Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

manga

On The Shojo Beat

by Leave a Comment

I have a couple of reviews in today’s On The Shojo Beat column at Manga Recon, for volume 8 of Yuu Watase’s Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden (you can read my review of the previous volume here), and for the first volume of Honey Hunt, a new series by Hot Gimmick creator, Miki Aihara. It’s probably too early to really say, but Honey Hunt could potentially make its way on to my list of addictively readable shojo (thanks, David Welsh). It’s not of the same quality as something like NANA, but it is pure, trashy fun.

Expect a few more additions to my recent shojo review binge on this blog over the next couple of weeks, as well as a nice new burst of shonen (beginning with last night’s review of Hikaru no Go, vol. 15). Later!

Good news & bad news

by 18 Comments

Just a couple of things for today. First the good news, PopCultureShock is having a Naruto giveaway, mainly to help jump-start our new discussion boards over there. Here’s the announcement from Manga Recon with links to the PCS announcement and the boards. It’s always tough getting new forums up and running, so I hope some of you will go join in!

Then for the bad… AmazonFail. Wow. Having just signed up this blog as an Amazon Associate maybe three days ago, I was pretty dismayed to discover that I was inadvertently promoting a corporation that would do something like this. For the three people left on the internet who don’t know, Amazon has stripped its sales rankings from what appears to be mainly LGBT-themed books, labeling them as “adult” content, despite the fact that many of the books contained little to no sexual content at all, and plenty of books with explicit (heterosexual) content remain ranked. What this means is that these unranked books do not come up through their search engine, and in fact, if you do an Amazon search for “homosexuality” now, most of what comes up are books on how to “cure” or prevent it. Amazon claims this was a “glitch,” despite the fact that people were initially told that this was new official policy.

Obviously this is disgusting and if they don’t turn this policy around very soon I’m going to remove every link to Amazon from this blog, because there is no way I’m going to support that. Fortunately, the entire internet is outraged, which may hopefully effect change. Over at AnimeVice, Gia has a post about how/if this affects the manga industry (ETA: check out Kuriousity‘s as well). I also liked Danielle Leigh’s message to her students, EREC’s response to Information Week’s statement, “…it’s premature to blame Amazon” (thanks, gloss), and this article from Jezebel. ETA: Also, this is pretty interesting, and makes me think I’ll be switching away from being an Associate really soon. Sad.

For now I’ll say, don’t click those Amazon links. Hopefully I won’t need to say it for long.

Report on ConBust 2009!

by 10 Comments

Happy Friday, everyone, Good or otherwise. I was hoping to manage a review for this blog last night, but other than a few minutes spent watching the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime (I look forward to it getting through its setup and on to the manga plot), I ending up using the entire night finishing my coverage of ConBust at Smith College, which is up now at Manga Recon!

I enjoyed the convention immensely, and I can’t emphasize enough how gratifying I found its focus on female fans and creators. Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably recall some frustrated tweets about some (fairly infuriating) comments made about manga during the con, and I do address that at the end of the article, but I really hope that will not overshadow the essential awesomeness of the con and the Smith students who put it together every year.

Follow this link to read my report, and if you’re in the Pioneer Valley or thereabouts (and especially if you’re a sci-fi and/or fantasy fan) I hope you’ll consider attending ConBust in 2010!

Personal musing on La Corda d’Oro

by 22 Comments

One of the anime series currently available for viewing on Crunchyroll is La Corda d’Oro, based on the manga series licensed in the US by Viz (which is, I understand, based on a video game). My husband brought it up to me recently as a series he’d be interested in watching and when he told me the name, my ears perked up as I reached excitedly into my pile of review copies where I have volume ten of the manga waiting to be reviewed for Manga Recon’s “On The Shojo Beat” column next month. Seeing this as a great opportunity for me to study up for my review (I don’t own or have access to the first nine volumes of the manga), we plunged right in.

Now I’ll say right off, I am really enjoying this anime series. Sure, the musical selections are straight out of someone’s supermarket CD of “Your Favorite Classical Music Hits,” but honestly this is what I expect to see in popular fiction, and even when the arrangements of these overused standards are utterly ridiculous (I looked it up–there actually is an existing arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon for just violin and piano, as ill-advised as that may seem) the characters are so sincere about playing them it’s hard to remain snobbish about it, even for a stodgy old music geek like me. Recently, however, there has been a bit of a plot twist that has seriously thrown me for a loop. I found my own reaction to it surprising, revealing, and actually a little bit hilarious so I thought I’d talk about it here. Major spoilers after the jump. …

Read More

Claymore 14, All Hail Crunchyroll

by 6 Comments

Morning! Just a quick update before I run out to an early morning meeting (ugh). First of all, I have a short review in this week’s Manga Minis, for volume fourteen of Claymore, a series I like a lot and one of the few shonen series I have reviewed at MR. If you missed my review of volume thirteen back in December, here it is! It was actually my very first review for Manga Recon. Oh, the nostalgia.

