As parts of its advanced anime/manga course program "Manga and Anime Explosion: Story Development, Marketing and Adaptation," UC Irvine Extension has announced a field trip to Digital Manga's headquarters in Gardena:

Students will be able to ask questions of the staff and CEO, sign up for internships, and take a personal tour of the facility with Digital Manga's CEO, Hikaru Sasahara, a pioneer in manga publishing in the US.

Indian Catholic reports that manga-style illustrations are being used in a new vocations program from the National Office for Vocation of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales.

According to Fr. Paul Embery, Director of the National Office for Vocation: "We have chosen the Manga cartoons for the 2007 campaign, because we hope it will appeal to young people under twenty as well as people in their thirties. [...] Many of today’s priests and religious people say they first thought of their callings at the age of ten, sometimes even earlier."

Source: Indian Catholic

San Francisco, CA, April 26, 2007 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced the launch of NARUTO NATION™, a broad campaign that will bring an unprecedented increase in the frequency of publication of its wildly popular NARUTO™ manga series.

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ANN reports that a special sales campaign called the "I Love Fujoshi Fair" will take place on Wednesday in over 3,000 bookstores across Japan. The campaign's purpose is to promote two fujoshi works: Tonari no 801 chan by Ajiko Kojima and Fujoshi Kanojo (novel) by Petanbu:

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Celebrating their 30th anniversary, comics retailer Austin Books has announced their second annual Manga Melee event, which will take place this Saturday.

Discounted (25%-50% off) manga will be sold during the event. Also announced are special prizes provided by Tokyopop and Dark Horse, as well as Question & Answer and autograph sessions with special guests such as Rivkah and Tony Salvaggio.

Source: Newsarama

According to animeOnline, a Korean Manhwa exhibition will take place from April 21st at the Kawasaki City Museum:

The exhibit will continue through June 3rd and will feature manhwa artists such as Kim Dongwha (creator of A Story of Kisaeng and Bug Boy) and So-Hee Park (creator of Goong).

Industry Leader in Japanese Animation To Wow the Show from Booth #A012

San Francisco, April 17, 2007 - VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, arrives at MIPTV this year, Booth # A012, with a variety of exciting properties for both North American and International markets. Held in Cannes, France, April 16 though April 20, MIPTV is the global content event for co-producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment content across all platforms.

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To celebrate the release of the 80th volume of its boxing manga Hajime no Ippo, Kodansha will be releasing 3,000 sets of a special collector's edition box set called "Early Times Set." The box set will come with the first 30 volume of Hajime no Ippo.

From ANS comes an article on two of the largest anime events in Japan, the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) and the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF). According to the article, the Tokyo International Anime Fair is currently considering the coverage of manga:

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According to this press release, a special manga section will appear at the Bristol Comics Expo, taking place 12th/13th May:

This year will see a much expanded manga section in the Bristol Comics Expo, 12th/13th May, which will be put alltogether in a special 'manga alleyway'. The section is previewed at: http://www.comicexpo.net/spotlight.htm