September, 2007

According to The Beat, the winners of the 2007 Harvey Award were announced late last week. Yoshihiro Tatsumi's manga Abandon the Old in Tokyo tied with Moomin for "The Best American Edition of Foreign Material" Award. ICv2 also has a report.

In the latest issue of Flipped, David Welsh interviews Jason Thompson, manga editor for Otaku USA and the author of the upcoming book Manga: The Complete Guide.

topKumoricon took place on September 1st - 3rd. One of our staff, Sarah, was able to attend the event and return with lots of pictures and reports. Since we aren't known for our convention-reporting skills, we thought we'd try something different.

In our report, you'll find a map for each of the convention floors. Hover your mouse over the map, and pictures taken at that location will pop up. Clicking on the pictures, and a short report may pop up (make sure to enable Javascript!).

This is still an experimental feature, and is not as polished as we had originally planned. Please let us know what you think!

Anime! Anime! reports that 17 Japanese copyright holder groups have formed a committee to plan for the establishment of a new copyright portal next year. ANN has a translation:

A committee formed by 17 of Japan's copyright holder groups is planning to open a free Internet portal with a searchable database system of product details and copyright information for music, movies, television, music, literature, comics, anime, art/photo, and games next January. The objective is to provide convenient access to any media item's author, credited staff, and copyright information.

(September 10, 2007 - New York, NY) --David Hyde has been promoted to Vice President of Publicity, DC Comics, it was announced today by Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher. Hyde will continue to report directly to John Cunningham, VP of Marketing.

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According to Heisei Democracy, Hobby Japan will be releasing a collection of short comics titled Happy Fujoshi, which will feature works from 15 BL and shoujo mangaka detailing the daily lives of fujoshi:

"At last, a collection of authentic tales of the fujoshi lifestyle is introduced!", says the ad copy. "We've appointed boys' love and shoujo manga artists to bring you this assortment of happy love-love stories. The unbelievable daily lives of fujoshi will grab hold of your heart!"

Yaoi Suki points out a new yaoi manga listed on Amazon.com titled Yakuza In Love. According to the listing, the manga will be published by Deux and will be released in January 2008.

The DC Anime Club, an organization whose purpose is to educate the Washington, DC community about East Asian culture through the art form known as Anime (Japanese animation) will host a Marathon of Shoujo (girls)Anime on September 29,2007 from 2pm-5pm at the Martin Luthur King, Jr Memorial Library 901 G St NW Washington, DC 20001 in Room A9.

The Marathon will consist of screenings Girls Anime, Trivia, Prizes and More. For those unfamiliar with Shoujo, Shoujo is a specific genre of Anime and Manga that is aimed at female audience with such themes as romance and drama.

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Shinbunka reports that Touen Shobo (Toen Shobo) has closed its business on August 31st. According to the report, Touen Shobo notified their lenders regarding an adjustment of their debts on August 24th.

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• According a post on J.A.C. Bulletin, Lynn Okamoto, mangaka of Elfen Lied, will start a new manga in Young Jump this October centered around ski jumping.

• A new manga titled Assistant Romance Keika (アシスタント伝奇ケイカ) by Rosuke Nishikawa will begin in Young Animal No.11 (10/5).

• A new series titled Inanna (イナンナ) from Reiko Okano, mangaka of Onmyoji, will start in issue 41 of Morning, on sale 9/13.

• A manga version of Sushi Oji! (Prince Sushi!) (スシ王子!) will begin in issue 41 of Young Sunday, on sale 9/13.

• According to AoD, Kodansha Box will launch a new magazine called Pandora, which will be published twice a year.

Source: Ultimatum Tidbits

Japanese entertainment news site Tokyograph has launched a Digg-like social news site called TokyoGraph Link.

Tokyograph recently launched a Japan-related social news/bookmarking site, currently named TokyoGraph Link. The site is still in infancy, but improvements will be added over time.

