News and reviews for the discerning manga fan
Katherine Dacey has been reviewing manga since 2006, when she joined PopCultureShock. Over the next two years, she worked with webmaster Jon Haehnle and fellow contributor Erin Finnegan to transform Erin’s “Manga Recon” concept from a bi-monthly column into a full-fledged website covering manga, anime, and Japanese pop culture. She stepped down from her post in January 2009. Kate’s resume also includes serving as a panelist at the American Library Association's national conference, New York Comic-Con, and Wondercon; contributing to Chopsticks, a “comprehensive guide to Japanese culture in New York City”; and contributing to the School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids blog, where she writes Good Manga for Kids, a column that focuses on manga for pre-teen readers. When she isn’t writing about manga, Kate swings a golf club, plays the oboe, runs long distances, watches old movies, and frolicks with her dog Grendel. Kate lives in Boston, MA.
Today’s round-up focuses heavily on reviews and analytical essays, with writers tackling manga from every stage of Osamu Tezuka’s career: Black Jack, The Book of Human Insects, Buddha, Princess Knight, and Swallowing the Earth. Linda Thai, who blogs at Something Deeper: Anime, Manga, and Comics, begins her exploration of Osamu Tezuka’s manga with Buddha, praising [...]
On the menu today: reviews, license requests, and a unique appreciation of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, courtesy of the Brazilian fan who helped organize Tezuka Day back in December 2011. Linda, a.k.a. AnimeMiz, makes the case for licensing Tezuka’s Umi no Toriton (a.k.a. Triton of the Sea), which she first encountered in its anime form. [...]
Welcome to the February Manga Movable Feast! On the menu: Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga. Before you dig into our first course, you’ll want to visit Tezuka in English, where Greg Baker has written an extensive, five-part overview of Tezuka’s entire career, from the 1940s through the 1980s. Begin your exploration of Tezuka’s life [...]
February 9, 2012 marked the twenty-third anniversary of Osamu Tezuka’s death. His career in the manga industry spanned five decades, from the early days of the akahon market to the industry’s zenith, when comics accounted for nearly 40% of all books sold in Japan. Over the course of his life, Tezuka produced more than 150,000 [...]
Soulless is saucy in the best possible sense of the word: it’s bold and smart, with a heroine so irrepressible you can see why author Gail Carriger couldn’t tell Alexia Tarabotti’s story in just one book. As fans of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate novels know, Alexia is a sharp-tongued woman living in Victorian London — or [...]
Apologies for the late posting this week! Today’s featured collector is Safetygirl, a self-described Shinsengumi fan and avid manga collector who owns over 2,000 volumes. As you’ll see from her drool-worthy photos, her tastes run the gamut from Kaze Hikaru to Golgo 13 to Arata: The Legend. She’s so dedicated to anime and manga, in [...]
Are you still mourning the end of Oishinbo? Have you re-read Antique Bakery more than five times? Do you ponder the edibility of the creatures in Toriko? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, I have great news: JManga will be releasing Kodoku no Gourmet, a foodie manga by the manliest manga artist [...]
This slim how-to manual caters to the manga fan who wants to become an artist, but finds the technical aspects of comic creation daunting. “If you’ve ever flipped through a How to Draw Manga book in a bookstore, looked at the pages that explain character design and perspective and thought, ‘I have to learn all [...]
Back in the 1980s — the heyday of Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone — Hollywood cranked out a stream of mediocre but massively entertaining B-movies in which a man with a freakishly muscular physique and a granite jaw battled the Forces of Evil, dispatching villains with a catch-phrase and a lethal weapon. I [...]
Back in the mid-2000s, fans’ most commonly cited reason for turning to scanlations was lag time: the English editions of popular series like Bleach, InuYasha, and Naruto were often five or ten volumes behind the Japanese releases, frustrating American readers’ ability to remain up-to-date with the latest plot developments. In 2012, we’re beginning to see [...]
When I lived in New York City, I went on my share of awesome first … [Read More...]
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan is loud and silly, the kind of manga in which … [Read More...]
Among the many books I read and loved as a child, few left as … [Read More...]
Below is a list of helpful English-language web resources about manga and manhwa. I update this page … [Read More...]
Since joining the Good Comics for Kids team in 2008, I've reviewed a variety of comics, graphic … [Read More...]
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