Tag Archives: manga

Review: Psyren, Vol. 1

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A few weeks ago, I talked about the way that Shonen Jump was changing in a review of the first five volumes of Blue Exorcist, one of the latest series from Viz Media‘s Shonen Jump line. Now that the transition to Shonen Jump Alpha has had a bit of a rocky start it has been an interesting reading experience for me (as a reader who has never read the anthology before in my life). I find myself a little out of sorts with all of the stories running in the magazine currently – they are either far ahead of where I am reading, or I gave them up after a few volumes, meaning that while I can enjoy the moment, I have to play a lot of catch up. This is not a bad thing, but I already have quite a bit of reading to do!

In the interest of beginning new things, another new Shonen Jump title has recently crossed my review stack – the first volume of Psyren. This manga focuses around a punk Ageha Yoshina who “helps people out” to the tune of 10,000 yen ($100). This generally involves kicking the crap out of some gang of losers or roughnecks. Ageha is a good guy with a Robin Hood personality, but he’s rough around the edges. After a run-in with a local stalker, Ageha hangs out with some friends and has a strange hallucination which leads him to a pay phone and a red Psyren phone card. While at first, he doesn’t think much of it, he soon discovers there is a lot more to this phone card than he initially thought. Ageha learns of the Psyren secret society and that people are willing to pay any amount of money to get their hands on the cards. But this isn’t fun and games. The first volume of Psyren shows Ageha exactly how dangerous this Psyren phone card is. Strangely, one of his friends from school, Sakurako Amamiya, also has a Psyren card, and I won’t spoil the big first twist of the volume, but it’s a whopper. Let’s be brief and say that Ageha gets to put his fighting skills to good use as he fights for his life, and the lives of a few other unlucky souls who have entered the Psyren game.

Psyren has the advantage of coming out of left field in a number of ways – it develops in a very unexpected way, and it has some really stellar art for the style of story it is trying to tell. The art is rough, sometimes sketchy, and it is very telling that this is only the second work for Toshiaki Iwashiro, (his original was another Jump comic, Mieru Hito) but he commands his style in a way that is either indicative of a sure author or a skilled editor, or some combination of the two.

My initial impressions were that Psyren was going to be a very odd conspiracy manga, something like Maoh: Juvenile Remix, a comic I originally gave high marks to, but I fell out of reading after a lull between the third and fourth volumes. The idea of a secret Psyren society and these magical red phone cards was a very interesting setup for a conspiracy thriller. But what Psyren actually delivered was something about as high energy, high violence as shonen manga can get while still being cerebral. The first volume of Psyren is a complete 360° that feels neither ratings-inspired or editor forced.

I really enjoyed this volume of Psyren, and am looking forward to reading more of the series. Having recently ended in Japan at 16 volumes, I hope that future volumes will be just as entertaining.

Review: Mardock Scramble, Vol. 1

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When Kodansha Comics popped onto the scene, replacing Del Rey and making huge plans for increased frequency of releases and new series making it to print, I was fairly excited. Obviously it was upsetting that Del Rey had mostly been cut from the picture, but it was my hope that this change would lead to some great new content being released. For the most part, I have been underwhelmed, due in large part to the fact that I am not the average manga consumer, and I still don’t have new volumes of Nodame Cantibile (which, face it, is a lost cause).

Kodansha has made a lot of safe bets with the titles it is currently publishing (besides the ever-befuddling Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei!) and one of these safe bets is Mardock Scramble, a manga based of a 700-page “cyber punk noir thriller” novel recently published in English by Viz Media‘s Haikasoru imprint. Importantly, both the manga and book were written by the same person, so the hope is that the transition from novel to illustration would at least be faithful to the original book. I had all but decided not to purchase the title when a few bloggers I follow fairly closely said that it was a fun read – so I decided to bite.

Mardock Scramble follows a young girl named Rune Balot (the most irritating name for a protagonist ever) who has been forced into prostitution and is inexplicably found, revitalized, and subsequently murdered by a man named Shell. Rune, in the hands of the reaper, is saved by two private detectives, Dr. Easter, and a shape-shifting weapon that calls itself Oeufcoque and takes the form of a yellow mouse. She is saved by a mostly illegal experimental procedure called “Mardock Scramble 09″ (yes, I realize this gets more ridiculous as I type), and now has the power to interface with all manner of electronic devices. The main focus of this first novel is whether Rune feels that her new life is worth living, after being broken down so thoroughly by her past, or if she should help Dr. Easter and Oeufcoque deliver Shell to justice.

