Just a little website update for you all: as part of my resolution to be a better blogger this year, I have decided to get my own domain name. All of the old http://mangawidget.wordpress.com links should still work, but this change was long overdue.
I hope to have some reviews up later this week, so please check those out. Have a great New Year!
2011 was a fantastic year for me. I effectively doubled the content on my blog, and managed to do so while earning my Doctor of Pharmacy degree, starting a post-graduate residency, getting married, and conducting a large scale research project focused on patient compliance. It has been a busy year. It has also been a great year for me in terms of my hobbies. I have read quite a few volumes of good manga, have expanded my beer brewing setup and have done all of this while blogging and doing other writing that I love. As we reach the end of the old year, and the beginning of the new, it seems customary for bloggers to wrap up their years with a “Best of 2011″ list, and I was going to write one of these yesterday.
As I worked over my list, I came upon a sort of realization: blogging in general has a sort of perverse relationship with top 10 lists. Blogging is by its nature very quick and unseasoned. It can be excellent journalism, but more often than not is an assortment of opinions and a few pictures. Top 10 lists do this excellently. There are plenty of pictures, plenty of opinions, and it all turns into one quick article very nicely. Badda bing, badda boom. But this seems to have generated a sort of “need to make a top 10 list” mentality that many people are so quick to mention or notice, and some people have broken down the general formula of the list post and displayed it for all to see in a sort of “dissected-frog” sort of way.
I appreciate the idea of a backwards glance at the year as much as the next person, but there are plenty of great Top 10 lists already on the internet. (Your local flavor may vary) So instead of a Top Ten list, I just want instead to talk about things that I thought were important in 2011, along with a few thoughts for 2012.
1. Digital manga becomes mainstream:
The biggest change to manga in 2011, in my opinion, is the push towards the digital medium. We have been seeing a bit of this for some time, but with the advent of the iPad and the B&N nook, Viz Media, Yen Press, and Kodansha have started releasing a quantity of their manga into the digital realm for download. Viz shuttered Shonen Jump magazine, and announced the start of Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, a weekly digital anthology offering the weekly releases of the newest shonen manga in Japan. Yen Press also moved Yen Plus online in 2010 and has continued to publish the magazine with seeming success.
Gen Manga, an online anthology of seinen manga written by independent mangaka in Japan, has also jumped into the fray this year and has released an impressive lineup of seinen manga available monthly in a very accessible format. The content delivered by Gen Manga is easily accessible on most devices, and its relatively low price has made it a great investment as far as entertainment/dollars spent goes. I have been extremely impressed with the latest releases, and hope that great content continues to grow and increase. Gen Manga is one of the first digital hybrid models, where content is released first digitally and then can be printed on demand once the content has been collected.
The other big digital player this year was JManga, which opened its doors this summer. While I feel JManga had an okay starting platform, it is clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done this year if they are going to survive as a digital content provider. Digital content has a price ceiling, and it seems as though JManga has realized that. Still, the major problem with the platform right now is a lack of continuation of content already on the service, and hopefully that will change in 2012. Additionally, JManga can only do itself good if it releases apps for the Apple and Android devices in 2012.
2. DMP utilizes Kickstarter to reprint Swallowing the Earth:
While this may not seem like much on the surface, I feel like microniche publishing has now found a unique and powerful tool to publish what would normally be considered unpublishable manga in the United States and all across the world. Microniche publishing through crowd-sourced funding can be the source of some really off-beat and fantastic comics, and I hope that DMP and other publishers try to use the Kickstarter model to their own advantage.
Think about Kickstarter as the method to get josei manga published in English. Just think about that for a second. Or, if you would prefer, how about obscure horror manga, classic shojo, or yuri? Kickstarter has proven to be a successful market for comics, and if Swallowing the Earth is any indication, DMP will be using the service again to fund future projects.
