JManga Rescues TOKYOPOP Titles from Limbo

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Is the third time the charm? That’s the question on this critic’s mind, as JManga announced that it will be releasing the first volume of Your & My Secret on Thursday, April 26th. Long-time manga readers may remember that Ai Morinaga’s gender-bending comedy has been licensed before, first by ADV Manga, which released one volume, [...]

PR: VIZ Announces Two New Shojo Beat Licenses

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Stop the presses! VIZ Media has just announced two new shojo licenses for 2012. The first, Io Sakisaka’s Strobe Edge, sounds like a perfect fit with the Shojo Beat catalog: the story focuses on a fifteen-year-old girl who befriends the class hottie, only to learn that he has a serious girlfriend. (Man, I hate it [...]

Manga Artifacts: Love Song

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Back in the 1990s, Matt Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ. Two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song. VIZ made a conscious effort [...]

Dr. Slump and Rock Lee Join VIZ Line-Up

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VIZ may not have made any splashy announcements at SakuraCon, but they’ve been busy enlarging their digital footprint. If you visit VIZManga.com, you’ll see that VIZ has added several new titles to their eBook catalog, including Shaman King and four Arina Tanemura series: Gentleman’s Alliance Cross, I•O•N, Short-Tempered Melancholic, and Full Moon. The most exciting [...]

The Apartments of Calle Feliz

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The Apartments of Calle Feliz begins with a scene cribbed from an Audrey Tatou flick. Luca, a struggling writer, has a terrible day: he breaks up with his boyfriend, then fights with his editor, who chastises him for writing “dark” endings. (“Nobody wants to read your sad story during a recession,” he tells Luca.) Desperate [...]

Links: A License to Read Manga

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Like many folks, I was so busy swooning over news of Thermae Romae and Paradise Kiss that I didn’t realize Dark Horse also unveiled new licenses last week. Of the five titles DH announced, two seemed promising. The first, Blood-C, is the latest installment of Blood: The Last Vampire, and features character designs by CLAMP’s [...]

Kitty & Dino

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Is it possible for the artwork in a kid-friendly comic to be… well, too good? I found myself wrestling with this question while reading Kitty & Dino, a playful, visually sophisticated graphic novel for young readers. The story is standard kid-lit fare, using animals to dramatize the dynamic between older and younger siblings. In this [...]

Est Em Coming to JManga This Week

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Good news for est em fans — JManga will be releasing her short-story collection Apartments of Calle Feliz (a.k.a. Happy End Apartment) on Thursday, April 12th. Calle Feliz focuses on Luca, a writer whose Eeyore-esque tendencies put him at odds with his editor and his boyfriend. When Luca moves to the fortuitously named Happy End [...]

Call for Participation: VIZ Signature Manga Movable Feast

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Every month, the manga blogging community holds an event that writer Matt Blind dubbed the “Manga Movable Feast.” It’s a week-long virtual book club in which we discuss a favorite artist, series, or genre in-depth. A new blogger “hosts” each month, determining the “menu” and ensuring that every participant’s contribution is properly noted. This month’s [...]

Breaking News: Yen Press Licenses Thermae Romae

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Paging David Welsh — yet another of his license requests has just been granted! On Friday, Yen Press announced that it will be publishing Mari Yamazaki’s award-winning comedy Thermae Romae. The story focuses on a Roman architect who makes a fortuitous discovery: the tunnel beneath his favorite spa leads to present-day Japan, providing him a [...]