue, Yen Press picks up this popular series, to be released in quick succession. From Yen’s official announcement: “Take heart, Alice fans! Yen Press will be releasing the COMPLETE Alice in the Country of Hearts series in June 2012 as three omnibus editions each collecting two volumes of the original series!”

Puella Magi Madoka Magica – “Madoka had always thought magic was the stuff of her dreams…until she encounters an unreal cat-being at her totally normal school! The cat offers her a choice — Will Madoka become a Puella Magi in exchange for her dearest desire?”

Until Death Do Us Part – “Haruka is a young girl with precognitive abilities that allow her to predict the future with incredible accuracy. Unfortunately, these powers have made her a target for greedy corporations. Haruka uses her power to seek the one who can offer her protection, singling out Mamoru Hijikata, a blind man whose inability to see belies his skill with a sword!”

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan – “This spin-off takes place in the world of the “Disappearance” arc of the Haruhi Suzumiya novels, focusing on the high school life (and romance!) of a tentative and bashful Yuki Nagato quite unlike the one you’ve come to know and love through the usual exploits of the SOS Brigade…but no less charming!”

Soul Eater Not – Though this Soul Eater side-story might seem like a no-brainer for Yen, the real meat of this announcement is in its distribution. Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Soul Eater Not will be serialized digitally in Yen Plus, but released simultaneously with chapters in Japan. Serialization begins in this month’s edition, and access is available worldwide.

Manga the Week of 10/26

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As is traditional with the last week of the month, we have a nice, reasonable, quiet week. Oh, if only they were all like this.

It is rather scary that Blade of the Immortal 1 came out in 1997, and here we are 14 years later getting Volume 24. But hey, that’s what happens when you are the very last manga series in the West to cease coming out in monthly floppies. This particular volume is entitled Massacre, and I’ve no doubt it will deliver on that. Speaking of old-school Dark Horse titles, they are almost caught up with their Oh My Goddess re-release unflipped. Volume 19 is out next week, and wraps up the Phantom Racer story, as well as giving us another plot with Skuld’s ‘robot girl’.

Kodansha put out 3 books this week, and this is Diamond Comics, so that must mean we have three books coming out next week. Hey, they’re getting closer! The second volume of Animal Land is out, which Dallas Middaugh praised highly at NYCC. There’s also a second volume of cyberpunk mystery Mardock Scramble. And for those who have been despairing, fear not! Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei has hit Volume 11. Now with 100% more body doubles.

So does anything please you? Or will you spend the week getting everything you put aside as it all came out the first week in October?