If I had to describe Mardock Scramble in one word, that word would be “fluffy,” which is an odd word for describing a gritty sci-fi action thriller like Mardock Scramble. We see Rune run through the ringer, only to be brought back to life and made into some sort of superhuman weapon, and it’s all very cheery and “wow, look at how much power she has,” in a typical shonen way. Rune is a victim of poor circumstance, and her trials and tribulations are laid out to give her excuses to do certain things, but the pain or the sadness is very gimmicky. As a reader, I want well developed characters to go with my action, and Rune is a few clichés pasted onto a black-haired girl. The content of Mardock Scramble takes a backseat to cool explosions and artistic flourishes, and while that can be entertaining, it certainly isn’t compelling. It is this “style over substance,” storytelling that turns me off to works like Mardock Scramble.

To add to that mix, Rune is a doormat character, and her trauma and sadness are not well explained, so she ends up looking like a broken doll rather than a person battling with depression and issues of self-worth. The book is so busy with its upgrades that it essentially overrides Rune’s emotional crisis after a few short scenes. The other main character, Oeufcoque the mouse/weapon, is played as both comic relief and a Yoda-like benevolent teacher, leading Rune through her problems while enjoying a good pistachio. It’s not really clear what roll Oeufcoque and his friend, Dr. Easter, play in this series, but they break the action up a little bit, and that’s a welcome change from the rest of this first volume.

The art of Mardock Scramble is fairly well done, but there’s an unpolished feel to it that nags at me. The style, which is grungy, a little dirty, and futuristic, hits the right tone for the story, but there are some inconsistencies with the way people are drawn (faces with misaligned eyes, abnormally long arms and legs) that seem to get less and less noticeable as you progress through the book. Page layouts in Mardock Scramble are excellent in comparison to other books in the same genre, and Mardock Scramble reads very easily because of it. If anything is this book’s saving grace, it is that it is a quick, well composed read, so unless you are looking specifically to evaluate the work in a critical, some of the misgivings I have about it may be easily overlooked.

Overall, I think Mardock Scramble will be a great read for teens who like action and sci-fi, but I think those who are looking for a bit of manga popcorn to munch on will like Mardock Scramble the most. For my tastes, I want Mardock Scramble to have more substance than it currently has. This may change in the second volume, but from the parting scenes of volume one, I would have to sit through another chase scene, and to be honest, I have seen enough of those to last a lifetime. While Mardock Scramble isn’t the worst work I have read in the genre, and certainly manages to get the pacing and flow of reading absolutely right, I doubt I will be back for volume 2.

A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign

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This weekend, I learned that Digital Manga Publishing had started a new Kickstarter project to publish a previously unlicensed unpublished manga in English. The work is Barbara, one of Osamu Tezuka’s adult-oriented works that have been the source of much of Vertical Inc.’s manga success. While the project has funded itself very quickly, there have been some skeptical voices, including Lissa Patillo at Kuriosity.ca.

I respect Lissa quite a bit for her work in manga blogging, and we’ve had the opportunity to talk about manga on Ed Sizemore’s Manga Out Loud podcast. The business of publishing is something Lissa and I both have a lot of interest in, and Lissa has essentially revealed herself as an “old soul” of publishing mentality in our podcast, while I consider myself more progressive, at least in matters of digital publishing. Lissa has been an excellent community member, and has done me a great service in multiple occasions by helping me get copies of comics from Canada that I would not otherwise have access to in the United States.

Why do I preface my entire article with all of this? Because while I think that Lissa is a great person and a wonderful member of the manga blogging community, I absolutely and vehemently disagree with her entire argument against Kickstarter campaigns, and I want to present the opposite argument without offering any personal insult.

What I want to argue in this article is that there is a stark difference between what the use of Kickstarter actually means for manga fans and the perceived attacks on fandom that have been presented by Lissa’s article. I feel that the bulk of Lissa’s argument is predicated on the idea that the traditions of analogue publishing are the only correct way to publish content, or that the publisher has an obligation to the traditional methods of licensing and publishing content in English. I disagree.