The Sunday Times interviews Elmer Damaso and Jhomar Soriano, two Filipino manga artists who made it to the finals of the First International Manga Award Competition:

Because of their accomplishment, Damaso and Soriano were presented an award certificate by Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki during the celebration of the Japan Week last month.

The two artists talk about their lives, their professional manga career and the reason they became manga artists.

According to the latest entry in Icarus Publishing's blog, the adult publisher has acquired Tohru Nishimaki's Scarlet Desire (NSFW).

According to Shinbunka, Yoshimoto Kogyo's new seinen comedy manga magazine Comic Yoshimoto will cease publication after issue 7, on sale 9/18. According to the report, when the magazine was launched in June, sales did not meet the expected 250,000 copies.

Source: Ultimatum Tidbits

From ICv2 comes a 3 Part (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) interview with Tokyopop's Mike Kiley, who talks about the manga market as well as what's next for Tokyopop.

The Associated Press has published an article looking at how publishers are beginning to experiment with releasing comics on mobile phones. The article takes a close look at uClick's GoComics service, as well Tokyopop, which provides most of GoComics' manga titles, and is planning to include animations, games, ring tones, wallpaper and other content to their mobile manga offering:

Stu Levy, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based TokyoPop, one of the leading U.S. publishers of manga, said the domestic market is still way behind Japan. But he said he could see comics being released in the U.S. on mobile phones before coming out in print regularly in the next few years.

Hobby Japan is launching a new TRPG light novel label in October called HJ Bunko G (HJ文庫G). The following light novels will be published under the new label:

Source: LightNovel.org

San Jose, CA, September 2007. DrMaster Publications Inc. has just announced the street date of volume 5 of the popular series Lunar Legend Tsukihime. Fans of the hit Japanese anime, not to mention those of you lucky enough to play the import PC game, will revel in the thrilling continuation of Tsukihime.

A childhood accident has left young Shiki Tohno with a very special ability. He can now see the hidden lines or weak points in all things- be they organic or inanimate. By striking or cutting along these lines Shiki can slice through virtually anything like a hot knife through butter. Unfortunately the gift comes packaged with a nearly irresistible urge to kill using this new ability.

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The following manga appeared on the USA Today Booklist Top 150 (PDF) for the week ending September 2nd:

  • #62 - Naruto, Volume 18 - Viz - (Last week: #116)
  • #93 - Naruto, Volume 17 - Viz - (Last week: #123)
  • #102 - Naruto, Volume 16 - Viz - (Last week: #131)
  • #132 - Negima!, Volume 15 - Del Rey - (Last week: #0)

According to Canned Dogs, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure creator Araki Hirohiko has created a cover for a U.S.-based science journal titled Cell.

Also, ANN reports that Fist of the North Star artist Tetsuo Hara is premiering a children's anime series on the Japanese satellite channel KIDS STATION on November 5th.

Publishers Weekly reports that DC Comics is switching its book trade distribution from Warner Books/Hachette to Random House Publisher Services:

DC Comics is switching its book trade distribution to Random House Publisher Services after more than 20 years using Warner Books/Hachette for bookstore distribution. The switch will take place in spring 2008. DC will continue to use Diamond Comics Distributors to distribute to the comics shop market. The change teams one of the largest publishers of comics and graphic novels in the world with the book industry's largest and most far-reaching distribution service.

JBC Publishing has announced that it will release the manga Socrates in Love - O Amor Sobrevive ao Tempo (Sekai no Chuushin de Ai wo Sakebu) by Kyoichi Katayama (story) and Kazumi Kazui (art) in Brazil. The title is based on Kyoichi Katayama's best-selling novel of the same name.

Source: Papo de Budega

Anime! Anime! reports that a four-day manga festival will take place at the Akihabara Enta Festival between October 25 - October 28. According to ANN, the manga festival will "focus on the international popularity of manga, digital content, copyright issues, and other topics."

Source: ANN

Shueisha has released a new promotional video titled "Shining!!!" for its upcoming Jump Square, the replacement magazine for Monthly Shonen Jump.

Shueisha also updated the official Jump SQ site with three new serializations:

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