Unshelved

We’ve got some excellent links from Day One of this Manga Moveable Feast!

Aaron Kooienga tells us all why he’s so find of the magical girl genre, and also reviews the second volume of Codename: Sailor V.

Erica Friedman wrote a great article for Hooded Utilitarian a while back about why Sailor Moon was such a huge influence on North America.

Ed Sizemore found that he had issues with Usagi as a heroine in his review of Volume 1, but he was able to get behind Minako more. Ed also did a podcast about the series with Erica and Emily Snodrass.

Erin Jamison gives us a look at what lessons one can learn from Usagi Tsukino.

I’ve reviewed the first two volume of both Sailor Moon and Sailor V here, and I also discussed the character of Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter.

And that’s just Day 1! What will other days bring?

When I thought about what I wanted to write about for this month’s Sailor Moon MMF, I decided I wanted to get away from my two favorite senshi, Minako and Hotaru, mostly as I’ve discussed them to death. (You can argue I’ve done the same with Setsuna, but I reserve the right to come back to her later this week anyway.) So I started to wonder if there were senshi that I liked but hadn’t really delved into why I liked them in great detail. Makoto was the first that came to mind. Because really, she’s terrific.

Introduced at the end of the first re-released volume/halfway through the first season of the anime, Makoto pretty much makes an instant impression. She is 5’6″, which given she’s 14 and Japanese, is really significantly tall. She also has many of the features and clothes that a fan of Japanese shoujo manga would instantly associates with ‘yanki’, or a girl in a gang – she has ‘wavy’ hair (the manga goes to great pains to have her note that it’s naturally that way and not a perm), she wears a long skirted school uniform, a carryover from her old school, which one could easily hide weapons in (it’s noted she’s so tall the school can’t get her a new uniform right away – in fact, she doesn’t get one till high school). And of course she’s rumored to have been expelled from her old school for fighting. (Apparently Takeuchi’s original plan was for Makoto to actually *be* a yanki, but her editors told her to dial it back.)

Of course, we eventually find out that Makoto is quite feminine, and loves to cook and do gardening. The interesting thing about this, though, is that this is not followed by her explaining everything else is a misunderstanding. She does fight at school – she fights bullies picking on others. And even though she gets ostracized by her classmates for her scary appearance and tendency towards fights, she’s not going to stop doing this. This becomes even more obvious when she awakens to her role as a senshi, Sailor Jupiter. She takes her role of protecting her princess, Sailor Moon, very seriously, and does not hesitate to treat youma exactly the same way she would treat a bully. Makoto hates injustice as much as the rest of the senshi, and if she can use her height and strength to stop it, well, that’s fine.

I feel I should also mention something else – of the entire inner senshi, Makoto is the only one with no parents – or even parental figure – at all. Takeuchi actually gives us this information offhandedly in a comedic side-story – Makoto gets terrified when she hears an advertisement for an airline, and tells us her parents were killed in a plane crash. Now, Ami and Rei also have parental issues – Ami’s parents are separated, and Rei’s mother has died and she’s estranged from her father. But Ami does at least live with her mother, and Rei has her grandfather. Makoto, from what we can tell, lives alone. How she manages to swing this we’re never quite shown – one fan idea is that she’s given enough for an apartment and necessities from a distant family member – but certainly it does give another reason why she’s good at cooking.

And then there’s the old boyfriend. Now, the manga briefly touched on this in her debut, but the anime began to use it as a running gag. And then once fans got a hold of it and began using it in fanfics… let’s just say that if you ask Sailor Moon fans about Makoto, one thing they will always discuss is that “she always things every guy reminds her of her old boyfriend”. A constant source of humor, it also underscores the loneliness in Makoto’s life. From what we see, Makoto was devastated by the breakup (this is even more true in the anime – the manga downplays it somewhat by having her awaken to her destiny) and is having a lot of trouble getting over it. Sailor Moon is not a series short of girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but even among those Makoto stands out.

