Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Azuki

The Manga Review, 11/4/22

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This week’s biggest news story: Kadokawa has purchased Anime News Network. On November 1st, publisher Christopher MacDonald posted an open letter to ANN’s readership to reassure them that the site’s “editorial independence is contractually guaranteed,” and explain that the biggest changes would be in the site itself, not the content. “KWE will be investing significantly in ANN’s software development,” he noted. “A number of new projects will be launched, and a number of projects that have been stuck in development for way too long will be prioritized.” As expected, reader reactions were mixed, with some posting congratulations, and others voicing skepticism about having a major Japanese publisher as a corporate parent. “Yeah, gonna be tough to trust reviews for Kadokawa stuff now,” opined user Albion Hero. “You can say all you want about ‘we will keep our independence’ but its [sic] been long proven that companies that own sites and magazines don’t like those reviews to be critical of their products… Seen this same song and dance plenty of times in gaming media. All the staff say how good their new corporate overlords are, and how they will keep their independence and all. Then 2 years later all the staff is gone and the site no longer has their original integrity.” They concluded: “Would love to be proven wrong but I’ve seen this story too many times.”

NEWS AND VIEWS

Earlier this week, Seven Seas unveiled a fresh crop of licenses, among them Homonculus, a horror series from the creator of Ichi the Killer; Soara and the House of Monsters, a fantasy manga; and Cat on the Hero’s Lap, a comedy about a warrior whose efforts to save his homeland from destruction are thwarted by a cute cat. [Seven Seas]

In other licensing news, Azuki announced two new acquisitions: BLITZ, a sports manga set in the world of competitive chess, and Zombie Makeout Club, a horror manga about–you guessed it–a teenage zombie. [Azuki]

The October 2022 NPD Bookscan numbers are in, and once again Spy x Family, My Hero Academia, and Chainsaw Man dominated the Top 20 Adult Graphic Novels chart. [ICv2]

Bill Curtis posts a complete list of manga and light novels scheduled for a November 2022 release. [Yatta Tachi]

If you’re an avid sports manga enthusiast, you’ll want to check out the newly launched Sports Baka substack, where you’ll find essays on Hajime no Ippo, Dive!!, Days, Ryman’s Club and more. [Sports Baka]

The Manga Mavericks dedicate their latest episode to Red Sprite, a Shonen Jump title from 2019. [Manga Mavericks]

On the latest episode of Shojo & Tell, Ashley and Asher critique Skull-Faced Bookseller Honda-san. [Shojo & Tell]

Walt Richardson and Emily Myers dissect the October 2022 issue of Shonen Jump. [Multiversity Manga Club]

In keeping with the Halloween spirit, Gee and Ray explore the highs and lows of Junji Ito‘s extensive catalog. [Read Right to Left]

Parents, teachers, and librarians interested in learning more about yokai manga will find Brigid Alverson’s latest article for the School Library Journal a helpful resource; not only does she delve into the history of the genre, she also compiles a list of age-appropriate titles for kids, tweens, and teens. [School Library Journal]

Over at TCJ, Ritesh Babu and Ari Gardner interview Juan Albarran, a Spanish artist who’s currently working with Shoji Fujimoto on Matagi Gunner, a seinen action series about “an elderly rural hunter who proves unexpectedly skilled at video game first-person shooters, and soon becomes embroiled in the colorful world of e-gaming.” [The Comics Journal]

Max explains how BL manga such as Go For It, Nakamura! offered him an alternative model of masculinity. “I could be kind, thoughtful, and cute like the boys in BL anime and manga,” he notes. “Maybe some people wouldn’t understand, but I’d always have BL to reassure me that there was nothing wrong with me, and that it was okay to be myself.” [Anime Feminist]

REVIEWS

It’s a measure of how mainstream Hayao Miyazaki’s work has become that both the New York Times and the New Yorker commissioned reviews of Shuna’s Journey, available in English for the first time this month. Writing for the Times, Susan Napier declares Shuna’s Journey “eerie, enchanting, and surpassingly strange,” while Sam Thielman observes that “Shuna’s Journey moves and surprises because of the reader’s disorientation at being dropped into a world that is both generously detailed and miserly with explanations.”

New and Noteworthy

Complete and Ongoing Series

The Manga Review, 8/19/22

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Attention manga shoppers! Kodansha is currently holding a blow-out sale on digital manga. And when I say “blow out,” I mean it: they’re offering deep discounts on over 3,000 titles, with first volumes priced as low as 99 cents, and later volumes discounted 50%. It’s a great opportunity to try a buzz-worthy series such as Blue Period, Boys Run the Riot, Knight of the Ice, PTSD Radio, or Witch Hat Atelier; to catch up on long-running favorites; or to check out classic titles such as Black Jack and Princess Knight. Don’t wait, though; the sale ends on Monday, August 22nd.