Secondly, I just want to take a moment and appreciate Crunchyroll. We originally bought a membership in order to watch new episodes of Shugo Chara!! Doki as they came out, but yesterday we started watching three new series (we’ll probably keep going with two of them) which were being simulcast here at pretty much the same time as in Japan. It was exciting, seriously. I mean, this is what we’ve all hoped for, right? That someone would start to provide legally what was previously only offered by fansubbers–subbed anime available here at the same time (or shortly after) its release in Japan. Hell, I’d have gone for episodes aired even a month or so afterward–that’s still a huge improvement over the years-long wait for dubs I’m not going to watch anyway–but I admit there was something kind of thrilling about knowing we were watching at approximately the same time these episodes were airing for the very first time. Thank you, Crunchyroll, thank you. You are awesome. It’ll be interesting to see how Funimation’s Fullmetal Alchemist streams stack up!

100% Perfect Girl & FMA Squee

by 8 Comments

First off, I have a review up this morning at Manga Recon, for volume nine of NETCOMICS’ manhwa soap opera 100% Perfect Girl. I’ve had a rough time with this series as its heroine is repeatedly dragged through hell by the men who supposedly love her, but if you love a soap opera this may be the series for you.

In other news, I was thrilled to see this morning (thanks to ANN) that Funimation is going to be streaming the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime series within days of its airing in Japan! Now that the manga is so far along, I have real hope that the new adaptation may be able to approach Arakawa’s genius. There are few stories I love as much as this one, and to be able to watch the new anime series legally as it airs is more than I’d expected.

I hope this means that all this new streaming going on is working out just as the studios hoped, and that this will become the new model (or at least a new model) for anime distribution. We’ve already got a membership at Crunchyroll so that we can stream Shugo Chara! in high quality each week (and we’re excited about trying some other series as well), and aside from a few technical glitches here and there, it’s been a fantastic deal.

Fruits Basket, Volume 22

by 13 Comments

Here is the last of my “quick” reviews for this week! Please enjoy it!

Fruits Basket, Vol. 22
By Natsuki Takaya
Published by Tokyopop

9781427806833
Buy This Book

With the level of drama that volume 21 of Fruits Basket provided, it was hard to imagine that the next volume could actually be stronger, but it is. Still barred from visiting Tohru in the hospital, Kyo decides to face down his own demons by visiting his father who rejected him so many years ago. It is a painful meeting and provides nothing even close to reconciliation, but Kyo is at least able to declare his determination to live regardless of carrying the cat’s curse. Meanwhile, Akito makes the decision to end the curse entirely, resulting in emotional scenes for everyone and Akito most of all.

This is an incredibly lovely volume with everyone’s hearts laid bare and by the end, when the true, heartbreaking story of the curse is being revealed (“…that the Cat’s wish was finally granted”), I had tears in my eyes. What’s especially skillful about Natsuki Takaya’s storytelling in this series is that she balances the romance and the supernatural story just right, ensuring that the reader is equally interested in the outcome of both, so that when the story really finds its conclusion it is satisfying on more than one level. Not only that, she manages to make each of the character’s personal arcs intensely compelling, even those of minor characters, so with all of these achieving their dramatic climax at once, the effect is really quite stunning. It’s impressive too that after all this time, the character whose story here is probably the most moving is Akito’s. “I don’t have to be ‘special’ anymore. I don’t have to be ‘God’ anymore,” she says just before her final goodbye, filled with both terror and relief. “I can just be… me. Right?” …

Read More

Future Lovers, Volume 1

by 6 Comments

Over the next few days, I’ll be offering three short (somewhat casual) reviews of manga I’ve picked up recently. They aren’t all new, but they’re new to me. Here’s the first!

Future Lovers, Vol. 1
By Saika Kunieda
Published by Deux Press

9781934496350
Buy This Book

Having been dumped by his girlfriend, schoolteacher Kento Kumagaya lets himself get picked up in a bar by an attractive guy, Akira Kazuki. After a fantastic night of drunken sex (and a fantastic, less drunk morning), Kento assumes he’ll never see Akira again. This assumption proves to be false, however, as Akira turns out to be the new art teacher at Kento’s school. After a few repeats of their initial encounter and a moment of true jealousy, Kento finally realizes that his interest in Akira runs much deeper than he ever expected, and he decides to pursue a serious relationship with him. Facing open hostility from his family and Akira’s distrust of his sexuality things don’t proceed easily, but help arrives in the unexpected form of a female student with a longtime crush.

…

Read More

Monday. Oh, Monday.

by Leave a Comment

I am seriously sleepy today. I need to remember that two con weekends in a row might be more than I can really handle. I can’t imagine having missed either of them, though. Look for a full report of my weekend at Conbust later on this week.

Today I have one new review out there in the world, for volume four of the Yen Press’ Legend, included in today’s Manga Minis. I have mixed feelings about Legend at this point, but there’s some real promise there.

I have some things I’m pretty anxious to talk about, but I think they’ll have more context coming out of my ConBust report, so I’ll hold my tongue until then. Meanwhile, apologies for the short update. I’ll have much more to say when I’ve had some real rest.