Again, among the Inners, Makoto has a tendency to be “the normal one”, who can play straight man when any of the others go insane. One can argue Ami also fills this function, but Ami is a “genius type”, whereas, height notwithstanding, Makoto is far more easy to identify with as “one of the girls”. We usually find Makoto talking Usagi and Rei down from a fight (anime only – manga Rei rarely gets that hotheaded) or trying to walk Minako and Usagi back from a harebrained scheme. But as a character, she’s just as notable. Showing female readers and viewers that you don’t have to be either a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘girly girl’, but can feel free to love aspects of both. Oh yes, and also feel free to take no guff from any bullies who might be picking on your friends. Makoto is a fantastic part of the core Sailor Moon cast.

And she’s ‘talented’, too. (Sorry, had to get that in there.)

In two days it will be my 2nd anniversary of manga blogging. Of course, I won’t post about it then, as I’ll be far too busy writing up and linking the new Manga Moveable Feast, which will be discussing Sailor Moon. But since my stack of books to review keeps getting higher, and Lord knows I’ll do anything to avoid doing things that are pressuring me (hi, stack of Viz books!), I thought I’d discuss what I thought of this year.

Overall, a mixed bag. (And I’m pretty sire that art is final, sadly.) Tokyopop had its faults as a company, God knows, but they also put out a pile of series I adored. Viz slowed to a crawl a number of series I follow, presumably for sales reasons. Kodansha’s reboot was great, and Sailor Moon is fantastic, but they give the impression of working with a very small staff, given the number of obvious proofreading errors that plague their books. And in general a lot of 2011 was watching the economy continue to contract, and seeing it affect everyone in the business.

But it certainly had its high points as well. JManga, even if it’s not what we hoped it would be, has introduced me to a number of stellar series. Viz also came out roaring with their digital platform, and are doing the speedup to (near) simultaneous release that folks clamored for. Yen Press and Kodansha also rolled out digital platforms. I admit that a lot of the digital manga arena seems to be ‘won’t you buy this proprietary device that you can only get our manga on?’, but I’m hoping 2012 will include more options for those of us who don’t own iPads.

Series I love ended in 2011! Fullmetal Alchemist, Eyeshield 21, Seiho Boys’ High School, Black Jack. New series I love began! Blue Exorcist, Oresama Teacher, The Drops of God. New reprints of Love Hina and Sailor Moon. And yes, some series were cancelled: Gintama. And, in non-manga high points, the big news of the year was Pogo *finally* coming out from Fantagraphics.

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2012. New series like Devil and Her Love Song, which promises to be awesome. Shonen Jump Alpha, even if it doesn’t have Medaka Box just yet. Vertical trying to change its image a bit from ‘they don’t publish mainstream’ by picking up GTO and Flowers of Evil. More from JManga, hopefully at a faster pace than the 1-per-week they settled into after their debut. Some great stuff from Yen, including the Durarara!! manga and Until Death Do Us Part. And, of course, Vol. 23 of Excel Saga. I’ll be there, shouting from the rooftops as always.

Any wishes for the new year? I wish that some of the mid-range publishers who were all giving stuff to Tokyopop got together and figured out what they’re going to do now. Hakusensha in particular is in trouble if their one venue is now “One Viz license per year”. Yes, I realize that they probably feel pretty burned by Stu Levy and reluctant to deal with North America right now, but still. I’d like to see some titles available digitally that are back catalog titles – such as Ranma, or Excel Saga, or Please Save My Earth – rather than just “new and popular”. I’d also be interested in companies doing some digital only – maybe that’s how we can see ‘tricky’ series such as Medaka Box or Sket Dance. Of course, I realize digital only is very unpopular with folks, but… And I’d like to see the economy turn around, and folks buy more manga, so that we can get even more licenses.

I’d ask for a pony, but I did discover Friendship Is Magic this year, so I am content with Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and the others for now. :D

Lastly, thanks to everyone who reads and comments at my blog for a great year. I particularly want to thank MJ, Kate, Michelle and David at Manga Bookshelf, both for asking me to join and for immediately welcoming me. It’s been a rough December for our group, as you are no doubt aware, but I hope that 2012 finds joy and happiness all round, for both the Manga Bookshelf team and its readers.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hi there.

A difficult year has ended on a low note with the not unexpected but still very difficult passing of my father.

I’m going to give myself some time off, and I’ll see you all in 2012, which I’m hoping will be an improvement on 2011.

Thanks.