The Barbara Kickstarter campaign offers manga fanatics and Tezuka appreciators the ability to commission the translation and print of a volume of manga currently not published in English. I use the word commission because this is really what is happening with the Kickstarter campaign system. DMP is essentially saying “If you give us X dollars, we will do this project, and we can give you access to our process and input into the final product.”

Commissions are a vital part of the art industry, and comic publishing to a very large extent is a system of commercial art that does not run on this system.  There have been recent Kickstarter campaigns, such as Womanthology, Ashes, the Transmetropolitan Art Book, and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories, to name a few, that have challenged the idea of comic publishing as an industry with traditional methods of content delivery.

With the Barbara Kickstarter campaign, DMP is essentially asking for a commission for a book. This is unorthodox considering what the traditional publishing model is (the publisher licenses material, translates, edits, typesets, and prints it, then sells it to bookstores and hopes to recoup its costs and make a profit). Just because this system is unorthodox does not make it bad. In fact, being able to have input in the way that the industry works and makes decisions offers fans the direct ability to be involved and get something that they want.

As publishers of Japanese content continue to dwindle in the United States, DMP is making a small move from the traditional publishing model to a commission model because commissions are what work for microniche consumer materials. We are at a place in the anime and manga industry that is stressful for publishers, because one flop, like Bandai’s overproduction of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya product, could lead to the failure of that company. DMP is readjusting its game plan to determine what markets will bear prior to taking the intial risk by asking consumers – something that no manga publisher has truly done before. This is a smart business move.

The idea of crowd sourcing risk has been a standard practice in the wider business community for a long time. The crowd-sourced model that DMP has adopted is a much more open and malleable process than the standard operating procedures of the banking, credit, and private equity industries. Also, unlike those systems, where you take on the risk without being explicitly made aware of it, you are being made aware of that risk when using Kickstarter.

Lissa makes some strong arguments about the role of publishers in the market. She states that Kickstarter is a program for individuals without corporate backing, and that traditional publishers should continue to publish manga traditionally. I have two issues with this statement. The first is that this argument denies the publisher the ability to experiment and change the relationship between producer and consumer. Experimentation, trying new business models is one way that microniche publishers like DMP can stay ahead of a recession economy, and continue to publish.

Second of all, as a rule, companies do generally take risks and hope that these risks lead to sales and a positive income. Just because that is what happens now, does not mean that is what DMP has to do. They do not NEED to bear the risks of a new title because they are a traditional publisher. They are under no obligation to do so. If DMP has a program that allows consumers to decide whether they want to pay for a possible license, it is perfectly fine for them to do so. This tradition of “risk to profits” in business only exists because it was the only way business could be done until the past 2-3 decades. If you as a consumer do not like the model that the publisher uses, then you do not need to purchase their products. But it is not an obligation for a company to take risk.

In fact, many other small businesses are using Kickstarter to produce content. Small Box Games is a great example of a small board-game publishing company that is using Kickstarter to fund games like Omen of War – and other companies are doing projects like this more and more frequently as time passes.

Lissa takes crowd-based risk a little personally, I think – she states that because the impetus to publish Barbara is left to the fan, the fan is accountable for the failure of it to meet its goals.

“There is definitely excitement and enthusiasm from fans fueling this drive, but it also feels like driving the pledging frenzy is the underlying sense of guilt and worry. After all, if you don’t pledge, you may never see the book. If you don’t pledge, it means you don’t want the manga at all. If you don’t promote this book you’ve likely never read and this initiative you only have on a promise will deliver, there will be no book. If Digital Manga Publishing isn’t able to create and print this book it is your fault.”

I think this is a gross overstatement of the relationship between the publisher and its customers. Never in a million years would DMP blame customers for not supporting a Kickstarter campaign. That’s the easiest way to go out of business that I can currently think of.

You have no obligation as a manga reader, consumer, or even as a Tezuka fan to purchase or fund Kickstarter campaigns. If you have doubts about the system, that is your chance to not purchase, not make that jump. If you decide not to buy from Kickstarter, you have made your choice as a consumer. That’s your right.

The idea that guilt is an emotion that should be considered in the use of Kickstarter projects is farfetched. In no other industry is there guilt associated with not buying an item because the manufacturer or project will fail if you don’t. This is antithetical to the idea of modern business – if the project/product does not succeed, it is not your failure as a consumer. It is a failure of the business to meet the wants/needs of the consumer.

