Ferreting around

So, Peach Fuzz (the one about the ferret) is out, and it's been getting good buzz so far ... score another one for Tokyopop's homegrown titles.

Cool. ANS reports that the Gaten manga anthology will publish a series about various fields of employment, Gaten Michi Icchokusen -- basically career advice for high schoolers.

And I'm going to actually edit this post just to include a recently-posted article on Hideshi Hino.

If I lived in the Bay Area, I'd go to this Japanese pop culture discussion just to meet the co-editor of Giant Robot.

And if you thought Sgt. Frog was funny ... download Honey Bunny and see what happens when an alien invader occupies the body of the hottest guy in school! ("It'll be educational.")

New Year Gimmick

Well, this isn't THAT much of a surprise ... a Negima video game. Who wants to bet it'll play out like some freaky-deaky Harry Potter dating sim?

And moving along from the mainstreamest of the mainstream, it's a short hop with Completely Futile to go into the underground. With links to sites where you can read the manga online!

As mentioned on many sites already, DMP has extended their distribution deal with Diamond to include educational manga, how-to-draw books, and yes ... yaoi. Always more yaoi.

AOD does a year in review for Broccoli Books, that small-time publisher whose manga properties can be counted on the fingers of one hand, yet when it comes to production quality, they're the best $10 deal you can ask for.

Today's recommendation: Head over to Virtual Infusion to pick up more chapters of School Rumble! I will say nothing of the recent downloading-comics flap, except that, well, does that Site They Mentioned have scanlations? :p

And ... I just wanted to share this. The January issue of Betsucomi magazine had a mini-calendar giveaway, and guess what the image was for March/April? Hot Gimmick! Oh yes. (Also seen in this picture: old con badges, XXXHolic pencil board; postcard illustrated by Rising Stars of Manga 4 winner Amy Reeder Hadley, and Bottle Fairy figurines. Oh, and there's Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist lurking in the top right corner. Hee.)

Mobile Suitors

Slow news day ...

Who likes contests? Win a free copy of Yoshiyuki Tomino's Gundam novel ... not a graphic novel, an actual "prose" novel. Hey, it's practically the Star Trek of Japan! A cultural touchstone! And yes ... pushing the merchandising angle waaay too far. Henh.

Okay, fine, one more article: a Newtype USA contributor complains about how the magazine edited his review. Resulting in a pretty big discussion over on ANN. Comics reviewing sure is interesting work, innit?

...

Well, we all know what happened today. I'll spare myself the attempt to link to everything ... I'm blank. What's there left to say about Will Eisner? BEST. COMICKER. EVER. And I mean it.

Dreamwave Productions closes down, ending their mildly successful venture with adapting 80's-nostalgia properties (Transformers and Megaman among them).

See if you can figure this one out: ComicsOne is transferring its manga releases to Asian publisher DrMaster. But they'll still keep making comics. Or something. I dunno. The folks on the forums are equally bewildered.

As Bookscan and other fellow bloggers have duly noted, Rurouni Kenshin and Fruits Basket kicked tail in bookstore GN sales for 2004.

Manga licenses headed to Australia: Slam Dunk, Fruits Basket and Love for Venus.

And I promise you ... if you scroll down on this page, I swear it's there ... next volume of Princess Ai comes out in June. Soon to be followed by another rash of messageboard discussions where people get into a bigger argument about the merits of Courtney Love than the actual book itself.

If you happen to have 600 MB to spare on you computer ... do pick up the complete Kimagure Orange Road scanlation. This is one of the few manga series that I would officially deem "seminal." Almost every modern romantic comedy in manga has its roots in this one.

If you have a little less room, go for She Got Off the Bus At the Peninsula, a delightful little one-shot. Who'd have thought a ghost story could be so sweet?

Awesomeful Days

As if to finally catch up on the CMX books that everyone must've looked at and reviewed by now, here's what Active Anime has to say about the matter.

CBG is awesome for doing this huge feature on Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys).

And here's something a little tangential, a review of the newly released Korean animated feature Sky Blue (aka Wonderful Days). Still kinda hedging on whether to call it "anime," since in standard US parlance, that's considered to mean animated works of Japanese origin ... what's Korean for "cartoons" anyway?

Ready, Steady, Blog!

And I am back from the dead!

Sequential Tart just can't get enough Hot Yaoi/Boy's-Love action. "Yaoi isn't about 'gay' couples — it's about the idealized relationships with men that women would like to have," says one reader in a quote. Touché.

Once again, Completely Futile challenges us to look into manga outside of the "mainstream" (as imposed upon us by the likes of TP, Viz, et al). Adding Shigeru Sugiura to my Kinokuniya shopping list ...

Dark Horse's Junko Mizuno stationery looks like a fun addition to the all-too-sparse catalog of Mizuno products available Stateside.

Coming soon in Japan: not just one, but FOUR manga adaptations (in different styles) of a messageboard thread. Yes. They comickized a story that started out as a messageboard thread. Maybe Fanboy Rampage will pick up on the concept.

Is this old news? I have this niggling feeling that Marvel's hiring of Tokyopop editor Mark Paniccia as Senior Editor was announced a while back -- or maybe that was another guy. In any case, "Paniccia will be developing original graphic novels for teens, and recruiting new talent." Shouldn't be too hard, seeing as he was the guy who ran the first few iterations of Tokyopop's highly successful Rising Stars of Manga talent contest.

Finally, here's a nice AoD editorial recap of Del Rey's jump into the manga pool. Ah, memories of the Negima dust-up ...