 

It has to be said, many of the complete concerts we’ve seen since Frank’s death 18 years ago would not have been released were he alive. Frank was very fond of cutting, fixing, overdubbing, and replacing, and generally rarely liked complete performances enough to put them out on record. Since his death, however, we’ve seen several complete concerts from the folks handling the Zappa family trust, with concerts from Australia in 1976; Philadelphia in 1976 and Buffalo in 1980, as well as a collection from several concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978.

This particular concert, though, is unique for many reasons. It’s Frank’s only appearance at the esteemed Carnegie Hall. Apparently the venue was tricked by a promoter into thinking that Frank was performing with an orchestra, which he had previously done in 1970. Instead, Frank was touring with the ‘Flo & Eddie’ version of the Mothers of Invention, and things were definitely more in a rock and roll-oriented comedy group vein. We get both the early and the late show at Carnegie, something that is possible mostly as Frank’s setlists are not as long as they would later get. It’s in mono – probably a reason Frank never saw fit to release it, as stereo was the norm for most everything by 1971. It also, uniquely for a Zappa record, features the opening act – acappella doo-wop group The Persuasions, whose first album was released on Zappa’s record label.

The makers of this CD set apologized for the less than stellar sound, and this is most apparent during the Persuasions set, which is more muffled than the main set. It’s quite listenable, though, and it’s always a pleasure to hear acappella groups. They take a tour through several old 50s and 60s classics, including many obscure records as well as some hits still beloved today, such as Tears on My Pillow and The Great Pretender. Their set runs about 25 minutes long, and features 3 ‘medleys’, the second and third of which produce acappella versions of more modern hits such as the Temptations’ Cloud Nine and Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend.

It’s then time for the early show for Zappa’s Mothers. As I noted, this band featured former Turtles Flo & Eddie, aka Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, on vocals and entertaining skits. Frank wrote his compositions to suit his bands, and the Flo & Eddie period was filled with lots of falsetto vocals, tales of groupies and sordid sexual situations – it was 1971, after all, where the Summer of Love was turning into the Autumn of Casual Sex. Also in the band were fellow ex-Turtle Jim Pons on bass guitar and bass vocals; Aynsley Dunbar, who would later go on to be a founding member of Journey, on drums and British sex appeal; Ian Underwood (the ‘straight’ member of the group) on alto sax and keyboards; and Don Preston on synthesizers and gong. Ian and Don were in the early 1960s Mothers; the others were unique to this band.

The first show begins, as most of this band’s shows did, with the 1967 album track Call Any Vegetable. This was one of the more straight-ahead rock numbers the band performed, and allowed Flo & Eddie to sing the ridiculous lyrics while Frank got to perform a smoking guitar solo. The second half of the song varied from venue to venue, as Frank would improvise a monologue about what to say to a vegetable; these usually revolved around the city or country they were playing in, and this was no exception. It wraps up with a quick reprise, then segues (with another NYC-based improvised monologue, this one by Howard Kaylan) into an even earlier song, the Freak Out classic Anyway The Wind Blows. This starts off similar to the album, but as we near the end, it gains speed and volume.

The next song is probably the one reason that I would recommend you buy this album only after you’re already familiar with Frank’s work. It’s well known that Frank Zappa wrote songs many people consider offensive; in fact, I have a few I consider offensive myself. Indeed, later in the show we’ll see songs about a groupie preparing to get laid, and in the 2nd show we’ll see God’s girlfriend beg a pig to screw her, and a young yuppie executive coat his thighs with syrup to that flies can surround them and lift him into the air.

Magdalena, though, is special even by these standards. It’s a song about a father and daughter living in Montreal, and the father realizing that his daughter is now grown up, and that he’s attracted to her. Now, to be fair, this is viewed in the lyrics as sick and wrong, and Magdalena herself rejects his advances and stomps off. However, the majority of the song is sung from the POV of the father, so you get lots of exhortations for his daughter to see reason and return to him. Naturally, as with many of Frank’s most offensive songs, the song itself is very catchy and you find yourself wanting to sing along, almost despite yourself. And this is also another song with an improvised monologue, as Howard once again uses the NYC area to try to seduce poor Magdalena.