Feeling guilt about not buying into Kickstarter because you think the project will fail is equivalent to the false guilt for allowing certain titles like Gintama die. Gintama didn’t succeed as a business venture and was cancelled. If you didn’t buy it, it was because you didn’t want it. Why should you feel guilty if the product is discontinued? Neither of these is a rational view on the relationship between a consumer and a producer.

I have discussed my thoughts on traditional publishing with Lissa and many of the manga blogging community, but as a restatement here, I feel that traditional publishing is becoming antiquated in this largely digital world. There are certainly products that can exist without direct consumer input, but in a microniche world, this is becoming less and less the case.

The way we license product from Japan is an antiquated system that is being threatened in a small but significant manner.  As we move forward in the next 10 years, it is my hope that licensing and publishing in the United States continues to grow out of the system created in the 90’s and in a more open, more consumer-oriented way. For this reason, I fully support the Kickstarter campaign that DMP is running and will continue to support these projects provided that the product they are offering is something I want to buy.

And if I don’t buy? Well, I won’t be feeling guilty about it.

Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita

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It’s been a while since I’ve gone snooping around the internet for license requests, but it’s a new year, and a time to get back into the business of blogging.

The recently passed Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and New Year seasons are a time of celebration for many people in the United States, and a large part of these celebrations is spending time with family. Having spent a lot of time with family this past holiday, I started to think about manga that focuses on the relationships between family members. Some of my favorite manga published in English focus on family dynamics (Cross Game and Bunny Drop come to mind) and while these books are probably not the most monetarily successful, these series have been critically acclaimed, and are always series that I make sure to have copies of at my home (and promote tirelessly!).

After a bit of digging, I came across what looks like a real gem – Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita (つづきはまた明日, To Be Continued Tomorrow) a manga about the Fujisawa family, which consists of a 5th grade boy, a 1st grade girl, and a salary-man father. The mother in the family has recently passed away, and so the Fujisawas gets by with the help of the father’s younger sister. The story starts off as a new family moves into the home next door, and the neighbors look remarkably similar to the Fujisawas. It seems like a very remarkable story, and having recently dealt with the pain of losing a family member, the idea hits close to home.

Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita is written by Kita Konno and published by Gentosha. The series is currently at 3 volumes and counting, and is currently published on Gentosha‘s Web Spica, which honestly, I’m going to have to learn some Japanese to understand exactly what’s going on here, but it looks like an digital platform similar to www.sigikki.com. I’ve been pulled to this site before on the account of beautiful watercolors and other artwork, but I still haven’t explored enough to know exactly what is going on. More reasons to become bilingual, I suppose.

Kita Konno is not a widely known writer in the USA, but has written a mix of josei, shojo, yaoi, and yuri manga in a mix of anthologies. This mixed pedigree makes a me even more interested in her work, as some of my favorite authors (Natsume Ono, Fumi Yoshinaga) have the same type of mixed pedigree.

As far as publishers go, I am not sure if any of the publishers have a direct relationship with Gentosha, so perhaps someone like Yen Press might go for this title, or perhaps this might be a great candidate for Digital Manga’s Kickstarter crowdsourced publishing. (I believe that TOKYOPOP had a licensing relationship with Gentosha, but unfortunately, TOKYOPOP is no longer publishing manga. Probably.) It appears that the parent publishing company has done some work with digital comics, so that might be a good home for Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita, so either JManga or NetComics take note.

While manga about families suffering hardship and coming out of it together may not sell a lot of comics to the Naruto crowd, it has the appeal of a more independent, adult comics-reading audience, and as the manga-reading population ages, this sort of content may be a good step in that direction. I would love to see manga like this in the United States, and I challenge publishers to redefine the meaning of manga with titles like Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita.

Manga Widget Retrospective 2011 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

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At the beginning of the year, I posted my 2011 retrospective, hitting on a lot of the major news points of the 2011 year in manga and the publishing business, but I think that my retrospective had a large piece missing from it, that piece being the things that I really loved about 2011. As far as manga goes, there are quite a few things that were released or announced in 2011 that I have wanted for a long time, or found to be extremely wonderful. Today, instead of focusing on the “news” of 2011, let’s focus on the “renews” of manga – the things that renewed my enthusiasm and joy for comics.