3. TOKYOPOP shuttered, Stu Levy sells TOKYOPOP brand to GeekChicDaily:
TOKYOPOP, the publisher I loved to hate, and sometimes loved, shut down after being one of the longest-lived companies in the business. While financial woes were certainly caused by the 2011 Borders closing, it also seemed as though Stu Levy was tired of publishing books. He is now off in Japan shooting a documentary of the hurricane disaster from this year.
I can understand not wanting to stick with something for your entire life. People’s interests change over time, and I can’t blame someone for wanting to stop doing what they have been doing. However, I do think that TOKYOPOP didn’t need Stu Levy at the helm to publish books, and I think shutting down the company instead of selling it or transitioning it to another CEO or publisher would have been more pleasant for the community.
The real nail in the coffin is the GeekChicDaily newsletter, which it appears Levy has sold the TOKYOPOP name to, utilizing what I am sure is the last ounce of public goodwill towards Levy for either a license or a lump sum payment for the name. Additionally, TOKYOPOP has promised to return to publishing comics, however nothing has really come of this except promises for more work and pleas for purchases of old content from current retailers. Hmmmmmmm.
4. Kodansha prints money with Sailor Moon:
This is a series that many people have been waiting on for quite some time, and Kodansha took advantage of its reverted TOKYOPOP rights to republish a new set of reprints of the books, which quickly sold out and went to second printing. It appears that a lot of people who liked the Sailor Moon anime as kids (me being one of those kids) wanted to read the manga and didn’t want to fiddle with the old versions that TOKYOPOP printed in the early 2000′s.
5. Less content was published in 2011:
This is mostly a function of a stagnant economy, the shuttering of TOKYOPOP, and the closure of Borders Booksellers, but it bears repeating that manga publishing is down from where it was in its peak days and even down from two years ago. As a function of this publishing environment, it seems as though more risky titles are not getting an opportunity in the USA, at least from larger publishers. New shonen releases have been fairly formulaic, which is fine, but some of the diversity of previous years is sorely lacking this year.
6. But even though less was published, there was still some fantastic new content published in 2011:
New series or one-shots include: A Bride’s Story, Drops of God, Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths, A Zoo in Winter, Wandering Son
Continuing series of note include 20th Century Boys, Bunny Drop, Chi’s Sweet Home, Cross Game, and Twin Spica
7. And I am looking forward to some fantastic comics in 2012:
Books that have been announced that are sure to please: Heart of Thomas, Sakuran, 5 Centimeters Per Second, A Message to Adolf, Fallen Words, Cigarette Girl
Continuing Series I’ll be reading in in 2012 not already mentioned: Sailor Moon, Blue Exorcist, The Story Saiunkoku, Kimi ni Todoke, Itazura na Kiss
I hope that everyone has a fantastic new year, and that this year is a great year for manga. I am looking forward to reading more great comics in 2012!
I don’t normally use this blog as a way to discuss non-manga fiction, but a few weeks ago my residency position had me across the country in the great city of N’Awlins for the American Society of Heath-System Pharmacists’ annual Midyear conference to present some of my research as well as network with other clinical pharmacists from around the US, and in those brief moments where I wasn’t attending CE presentations, presenting research, interviewing residency candidates, meeting new people, catching up with fellow ONU alumni, or drinking hurricanes, I was feverishly consuming the most recent works of Lev Grossman.
The trigger for my original purchase of the first book came from a review of The Magician King from The Onion’s AV Club, which likened these novels to a Harry Potter of the real world – a fantasy novel that was more about people and how wretched they can be than the fantastic feats they could perform. I took the bait, and was enthralled by Grossman’s keen fiction.
The premise of the first novel is simple – a brilliant young man named Quentin, obsessed with novels about a magical land called Fillory (a Narnia of sorts) finds out, in a strange afternoon, that he has the ability to do magic, and that he, instead of being accepted to the halls of Stanford or some other prestigious Ivy-league school, will instead attend the similarly-prestigious and completely mysterious Brakebills School of Magic. He learns the craft of magic slowly throughout the first book, and falls in love with a young woman who will become the crux of the two novels – a woman named Alice. As he graduates and moves on to the real world, he finds that Fillory is a real place – a magical world where he and his other friends can live out the rest of their lives.