After this, we’re back in safer territory, with a straight on performance of the Uncle Meat classic Dog Breath, which (as with almost all Flo & Eddie version of old Zappa songs) is more of a rocker now. This ends the first disc, but the show continues on CD2 with Peaches En Regalia, an instrumental and one of Frank’s most well-known songs. It segues right into Tears Began To Fall, the band’s current ‘hit single’ (that was not a hit), which is a standard love song about the lack of love. We then get ‘Shove It Right In’, a collection of three tunes from the 200 Motels movie. This is the groupie song I mentioned earlier, and is about a young girl putting on makeup, clothes, deodorant, etc. in order to go out and make herself attractive for the band members who are playing that evening. In the movie, it’s separated by instrumental orchestration, so never really gets going. Here, it’s just the songs themselves, and it becomes a raging beast.

After this it’s time for one of the band’s finest – King Kong. Frank played this instrumental piece for almost his entire career. It was in some of his earliest known performances in the 1960s, and it features prominently on the final tour in 1988. This is where the other type of Zappa fan, more in love with the music and soloing than the vocal shenanigans, sits up and gets excited. After the main theme, Don Preston gets to solo on his keyboard synthesizers. It’s worth noting that synths in 1971 were still fairly new and surprising, and that hearing what Don is doing with them must have been startling. Don enjoyed starting from a drone and building up swathes of noise, rather than playing straight ahead melodies. We then get Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, and Frank himself, all playing long and involved solos that extend the piece to just over half an hour. (Flo & Eddie, being vocalists only this tour, did not get a chance to solo. And Jim Pons either did not want to or was not asked to solo in any of their shows.)

We wrap the main set up with a piece first seen in the 200 Motels movie as part of the ending to ‘Strictly Genteel’. Frank separated it from the classical portion of the song and took it on tour with just the rock band finale, which he called, appropriately enough, 200 Motels Finale. It’s a great way to end a show, with the band telling everyone that they’re all exhausted and that after the show they’re all going out to get wasted. Before they do that, however, they need to come back for an encore. This is one of the big treats of this whole release: we finally have a nice version of the Flo & Eddie rewrite of Who Are The Brain Police?, Frank’s scary Freak Out classic. He noted at several other shows that he rewrote it to ‘make it sound like Canned Heat’, and it is fantastic, with a long and energetic Zappa guitar solo, and a strange vocal coda that will give you the shivers. And thus ends the early show.

The late show starts with Frank once again making fun of the fact that they actually managed to get booked at Carnegie Hall, before starting into one of their two big ‘skit’ sings from the Fall 1971 tour. The piece as a whole is called Divan, and most of it has been heard on official releases, but not as one piece. It’s the story of a fat maroon sofa which sits in the middle of a vast emptiness. The Lord sees this sofa and demands some flooring be put underneath it. The band then plays Sofa, as heard on the One Size Fits All album, complete with the lyrics in German. (Frank explains that much of this song is in German as that’s the way the Lord talks whenever it’s heavy business.) We then go back to Frank’s monologue about the Lord, who by now has brought along his short girlfriend… and Squat the Magic Pig. (Yes, when I called the band a rock-oriented comedy group, I was not kidding.) They then move into a big surprise for casual Zappa fans – the song Stick It Out, which would not be officially released by Frank until the Joe’s Garage album in 1979. It works better here, where the girlfriend screaming at the pig to screw her in German is contextualized within the sketch better than Joe and his roto-plooker. And yes, I do think that a girl demanding a pig screw her in German while the Lord films it with his home movie camera is less offensive than Magdalena, if only due to its sheer ludicrousness.

Divan ends with a piece we’ve heard before with that title on the Playground Psychotics album, which is vocal-oriented, quieter, and also in German and English. By the way, don’t actually try to learn German from this song. Then we hear another of Frank’s most beloved instrumentals, which also appeared from his first few concerts to his last, Pound for a Brown. For this tour, it wasn’t the giant solo vehicle that it could be on other tours, but a straightforward vehicle for Frank to play a guitar solo. As with all Pound performances until 1975, it then segues into another piece from Uncle Meat, Sleeping In A Jar – though this version is an instrumental. After this, we get a three-song medley of pieces that all lead into one another. Wonderful Wino was written for former Mothers bass player Jeff Simmons, and now that Jeff is gone Flo & Eddie share vocal duties. It’s, well, about a wino. Sharleena is another love song where the singers exhort the heroine to return to their loving arms. And Cruising For Burgers is pure 50s nostalgia, though as always with Frank’s nostalgia there’s a bit of wry tongue in cheek there as well.