 1. Drops of God is Licensed and Released in the USA by Vertical Inc.

 I have been writing about Drops of God well before its release in the USA. The series has always marveled me because of its wine economy-shifting powers and the way it champions the world of wine in an unpretentious, exuberant, and often fascinating way. Getting to read the first two volumes has been a fantastic ride, and a great reminder of why I love wine and comic books. I am looking forward to the identification of the disciples and the one wine to rule them all – but I am guessing I will be reading quite a while before I see that come to fruition.

2. Wandering Son Makes an English Debut

I have heard praise again and again for Wandering Son, a manga about two young children, a boy and a girl, who identify more with the opposite sex than they do with their own gender. This is a story of growing up, and of being different, and finding the support you need to live the way you want – volume one was one of my favorite manga in 2011, and having just purchased the second volume, I am looking forward to more of the simple slice-of-life that Wandering Son provides so well.

3. JManga Opens, and Actually Has Manga

I know I give JManga a lot of flak. I am a fairly demanding person when it comes to spending money on digital comics, and I don’t think that JManga is at a point right now where the service and selection are at a peak for their platform. They have been publishing 0-2 books per week now for the past few months, and while this is a fine pace, there are plenty of titles on the service that only have their first volume available to purchase.

Still, JManga represents a powerful tool to allow readers to legally purchase translated manga from Japan. If JManga continues to expand, manga that is “essential Japan” or too niche to be picked by a big publisher in the USA will become more and more a part of the offerings of the service. There have been a few great series that JManga has published that do this, and for that reason, I have to commend the folks at JManga for creating and improving their digital service in 2011. I am looking forward to more improvements in 2012.

4. Interacting With the Manga Community

One of the things I tried to focus on more in 2011 was interacting with other bloggers and writers who were talking about manga. I tend to be an internet lurker at heart – I love to sit and read other people’s comments, but I rarely talk about my own thoughts or opinions. That’s something I have slowly tried to change, and I commented more on blogs, spoke more on Twitter, and had the privilege of speaking on the Manga Out Loud Podcast twice in 2011, which was a great way to get to know more of my fellow bloggers. (Thanks to Ed and Johanna for the invitations!)

5. Hosting the Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about the Natsume Ono MMF a few months before November of 2011. Having never hosted before, I wasn’t sure of what the requirements would be, and how I would be able to do a good job. Following in the footsteps of some very talented bloggers, I managed to write and host the MMF, and I think that the whole thing was a great success. I feel great about the content we generated in that month, and I am looking forward to the next time I host an MMF.

6. Reading A Bride’s Story for the First Time

I have read quite a few comics since I really started getting into them about 8 years ago – but nothing, not a single book, has swept me into its world like A Bride’s Story. This manga is absolutely fantastic, and I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone, ANYONE, who likes a good story. It is wonderful. The third volume comes out this year, and I am already impatient for it.

I hope that everyone has had a great start to their new year. Hopefully this is a year of great manga (and a year to possibly get to a convention for me!).

Review: Breathe Deeply

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Breathe Deeply
Written and Illustrated by Doton Yamaki
Publisher: One Peace Books (October 1, 2011)
Language: English
Genre: Seinen
Pages: 474 pages
US $16.95
ISBN-13:978-1935548072

As a medical professional, I sometimes have a hard time reading medical dramas or watching medical shows on television.This is especially true with shows like House, where the way the series is set up forces it to be completely technical and still be somewhat accessible for the layperson. As part of a long-standing studying stress reliever, my friends and I would gather around the television during pharmacy school and analyze all of the things that were going wrong throughout a given episode of House. I remember running through lists of ways the medical team could have accurately diagnosed the patient and not half-killed him or her throughout the show.

It was this same sort of trepidation that I came into my reading of Breathe Deeply, a hefty volume of manga written by Doton Yamaaki, the pen-name of a husband and wife creative team who have been serialized in Kodansha‘s Morning, among other titles. This particular title seems to have been published by Sanctuary Publishing in Japan, which is a publisher I don’t have much information on; according to the One Peace Books website, the English publisher is a joint international venture of Sanctuary Publishing.

Regardless of the source of this piece of fiction, Breathe Deeply is a deep and sometimes dark look at one of the great medical debates still plaguing the medical community; the use of stem cell research to save lives.