But not all is golden in Fillory, and neither is the real world. Neither, for that matter, are any of the characters in these two novels. Each of them has their warts, their tics, and their habits, and Grossman swings, spins, and twists them around stage until their basest desires and hideous natures are revealed, and then pushes them into the face of gods and delights when they spit in defiance. In the near-final portion of the book, Quentin loses things that are precious to him, but the world of Fillory is saved. It is an empty victory.
In the second novel, Quentin and a high-school friend named Julia, traverse the world of Fillory, and Earth and other lands in order to save the thing they both love most – magic. We learn about Julia, who appears briefly in the first novel as a broken and disturbed reject of the Brakebills School of Magic, and the darkness that permeates her character and her life. Oddly, once the dust of the action has settled, Quentin again has lost something precious.
Loss is the central theme of The Magicians and The Magician King. We watch the characters react to loss, whether it is a loss of their faculties, their relationships, their friends, and sometimes, their humanity in the name of heroism. Grossman seems to look into our sense of optimism and longing for happy endings, and chidingly tells us, “But remember children, this is how things actually happen.” It is this sense of loss and how real and biting it can be that has stuck in my craw even now as I look back on the books.
Grossman has a sense of the dramatic, but he also understands the balancing act each person must reconcile as they go about their lives, and he understands what drives people to make terrible, life-altering decisions. Amongst the bad choices and hedonistic tastes of his characters, Grossman sprinkles pop culture references, and brings into focus the books (The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter) which he so lovingly deconstructs.
The Magicians and The Magician King are books that every fantasy reader should read, but not because they are escapist, like the rest of the genre – they should read these novels because they are so rooted in the human. Grossman gives magic its due, but reminds us, sometimes gently, and sometimes with the force of a swinging hammer, that life is neither an escape, nor a fantasy. Our choices often have unintended consequences, and these consequences can unhinge us and make us who we are. Or who we are meant to be.
While I was busy preparing to host the Natsume Ono Moveable Manga Feast, Digital Manga Publishing Inc. announced a Kickstarter project to bring about another print run of Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing The Earth, a one-shot tome of early Tezuka work from 1968 that had received a very short print run due to publishing costs. The book has been praised by many in the blogosphere, and its short-printed status means that currently, a first print copy of Swallowing the Earth will run you somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 USD – that’s double-plus MSRP (originally $24.95 in 2009). This is actually cheaper than it was 6 months ago, before the Kickstarter was announced – a “new” copy of Swallowing the Earth in March was running more around the $75-80 mark. Which is frankly absurd. But Tezuka fans will be Tezuka fans, and I, being one of those fans, had been building up a small budget for the book, until the DMP announcement.
Other bloggers have talked about Kickstarter – Johanna Draper Carlson being the most prominent, having voiced her opinions about the platform multiple times. While I agree with some of her cautionary words, I also am interested in crowd-sourcing as an idea, and the idea brought onto the consumer’s stage by DMP is the idea of niche-publishing.
Ben Applegate of DMP has gone on the record in this Kickstarter video, saying:
So in order to get [Swallowing the Earth] back out there, to let people read this really important book, not only in the history of Osamu Tezuka, but in the history of manga as well, we’ve come to Kickstarter as a new way to fund manga publishing in the United States. If this Kickstarter is successful, and we’re able to get this book back out in to people’s hands, you’re going to see more, not only reprints of older titles, but also possibly even new titles coming over from Japan aimed at a niche audience in the United States that would never have been brought over by a publisher otherwise.