Next comes, for me, the highlight of the entire release. In the spring of 1971, Frank wrote a huge musical comedy number titled Billy The Mountain. The story involved a California mountain getting a royalty check for all the postcards he’s posed for over the years. Deciding to use the money to take a vacation, he and his wife Ethel (who is a tree growing off his shoulder) head off to New York City, stopping along the way in Las Vegas and other touristy attractions. This naturally causes untold destruction, as Billy is a MOUNTAIN. Things get even worse when Billy is drafted, and refuses to report for his induction physical. The government decides to send a superhero to stop him – Studebaker Hoch, whose voice may not match up to his image but who is plenty badass in his own right.

As you can imagine, this plot takes a while to sing. Especially as, as with many songs in the first show, Frank, Flo & Eddie take the time to localize the song for its audience – so we get a news reporter from WNEW telling us about Ethel’s communist tendencies. It first appeared on Just Another Band from L.A. – edited, with the solos and a few of the more litigious parts removed. (Halfway through the tour, Frank and company changed the name of “George Putnam, the right-wing fascist creepo newscaster” to George Pontoon, possibly as the real Putnam might get upset. Given they stated “And it is this reporter’s opinion” – a Putnam trademark – it wasn’t hard to figure out anyway.) On Playground Psychotics, we got a half-hour version that left in the solos, but was also lacking many of the extended improvisations from later in the tour. This is the latest version we have officially released, and it’s by far the longest – over 45 minutes! There’s 13 minutes of solos, and we also have the full uncut production itself, including the ‘Tibetan Memory Trick’ which Flo & Eddie inserted into each Billy the Mountain from about this time onwards.

A brief interlude, as some may not be aware of the awesome Tibetan Memory Trick:
One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four Limerick oysters
Five corpulent porpoises
Six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who haul stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery of the quarry, all at the same time.

As you can imagine, it was fun to hear in concert, delivered at an extremely fast pace. We then get the end of the piece. Studebaker Hoch has come to reason with Billy by going into a phone booth and getting the flies within to take him to New York by the method I mentioned above. Once there, he foolishly threatens Billy, who just laughs. And when a mountain laughs, you’re in trouble. Studebaker is knocked 200 feet into the rubble below. Billy The Mountain is almost a time capsule of a song, being so 1971 it hurts. It’s filled with puns (Studebaker Hawk, anyone?), and though a lot of it isn’t as funny as the band seem to think it is, it’s carried along by pure mood. A joy to hear. The solos are once again by Don, Ian, Aynsley and Frank, though Frank’s is quite short. (His guitar is low in the mix for both concerts, which may be why his efforts weren’t as long as usual.)

This is the end of the main set, and it’s after midnight. Frank comes out and tells the crowd that he’d have to pay $600 extra before they’d let him play an encore. The crowd is clearly upset, but Frank is setting them up. “So I said of COURSE I’d pay an extra six hundred to play for you!” Frank spends a couple more minutes mocking the inflexible union rules that lead to such arrangements, and then gives us The Mud Shark. This was originally part of the extended “Groupie Opera” piece performed by this band, much of which can be heard on the album Fillmore East – June 1971. They’d mostly dropped this by now in favor of the new, equally long Divan. Audiences loved the Mud Shark, which was the story of a band (most folks know it as Led Zeppelin, but Frank always told it as being Vanilla Fudge) who stayed at a hotel in Seattle where you could fish out of your hotel room. There they caught a Mud Shark (aka dogfish) and proceeded to use it on a young groupie. We don’t really get into the sordid part of the story, however, because the “Mud Shark Dance” (which mostly involves pretending to swim like a fish) gets extended out more and more. This version is thirteen and a half minutes long, and includes the band trying to get the audience to leave the hall and Mud Shark their way down Broadway. The last 7 minutes or so are pure groove, and makes you want to see what it must have been like visually.