MANGA NEWS

The July NPD Bookscan Numbers are in, with My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, and Kaiju No. 8 topping the list. Also making a strong showing on this month’s bestseller list are Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Chainsaw Man. [ICv2]

Have you completed this month’s Seven Seas Reader Survey? If not, don’t miss your opportunity to make licensing requests and give feedback on new and upcoming releases. [Seven Seas]

Coming soon to the Azuki platform: Red Riding Hood’s Apprentice: Final Testament to the Moon (Glacier Bay Books) and Doomsday Cleaning (Star Fruit Books). [Azuki]

Job alert: VIZ Media is currently looking for a Copy Editor. [VIZ Media]

Help Erica Friedman celebrate the 20th anniversary of Okazu by participating in a treasure hunt! The winner will receive a t-shirt of their choice from the Yuricon store. [Okazu]

And speaking of Erica Friedman, she and Rica Takashima (Rica ‘tte Kanji?!) will both be guests at Flame Con this weekend. [Anime News Network]

Blood on the Tracks, Blue Period, and Cat + Gamer are among the titles competing for Best Manga at this year’s Harvey Awards. Also making the cut are Chainsaw Man, Red Flowers, and Spy x Family. [ICv2]

Cartoon Crossroad Columbus (CXC) announced that manga scholar Frederik L. Schodt will be the recipient of the second annual Tom Spurgeon Award, which “honors those who have made substantial contributions to the field of comics, but are not primarily cartoonists.” Schodt is author of three books: Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983), Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga (1996), and The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution (2007). In addition, he has translated a number of manga into English, including Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy and Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga. [CXC 2022]

FEATURES, PODCASTS AND INTERVIEWS

If you’re a parent, teacher, or librarian in search of STEM-friendly comics, look no further than this helpful list compiled by the experts at No Flying No Tights. [No Flying No Tights]

Brigid Alverson posts a brief but thoughtful tribute to illustrator Sho Murase, who passed away earlier this month. [ICv2]

It’s Witch Week at Mangasplaining! Join the crew for lively discussions of Witch Hat Atelier, Witchcraft Works, and Witches, then stay for the bonus discussions of Fuyumi Soryo’s MARS and Yayoi Ogawa’s You’re My Pet (originally published in English as Tramps Like Us). [Mangasplaining]

The latest Manga Machinations podcast focuses on Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou as well as two manga/Marvel crossovers: Wolverine: SNIKT! and Secret Reverse. [Manga Machinations]

What did David and Jordan think of Monster Hunter Orage? Tune in to the latest Shonen Flop episode for their thoughts on Hiro Mashima’s other battle manga. [Shonen Flop]

ICYMI: Ashley and Loyola Rankin dissect the first eight volumes of Love*Com (Lovely Complex). [Shojo & Tell]

In honor of Sailor Moon‘s thirtieth anniversary, Christopher Chiu-Tabet revisits the first eight issues of Codename: Sailor V. [Multiversity Comics]

Jocelyne Allen flips through the pages of Keiko Takemiya’s Kokuhaku. “The takeaway for this volume… is pure vibes,” she notes. “The seven stories in the  collection technically have plots, but these tales are mostly about the feels. Because the stories themselves inspire questions like ‘how?’ and ‘why is this happening?’, and the smaller details of what is going on aren’t really relevant. Takemiya is using science fiction to dig deep into psyches and emotions and relationships because this is shojo before it’s SF, and shojo demands feels.” Someone license this, please! [Brain vs. Book]

Elias Rosner interviews Ryan Holmberg about translating Yamada Murasaki’s Talk to My Back. [Multiversity Comics]

Over at TCJ, John Holt and Chikuma Teppei  translate Natsume Fusanosuke’s essay “The Transgenerational Manga Sazae-san and Its Meaning.” In their preface, Holt and Teppei attribute the enduring cultural appeal of Hasegawa Machiko’s series to its long-running anime adaptation. “Like The Simpsons, the animated Sazae-san has been a fixture of Japanese television for decades,” they observe, “but unlike Matt Groening’s creation, Sazae-san has been a wholesome staple of family life, still operating by the terms of 1950s and 1960s culture in new episodes today. Therefore, although it lacks a Simpsons-level criticality, Sazae-san is still a mirror of society. As Natsume argues, the manga and anime create a kind of touchstone to what was good about Japan in the late 20th century. In this way, Sazae-san not only entertains, but also it curates a way of life that may be now remote or even alien to the lived experience of contemporary viewers in Japan.” [The Comics Journal]

REVIEWS

Scott Cederlund reflects on the radical empathy of Gengoroh Tagame’s Our Colors, while Eric Alex Cline explains why he won’t be picking up volume two of Rooster Fighter. “Whether one finds the series worth following will largely depend on if they share its ridiculous sense of humor, and if they’re willing to overlook incredibly blatant bigotry in character design,” Cline observes. “The major con is that some of the monster designs are lackluster, and the last one in particular tanks the fun vibes with a sudden veer into blatant transphobia.” You’ll also find new capsule reviews at Women Write About Comics, where Masha Zhdanova looks at three new VIZ titles, and right here at Manga Bookshelf, where Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith, and I tackle Rooster Fighter, Shadow House, and Wandance.