The emphasis here is my own, but I think it is safe to say that Digital Manga has high hopes for a Kickstarter-like crowd sourcing model. I have high hopes for it too, which is primarily why I backed the Kickstarter (as you may have noticed from the image of the site above.) Kickstarter is a unique tool that allows a publishing company with ties in the Japanese manga business to attempt to bring manga to the United States in a way that puts relatively little risk on the publishing company. I can understand why this is important – small companies like DMP that have small operating budgets need to invest in titles that can sustain a business. For Digital Manga, that means the niche audience of yaoi, and the occasional non-yaoi comic.
As a person who reads more independent and niche manga (Bunny Drop, A Bride’s Story, Velveteen and Mandala), I am interested in seeing more content from Japan that meets my tastes and expectations. I would love to see more josei manga printed in the United States, and am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Digital Manga if you publish josei manga on Kickstarter – you have a loyal customer in me. I understand that josei is a micro-niche of manga – but this is the type of content that can thrive in a crowd-sourced publishing system, where those that want it can buy into it, and create that opportunity for publishing that so many josei titles have been missing.
Now, I think it’s a fair criticism to ask- if you aren’t going to publish a book using your own budget, do you really need to be a book publisher? The answer here is a resounding “not necessarily.” With the appropriate contacts and contracts, it is within the realm of possibility for me to license and sell manga through the platform of Kickstarter. The thing that Digital Manga brings to the table is an honesty and a reliability as a company that has and continues to publish quality manga.
Also safe to say here that DMP‘s views on crowd-sourcing are not necessarily the same as my own. They may use Kickstarter to fund reprints exclusively, or print more yaoi manga. But my hope is that the company lives up to Ben’s words and uses the success of this first Kickstarter project to fuel the licensure and publishing of underrepresented content.
Digital Manga Publishing is on the bleeding edge of publishing. The Kickstarter initiative, in addition to the Digital Manga Guild, are two projects that may not succeed in the long term – but this type of innovation is bringing content to readers in a way that no other publisher is trying, and it is this sort of innovation that may become the new and best model for the micro-niche in years to come. I am looking forward to the results.
Especially in February of 2012, when I get a brand new copy of Swallowing the Earth shipped to me because of this Kickstarter pledge.
Well, it’s been a long week and a half, and we’re finished with the Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast – but not without some parting shots. Let’s take a look.
Jason Yadao at Otaku Ohana has a review of not simple and finds it to be a powerful work, again bring up the ties of family that others have mentioned this week:
[Natsume Ono creates] manga that are equal parts entertainment and contemplative exercise. I’ve seen this in reading Ristorante Paradiso – not enough that I feel qualified to comment fully on that book yet, but enough to know that the focus of that book, Nicoletta, comes from a family just as broken as Ian’s.
His review is the polar opposite of Jason Green’s, which I featured yesterday, but will link again, because I feel truly represents the very different perspectives of Ono’s work among the manga community.
I think I may have missed linking to a discussion between Melinda and Michelle at Manga Bookshelf in my complete archive, so to make up for that, please go read it again. Enjoy it. It is a fantastic discussion.
Last but not least, Ed Sizemore announces the plans he has for the Manga Out Loud podcast (spoiler – he’s still doing it! YAY!) and afterwards, he, Johanna Draper Carlson, Kristin, and I all have a great discussion about Natsume Ono, her works published in the USA, the works unpublished in the USA, and the MMF in general.
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Let me finish by saying that this has been an absolutely fantastic (if hectic) experience. Thank you all for participating, and for being a part of the Manga Moveable Feast for Natsume Ono. I hope you all have enjoyed this as much as I have.
I’ll be back later this week with commentary on DMP’s foray into Kickstarter. For now – this is Alex, flipping the switch. Have a good night, folks.
Well, here we are. It’s been an entire week of Natsume Ono, her comics, and a discussion of her work. This weekend has given the MMF a final burst of content, so let’s get started. I will keep the MMF call up until Monday evening, so if you have any content you want me to feature, please contact me using my twitter handle @mangawidget, my Contacts page, or by using the Manga Moveable Feast Google Groups page. Now, onward to the reviews!