There are a few moments during the concert where the sound quality gets degraded, likely as they were changing reels. However, for the most part this sounds excellent, even in mono. Fons of drumming in particular will enjoy Aynsley Dunbar being right up front in the mix, and his skills are quite underrated compared to later, more famous Zappa drummers such as Terry Bozzio or Vince Colaiuta. There’s also a booklet with details of the shows and some liner notes by Zappa fan Al Malkin and Gail Zappa. There’s also a few photos of the band, though oddly Don Preston does not get an individual photo. It’s possible he refused permission or that the ZFT removed him – they don’t get along at all these days – but given he is in the group shots, we must resort to speculation.

If you’re a casual Zappa fan and have never heard Flo & Eddie before, you might want to start with Chunga’s Revenge and work your way in slower. For those who want more, though, these two sets are a great example of this particular band hitting on all cylinders. Carnegie Hall never knew what hit it. Sadly, two months from this date, Frank would be playing in London when a crazed fan pushed him off the stage and into the orchestra pit. He had several fractures and a crushed larynx, and the band went its separate ways while he recovered. The Flo & Eddie Mothers can be an acquired taste – Frank made fun of his own band in 200 Motels, having the band complain about “only playing comedy music”. Many Zappa fans agree with the band. Still, I’m very happy to hear any new Zappa, and this one in particular is a stellar release, warts and all.

Every once in a while, I take a look at the various shonen magazines out there and see what is already licensed, likely to be licensed, and highly unlikely to be licensed. The shonen market can be vicious, and now that Kodansha is mostly back to normal over here, and Viz is where it’s always been, I want to take a look at their two magazines and see where we are today, and where we could be in the future.

(Look, I apologize to Shonen Sunday fans, but… no. It’s a mug’s game. Viz will probably license Silver Spoon when it get enough volumes. That’s all I got. I wish it sold better.)

I’ll start with Magazine, which has a slightly broader variety of content, though it also panders more towards the older teen/younger man who likes breasts and panties more than Jump does. (Arguably Jump panders more to the yaoi fangirl lately as well, but that’s a highly controversial topic, and it’s easy to see their core titles as still all being for young teen boys.)

Magazine’s final issue of 2011 (pictured above) has 24 stories in it. Five of those are licensed in some way or another: Air Gear, Negima, Fairy Tail, Bloody Monday (the current series is the ‘Final (3rd) Season’, Kodansha has licensed the first so far), and Cage of Eden. Another series which is on break this issue is also licensed: Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. And a 7th series was licensed by Del Rey but is currently in that limbo state of “It’s not cancelled, we’re just never releasing any more of it”: Code:Breaker. Lastly, Vertical has licensed the recently finished Onizuka manga, GTO: Shonan 14 Days.

That leaves a lot of stuff in the current magazine that’s never hit North American shores. (And yes, there are other options as well: popular series now finished but still unlicensed, like Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, and other ‘licensed by Del Rey but probably cancelled’ old series such as Suzuka and School Rumble. But I’m looking at the current magazine.)

First, there are the brand new, just started series that are too new to get a handle on. These include Star Children, which debuts in this issue, and seems to be about an astronaut school. Tanteiken Sherdock is about the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes as a cute small dog, and is from the author of cult favorite Psychometrer Eiji. Lastly, there’s Dragon Collection: Ryuu o Suberumono, which is apparently based on a video game, and honestly might have the best chance to get picked up of this whole lot, especially if Deltora Quest does well.

Then there are the gag manga, most of which never get licensed over here as the humor frequently never translates well, is very ‘Osaka-style’, and has art styles that are best described as stylized (i.e., they are unpretty). Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei is an exception to this, but then it also has more pages and more of a plot than most gag manga. (Well, pseudo-plot.) Zeus no Tane, Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san, and Mou, Shimasen Kara have very little chance of making it to these shores. There’s also Seitokai Yakuindomo, which has an anime to its name. However, it has another major killer: it’s an entire manga about sex jokes. If you like seeing young high school girls make jokes about their hymens and the male lead’s penis every single page, then it’s perfect for you. Otherwise, I’m fairly sure Kodansha is happy to leave it as a Japanese phenomenon.