New and Noteworthy

Ongoing and Complete Series

The Manga Review, 7/15/22

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Do you know about Azuki? This year-old company is working hard to make it easy for you to read your favorite manga on a phone, tablet, or laptop. Founded by a quartet of manga enthusiasts, Azuki currently offers a variety of titles from Kodansha as well as smaller publishers such as Glacier Bay Books, Kaiten Books, Star Fruit Books, and SOZO Comics. Best of all, it’s free to get started; all you need is a little patience with pop-up advertisements. Folks who want ad-free, unlimited access to Azuki’s growing library can sign up for a monthly membership that costs about the same as a grande Frappucino.

Wondering what to read? I highly recommend Pop Life, a short series about two single mothers who create their own blended family. In a 2020 review, Morgana Santilli praised Pop Life for being a “gentle, down-to-earth manga, happy and meandering. It takes women thrown into a difficult situation, one that is likely a blow to their self-confidence and ideas of self-sufficiency, and proves that they can overcome hardship by helping each other.” For younger readers, Hikaru in the Light! is great choice, offering tweens a first-hand look at what it takes to become an idol. The series is refreshingly honest about how cutthroat the music industry is, and how much hard, unglamorous work goes into being a popular entertainer. Hikaru is a little too tame for the 13+ set—how ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm when they’ve read Hot Gimmick?—but for kids in grades 5-7, it’s just right. (Special thanks to Azuki for sending me a review copy!)

NEWS

Love Hina creator Ken Akamatsu will be joining Japan’s House of Councillors (the upper chamber of the Japanese Diet) this summer. Akamatsu has been an outspoken critic of proposed changes to Japanese copyright law, as well as a critic of various anti-pornography measures. [Anime News Network]

ICv2 just published its quarterly list of the Top Manga Franchises. Not surprisingly, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, and Spy x Family made the cut, as did perennial favorites Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. [ICv2]

At its Anime Expo panel, Yen Press unveiled an extensive list of new acquisitions including Your Forma, Kakifly, Honey Lemon Soda, and Doomsday with My Dog. [Yen Press]

In other licensing news, Azuki announced that it would be adding three new titles to its catalog: Turning the Tables on the Seatmate Killer!, a romantic comedy; My Dear Detective: Mitsuko’s Case Files, a Taisho-era mystery; and Invisible Parade, a short-story collection by MISSISSIPPI. [Azuki]

Jennifer De Guzman offers an in-depth look at Tuttle Publishing’s efforts to bring Filipino komiks to American readers. Over the next four months, Tuttle will publish seven graphic novels by Filipino creators, from Arnold Arre’s The Mythology Class, “a foundational work of contemporary Filipino comics ,” to The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo, a collaborative work that focuses on the “dark creatures of Phillipine mythology.” [Publishers Weekly]

FEATURES AND PODCASTS

Over at The Comics Journal, readers can preview the third volume of of Glaeolia, “a curated variety of compelling, stylistically varied, and completely self-contained (at least, so far) works, many from artists that have never before had their work read or published outside of Japan and their local small press scene… Glaeolia 3 contains stories reacting to very contemporary circumstances such as the early pandemic regulations and BLM protests or unexpected pregnancy, SF-tinged comics in uncertain worlds, surreal dramas about grief, coming of age, love, and beyond.”  [The Comics Journal]

Also worth a look: Sean McTiernan’s lengthy essay on the weird beauty of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5. [The Comics Journal]

Ashley and Dee discuss The Story of Saiunkoku, “a semi-supernatural, extremely feminist manga adaptation of a light novel series” set in a fictionalized version of Ming Dynasty China. [Shojo & Tell]

Elliot and Andy devote the latest episode of Screentone Club to Ciguatera and Sensei’s Pious Lie. [Screentone Club]

This week’s Mangasplaining podcast focuses on Hiroki Endo’s All-Rounder Meguru, a manga about two childhood friends who become bitter rivals in the world of mixed martial arts. [Mangasplaining]

REVIEWS

Manga Librarian Ashley Hawkins is pleasantly surprised by the first volume of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon. “I expected this manga to be bad,” she notes. “But what this manga does is that it basically takes the character designs and essential threads of the show, and fixes a lot of the problems with the anime.” Writing for No Flying No Tights, fellow librarian Adam gives Samurai Deadpool mixed marks, observing that “this particular book makes a very odd choice: it takes an incredibly simple story that would be a great entry point for newer/younger readers and then adds just enough violent gore to make this book inaccessible to that age group.”

At Women Write About Comics, Masha Zhdanova posts brief reviews of Kaiju No. 8, My Love Mix-Up!, and Devil’s Candy, while the Beneath the Tangles crew weigh in on the latest volumes of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Penguin & House, and A Silent Voice.