First, Connie at Slightly Biased Manga has a review of House of Leaves, Vol. 3 and finds a lot to like. Still, she mentions Ono’s sketchy artwork as a source of some reader’s confusion, and I can understand that. Ono is hardly the only mangaka out there who has similar looking characters, but it’s a valid complaint, especially when volume 3 features face-0nly closeups more frequently than in previous volumes. I will be interested to see how Connie likes volume 4.
Next, Johanna Draper Carlson reviews Tesoro from the standpoint of someone who isn’t an unabashed fan of Ono (that would be my standpoint, obviously) and finds quite a bit to like despite her distaste of Ono’s longer works like House of Five Leaves. Johanna’s critique of Ono is that her writing style allows her to focus on incidents and moments, and that this style doesn’t mesh well with a longer running series, but works great for a collection of short stories. This is a very interesting review, since many of the people writing for the Manga Moveable Feast are fans of Ono, so I invite you all to check it out.
Jason Green, host of the early October Love Hina Manga Moveable Feast, has some pretty strong words for not simple:
Given the reputation of both Ono in general and the book in particular, I went into not simple with high hopes. I finished it feeling not only disappointed but, honestly, kind of gross. Withholding spoilers, the story takes several turns that feel exploitative, even more so in the context of Ian’s mercilessly downtrodden existence.
Certainly this isn’t my experience with the comic, but I can see Jason’s perspective. not simple is a miserable- the subject matter demands it be so. Still, exploitative isn’t a word I would use to describe not simple, and I don’t think it was the experience of many other reviewers in this MMF – which is a perfect example of why this digital monthly book club is so fascinating. To get another take on not simple, Jason Green is your man.
There is certainly more content out there to be found, so I will close this post tonight and look for more tomorrow. One more day until the Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast is on the books. Let’s finish strong, folks!
Welcome back! There is some dynamite content from some well known bloggers and some fresh faces. Remember that if you are interested in having your Manga Moveable Feast content featured in these round ups and the archive page, please Tweet me at @mangawidget, contact me via my Contact page, or use the #MMF twitter tag.
We have some absolutely wonderful writing today, so let’s take a look:
First up is a relative newcomer to the Manga Moveable Feast, Anna Whittingham, who has an excellent feature of one of Natsume Ono’s BL titles, Kuma to Interi. Anna is the translator for BLBangBang, a localization group participating in Digital Manga‘s Digital Manga Guild publishing project. As such, she offers a slightly different perspective (she’s read the book in Japanese) so can expound on what makes Kuma to Interi such a tantalizing target for localization.
Manga blogging powerhouse David Welsh of Manga Curmudgeon also has a feature of Ono’s unlocalized work, and looks again at a project I have been hoping to see published in the USA for quite some time – Coppers, which is supposedly Natsume Ono’s take on police drama like Law & Order. While I am not sure how Ono can handle the tension of a police title with her laid-back style, like David, I am willing to give any Natsume Ono-written comic book a try.
Two of David’s partners in crime over at Manga Bookshelf, Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith, have a great conversation about La Quinta Camera, House of Five Leaves, and Tesoro. Discussing their discussion feels a bit too meta, and I don’t want to ruin anything for you, fine reader, so just go check it out already.
On a completely non-Manga Bookshelf note, Derek Bown at Burning Lizard Studios has a review of House of Five Leaves, who makes the claim that
House of Five Leaves is meant to be read the way an ink painting is meant to be appreciated. It’s not so much about the details that are there, but rather those that are not.
An interesting viewpoint, and my opinion of the series is fairly similar, although maybe not as direct.
Lori Henderson has her own views on House of Five Leaves on a Manga Xanadu, which recently received a face-lift. Lori makes an astute connection that while Masa is one of the least compelling characters (honestly, the guy has the personality of bag of sand) of House of Five Leaves, he is the glue that keeps the wonderful character interactions of the series running smoothly.