Sei and Oishi are two young men in love with a sick girl named Yuko, a girl with an incurable heart condition that requires she receive a heart transplant in order to survive. She does not receive the necessary treatment in time, and passes away. The story of Sei and Oishi is one of heartbreak and stubbornness as each of them try to find their own way to a solution to Yuko’s illness after her death. Each of the men has a different outlook on the use of stem-cell research based on their interactions with Yuko. Sei, a brilliant chemical engineer, has created a polymer that can mimic heart cells and be applied to the failing heart to help massage it and keep it working, while Oishi struggles to have his research accepted as a major mode of inquiry into stem cell research (he has potentially discovered a unique way to create a new heart out of stem cells). The battle between them is one that weaves through the convoluted issues surrounding stem cell research – is transplant medicine ethical, is stem cell research murder to save future lives, and other modes of a morality vs. scientific progress argument.

Even when each character is at their highest point in the volume, each has to deal with the guilt and sorrow they’ve been grappling with for the past 15 years. It makes their struggles and fights more personal, their victories more bitter, and sets the stage for one of the most well-written “friendships” in manga for 2011. The way that Sei and Oichi play off of each other makes Breathe Deeply into a real interpersonal drama, where it otherwise could have been a sermon. Doton Yamaaki have an excellent eye for dialogue, and interactions in the lab seem very true to life, while the interactions between Sei, Oichi, and Yuko are a convincing mix of hormones, anxiety, and longing.

Doton Yamaaki have done an excellent job presenting both sides of the argument in this book, and it is clear that the only agenda the pair has is to write compelling fiction. In this area, they succeed, and do so with aplomb.  Breathe Deeply is a brilliantly written and illustrated piece of fiction that allows the reader to be drawn into personal fights and relationships while simultaneously asking the deepest questions and expecting no answers.

While I would not recommend Breathe Deeply to every manga reader (its often sketchy visual style and some adult scenes will not suit some readers), I do think that it is an excellent medical drama. The relationships are complex and human, and moments that could have been preachy or despicable are cast in that same human light. Overall, Breathe Deeply is a surprise success, and one of the better manga published in 2011.

A copy of this work was provided by the publisher for this review.

A 2011 Manga Widget Retrospective and Thoughts for 2012

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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!

Kickstarter: The New Model of the Micro-Niche?

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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.

Natsume Ono MMF Round Up: Day 4

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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.

Natsume Ono MMF Round Up: Days 2+3

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Wow, this week is going fast – we’re already close to halfway done with the Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast. If you have content you would like to have featured in these round ups, please send me a message using my Contacts page or the MMF Google Group. I am also scanning Twitter for the #MMF hashtag, and you can tweet me up at @mangawidget (There are so many ways you can say hi to me, so no excuses!).

Yesterday we didn’t have too much in the way of content, but I did post an essay regarding Natsume Ono’s different styles and her choice between the two in series like La Quinta Camera versus the more serious House of Five Leaves.  Some reviewers have poo-poo’ed the rounded, less complex style she uses for books like La Quinta Camera and not simple, and I think that these reviewers are missing a very significant point. Check out the link for more discussion.

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David Welch at the Manga Curmudgeon explored one of his older reviews from his Flipped! column (which originally ran at comicworldnews.com, and afterwards at The Comics Reporter) – in this case, it was a review of not simple back when Natsume Ono was first being published in the US. I’m going to steal a quote here, because I think it’s so perfect for the spirit of this MMF:

There’s just so much to admire about Ono’s work – its variety, its uniqueness, the level of talent it suggests. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope that she becomes one of those creators whose popularity transcends the audience specifically interested in comics from Japan and those who are interested in well-made comics in general.

It may be wishful thinking on my part, but nevertheless, I feel that this has been the case. Many of my American only comics friends have read House of Five Leaves. My little sister, who generally doesn’t read comics devoured La Ristorante Paradiso and Gente.

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Next up from this afternoon is a review of Tesoro by Kristen at ComicAttack.net. Kristen finds a lot to love about Tesoro, from the individual stories, the sketchy and spartan illustrations, and the book’s construction. Why haven’t I gotten my copy of this book yet?!?!

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Finally, Ash Brown at Experiments in Manga has a review of the first volume of House of Five Leaves. Ash points out the true strength of this series lies in the interaction between Masa and Yaichi, and how their strange friendship develops.