There are also a large number of sports manga, many of which have multiple volumes, and almost all of which are unlikely to appear here. Daiya no A (baseball), Ahiru no Sora (basketball), Area no Kishi (soccer), and Baby Steps (tennis). I’ll also throw Gamaran in here, which is in the Edo period, but still is unlikely to be licensed as it’s a martial arts manga with fighting on almost every page. Lastly, we have Hajime no Ippo, which deserves special mention as it’s not only a boxing manga but also has so many volumes that Dallas Middaugh would have a heart attack just trying to schedule it.

Now we have the rest of the magazine. A-Bout is a delinquents series, and I’ve discussed the popularity of these in Japan as opposed to America before. Kimi to Iru Machi is a romantic comedy from the author of Suzuka. If Suzuka didn’t sell here (and they tried – it had fancy oversize volumes and everything) why try something by the same artist? AKB49 – Renai Kinshi Jourei is the sort of thing that might get licensed if it were shoujo (it’s about celebrity singers, it features a guy cross-dressing as a girl, etc.) – but it’s not shoujo. It’s also a tie-in to real life idol singers, and thus might be too ‘Japan-specific’. There is GE – Good Ending, another romantic comedy/drama. Shonen romantic comedies don’t sell anymore, as their fans tend to read them online and them complain about each chapter being the ‘last one they’ll ever read’ a lot. This one also apparently has one of those casts that makes you want to kill everyone in it with fire. Lastly, we have Tobaku Haouden Rei: Gyankihen. First off, gambling is a uniquely popular Japanese shonen genre that really hasn’t taken off here. Second, it has Pointy Chin Syndrome, and its faces are simply too ‘interesting’ to be licensed. Third, it’s a sequel.

So, really, I think we’re good with Magazine titles for the moment. Kodansha and Vertical might agree with me, seeing as their new licenses came from the Magazine spinoffs instead.

Jump this week has twenty-one series in it, eight of which have been licensed: One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Bakuman, Toriko, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Reborn!, and Hunter x Hunter. There’s also Gintama, which is still running in Japan but has been cancelled here. (Of note: Bleach has been incredibly unpopular in Japan recently. After the end of the ‘Aizen’ arc, it plummeted to the bottom of Jump’s TOC (which is partly based on a reader poll), and with one or two exceptions has remained there since. I doubt it will be cancelled anytime soon, however.)

Again, let’s start by removing the gag manga. This includes Genson! Kodai Seibutsushi Pakki, which involves dinosaurs, and is fairly new; and Inamaru Dashi, which is about kindergartners and I imagine loaded with hard-to-translate jokes.

We can also remove the very recent series, which we don’t know enough about to see how they’ll do. Nise Koi, a romantic comedy about two high school kids who are from rival yakuza families and forced to date. Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa is a rather strange title about a magic mirror, but is essentially another romantic comedy. And Kurogane is a kendo manga, which is one strike against it, and is also named Kurogane. Do we really need another manga called Kurogane on these shores?

In its own separate level of licensing hell is Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo, aka Kochikame. It’s 176 volumes, and is a comedy about a doofus cop and his wacky misadventures. I’ve talked about it before. Maybe – MAYBE – If Shueisha forces Viz to release some sort of best-of, a la Oishinbo. Otherwise forget it.

What’s left? More series I’ve discussed before, and also talked about how they aren’t very licensable before. Sket Dance, about a group of high school kids who form a club devoted to odd jobs, is too similar to the recently cancelled Gintama. (The two series even crossed over recently in Japan, with Gin noting the similarities.) Beelzebub is highly promising, with lots of fights, several supernatural demons, and the son of Satan. Sadly, the son of Satan is a naked infant, and we see his naked infant penis a lot. A whole lot. If it was licensed, it would be Dr. Slump times twelve, and fans would have a complete freakout. Kuroku no Basket is a basketball manga, and while interesting, wouldn’t be licensed till Viz finishes Slam Dunk anyway. And Medaka Box I’ve given its own page in the past, and despite now having an upcoming anime produced by Gainax, I still think it has the same issues with being licensed. It’s now the most promising of that category, though.

