From the Manga Recon Blog comes a "Definitive Guide to Fumi Yoshinaga", which looks at the works of shoujo mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga.

The following manga appeared on the USA Today Booklist Top 150 (PDF) for the week ending March 9th:

• #17 - Naruto, Volume 28 - Viz - (Last week: #73)
• #115 - Negima!, Volume 17 - Del Rey - (Last week: #0)

Blog@Newsarama and MangaBlog both point out that Wildstorm Comics has posted previews of volume 1 of Yoshinori Natsume's Batman: Death Mask and Yoshito Usui's Crayon Shinchan on MySpace.

A round up of the new comic release list and views for the week of March 12th 2008:

• ComicList: ComicList for 03/12/2008
• MangaCast: New Manga Release List ~ March 12, 2008
• Manga Recon: Weekly Recon: Weekly Recon, 3/12/07
• Precocious Curmudgeon: Upcoming 3/12/2008

According to ICv2, Tokyopop will be releasing Fruits Basket creator Natsuki Takaya's first manga, Phantom Dream, this December:

The five volume series, Takaya's first published manga, was known as Geneimuso in Japan. It will be cross-promoted with Fruits Basket via a preview in Fruits Basket Vol. 21.

Also, MangaBlog reports that Tokyopop is planning on promoting volume 19 of its Fruits Basket manga by making the manga completely free online to Tokyopop.com members for 19 minutes:

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Shoujo mangaka Toshiyuki Suzuki, who draws under the name Kenichirou Suzuhara, has died of ischemic heart disease on February 9th. Suzuhara was an active shoujo mangaka in the 1960s whose manga were serialized in Shueisha's Margaret and other shoujo magazines.

Source: Asahi Shimbun

From Tech-On! comes an interview (Part 1, Part 2) with Tadashi Fukuda, president of Kadokawa Digix Inc., a Kadokawa group company, who talks about the recent deal between Kadokawa Group Holdings Inc. and YouTube/Google which might eventually allow users to upload Kadokawa's official contents to Youtube:

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The Age is reporting that a Japanese online bookstore called Papyless, which sells digital versions of books, is teaming up with Tezuka Production to make at least 448 stories by Osamu Tezuka available for purchase online in digital format:

Papyless, whose website is http://www.papy.co.jp/, said in a statement it would put the works online from March 18.

It will cost 105 yen ($A1.10) to read a volume over 48 hours.

Buying the work online will cost 315 yen ($A3.30) per volume.

Reuters is reporting that UNICEF, the Japan branch of the United Nations Children's Fund, is not satisfied with Japan's recent move to to ban possession of child pornography, and urges Tokyo to include child pornography in manga, anime and games in the ban:

[...] the Japan branch of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) urged Tokyo to beef up its laws by banning child pornography in manga comics, animated films and computer games as well as individual possession.

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ICv2 has an article that looks at Tokyopop's arsenal of videogame manga, including the Warcraft, Starcraft and Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Also revealed in the article is that Castlevania: Curse of Darkness by Kou Sasakura, a 2-volume series based on Konami's Castlevania franchise, will be released by Tokyopop this September.