The other promising unlicensed title here is Magico, a fantasy about a girl with sealed memories who has the potential for world-destroying dark magic, and the sorcerer who protects her from the entire world trying to kill her. It’s fairly new, and has sunk to the bottom of the magazine, but if it survives it seems very promising. And last in the magazine is ST&RS, another manga about an astronaut academy (which predates the one in Magazine), which is very likely to be cancelled soon. If you want an astronaut manga, either read Twin Spica or read Uchu Kyodai from Kodansha’s Weekly Morning.

So what have we learned here? That I would not want to be the sort of person who makes licensing decisions, as I tend to be very cynical. Also, there’s a lot of interesting unlicensed stuff out there regardless. Don’t take my talking about these series being hopeless cases for licenses meaning I think they’re bad. Some are excellent, some are guilty pleasures, and some are just fun. Which of them would you license if you suddenly had a publishing company, permission from Japan and a huge amount of money? (I’m sure that day will come soon for all of us…)

Seven Seas has actually had a bunch of new stuff they’ve announced lately. I missed the first few due to being at NYCC when they announced it (they were not at NYCC themselves, being a very West Coast group). They also solicited some titles on Amazon which could be seen before the official announcement, but which I wasn’t able to mention till now as they sort of want blogger/press types to not do that (shut up, I deleted that tweet). So, what’s new from Seven Seas besides no new Hayate x Blade?

First off, on the heels of Yen Press license rescuing Alice in the Country of Hearts, we see that Seven Seas has picked up one of its sequels, Clover no Kuni no Alice – Bloody Twins (or Alice in the Country of Clover), which ran for one volume in Ichijinsha’s fantasy shoujo magazine Comic Zero-Sum. The Bloody Twins tag is to keep it separate from the manga other one-volume Alice in the Country of Clover spinoffs, also from Ichijinsha, which I suspect might follow if this does well.

With the demise of CMX, it looked as if Softbank Creative’s Flex titles were dead as well… until now! Angel Para Bellum will be coming out next year. Its license should be no surprise, as the artist also draws Dance in the Vampire Bund, one of Seven Seas’ big successes. It’s a fantasy about angels and demons, and should broadly appeal to the same audience as Bund’s.

This next one is very pleasant to hear about for those of us who want more titles from the late Media Factory’s Comic Flapper and fewer from their sleazier yet more popular Comic Alive. Christie: High Tension will be emerging as ‘Young Miss Holmes’ from Seven Seas, in the increasingly popular omnibus format. (My baseless speculation is that this allows them to get the titles out faster in case they do poorly, thus leading to fewer cancellations and less annoying of Japanese publishers for said cancellations. Also, omnibuses DO seem to sell a bit better.) Christie is about Sherlock Holmes’ niece (so the title change works fine), who like her uncle uses her logical brain to solve mysteries. Like Case Closed but which Shinichi was a cute blonde girl? Try this. The series is 7 volumes in Japan, and also has a spinoff. The author is best known over here for the Area 88 manga Viz adapted and then cancelled back in the floppy days.

I’ve discussed Girl Friends before, back when JManga put the first volume online. Now Seven Seas has licensed all five volumes from Futabasha (it ran in Comic High!), and will be putting them out a year from now in 2 big omnibus volumes. (Where this leaves JManga, I’ve no idea. Publishers have spoken before about being reluctant to give JManga their digital content which they can market themselves.) This is a cute series about a shy high school girl who becomes friends with a more outgoing type… then realizes that she’s feeling more than just friendship. It’s always nice to see more yuri series here in North America, and this one’s pretty light and fluffy as opposed to ‘everyone ends up dead or married to men’ like old-school yuri. Now, will yuri manga fans actually purchase it? Good question…

And I should talk about I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! (Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nai n da kara ne!!), which is another Futabasha title, from its spinoff Web Comic High! magazine. It too will be coming out in omnibus format, and follows the adventures of a girl who is madly in love with her brother, but then discovers… (wait for it…) that they may not be related after all! But she also has to deal with the other girls vying for her brother’s affection! And it has that cover, as seen above. If you read Sankaku Complex without shuddering in self-loathing, then you’ll love this title. As with Girl Friends, I will believe its intended audience actually buys things with real money (as opposed to downloading them for free) when I see it.

Great job by Seven Seas in picking these up. I hope they do well.