The Coast is a local free paper published weekly here in my home-city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s “independent and locally owned”, publishing every thing from local news, editorials, reviews and entertainment schedules, not to mention a bevy of ads that I love for always letting me know about fun local businesses I wouldn’t otherwise discover.

Recently I began writing reviews for the paper and my first was published in this week’s edition. The Coast is available to read digitally with its full print layout online and in blog-like format, where you can directly read my review of Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight. Writing in the shorter format has been a great exercise and I’m eager to share more of my favourite titles with fellow Haligonians.

Fellow Kuriousity writer, Shannon Fay, has been writing and reviewing for The Coast for a couple years now. Her reviews have recommended plenty of great manga titles to our local comic-loving populous. You can read her reviews online at The Coast’s website as well:

GoGo Monster
Solanin
Saturn Apartments (Vol. 01)
Black Blizzard
Peepo Choo (Vol.01)
Not Love But Delicious Food Makes Me So Happy!
A Drunken Dream
No Touching At All
La Quinta Camera: The Fifth Room
A Bride’s Story(Vol. 01)

Bakuman and Wandering Son also made her picks for Top 11 Books of 2011.

From now on I’ll be doing occasional round up of reviews by Shannon and I as they’re published in The Coast. If you’re in the Halifax area, I hope you pick up copies of the print edition and enjoy all the local literary flavour!

Just as promised when news of their existence was announced, SuBLime has launched their website this week. No titles are yet available to purchase but they have release dates listed for their first four titles due out January 31, 2011.

I really like the website’s design – simple, fast-loading and quite visually cute while simultaneously rather classy. There’s a newsletter  you can sign up for, as well as registration for the site itself which will allow you to comment and purchase and download the digital editions when they’re available. The forum is currently marked as ‘Coming Soon’.

Tonight SuBLime also announced a new title – Iwamoto Kaoru and Fuwa Shinri’s Yebisu Celebrities. The first volume was originally released by BeBeautiful back in 2007. SuBLime will be releasing this five volume series digital-only, starting in March 2012. The story takes places at a design firm, one where only the talented and attractive are allowed, as the new part-timer catches his boss’s eye. As part of the new license, SuBLime will be doing some related giveaways in January when the staff returns from holiday vacation.

ANNCast is always a must-listen for me over at AnimeNewsNetwork but they’re most recent two shows have been especially interesting for manga readers. I highly recommend listening to both:

ANNCast – Tarboxed and Feathered

“Justin and Zac shoot the breeze about some ANN business, and then it’s all awful blurays and the winter 2011 movie season. Then our guest shows up – longtime industry veteran Jonathan “Jake” Tarbox tells the story of his career up to this point, including his stint at Raijin Comics and DC Comics’ short-lived manga imprint CMX, and then takes your questions via Twitter. You can’t go wrong! “

ANNCast – Guy Kiley

“Former Senior Vice President of Tokyopop Mike Kiley is our special guest this week, and he runs us through his long and storied career at the shuttered publisher. We cover it all – the heady early days, the not so heady later days and the company’s untimely downfall. You’ve been waiting for this one!”

The manner in which DC handled choosing licenses for CMX was both fascinating and terrifying. It says a lot about the problems they faced over their years as a manga publisher and makes me more thankful than ever for the great titles we did get from them, some I know we’d never have gotten from anyone else (Key to the Kingdom – I love it, but really?). Knowing it was mostly done via a method akin to a dartboard shows how lucky we were for some. You could really tell things were tightening up over at CMX in its final year for selection and marketing though. It’s so unfortunate it was the beginning of the end.

This week’s ANNCast has Zac and Justin sit down to talk to Mike Kiley, Senior Vice President of the now no-longer-publishing-manga-until-I-see-otherwise, Tokyopop. He shares a lot about his experience with the company from the day it began up until his final days in their office. He’s a terrific guest and speaks very well with a lot of interesting info to offer. I was especially interested in hearing which series sold well and reasons for others not continuing, such as Kino no Tabi. I regret no one, myself included, thought to ask about Tokyopop’s boys’ love imprint, BLU, but it’s a minor quip in an otherwise great look at TP’s life start to finish.

Manga Out Loud isn’t plugged nearly enough on my website – it’s definitely top of my giddy list when a new episode comes out. Ed Sizemore and Johanna bring on a whole bunch of fun and super-knowledgeable guests to discuss different manga titles and topics on the show, plus the two are a great podcast duo on their own. So go! Listen! Enjoy!

Ed and Johanna are also now the second crazy generous people to have me on-board for a podcast with this week’s Going Digital – a podcast where we all discussed different elements of digital manga: what’s out there, what we think of it and the pros and cons, among lots of other things. It was lots of fun and my thanks again to everyone there for having me. It’s a big bummer that my computer/internet wasn’t agreeing with me so unfortunately my sound quality is nearly inaudible at times. Witness listening however the power of a very patient group of podcasters! Once you’ve finished listening, Ed’s podcast post is worth visiting for the extensive show notes alone if you’d like to read more about digital manga and see lots of legal links to access it.

During the podcast I definitely took the pro-book over digital side (not that there were really sides, per say) and it was great hearing others thoughts on the benefits of digital access for them. It was also a big reminder how lucky I am to live in a city with a store like Strange Adventures and a dozen libraries. I’m sure I’ll embrace reading manga digitally more when/if I ever indulge in an iPad but I can’t see it ever taking the place of buying books. Would be neat for one-shots and longer test chapters though to determine buying new series less blindly. Time shall tell! If there’s one thing you can definitely say for digital manga, it’s that it still has lots of changes yet to come.

San Diego Comic Con 2011 is in its final hours today so its round-up time! As the biggest pop-culture convention of its kind, there were many bloggers on site to record all the details, so, while here on Kuriousity I’ll just be giving the brief run down of manga-related news, I’ll also be giving select links of where you can go to learn more.

Digital was the biggest news of the year. For everyone’s benefit, I’ll forgo my usual sad sighs and short rambles at the trend of more digital and less paper and skip right to summing up the news!

Edit (July 25th): More info re: Viz Media’s licenses added

Viz Media launched their new manga-portal website, VizManga.com, over the weekend. It shares accounts with their iPad/iPhone manga buying systems so that anything you buy through your Apple product, you can now read online -and vice versa. It’s like the Viz Media Kindle, minus currently any portable accessbility for those without an iPhone or iPad.

Currently the website has forty different series you can purchase volumes from spanning all across their imprints. The website is offering 40% off all the digital volumes until July 31st and has lots of free previews. At full price the volumes are $4.99-$5.99/US each.

Over at the Manga Bookshelf, Melinda takes both Viz Media’s manga site and Square Enix’s (which I didn’t have much good to say about when it launched) sites for a test drive with detailed reasons why you should, or shouldn’t, check them out.

JManga.com – the “first official Japanese comic site” – is set to launch on August 17. The website will have translated manga posted for readers to purchase from a number of Japanese publishers. How much the manga will cost will vary publisher to publisher and the quality of said manga (adaptation, lettering, etc.) will remain a mystery until the manga goes live as well. Unfortunately for the curious, this launch looks like it’ll be for those in the US only, at least for the first while. (More info available at AnimeNewsNetwork)

Also on the digital front, Dark Horse  said they’re looking to launch a method of reading their manga digitally in the near future and Square Enix is currently offering the first volume of their series free (though again only for those in the US).

Now onto my most anticipated news of any convention – the licenses! Alas publishers didn’t have many to offer at SDCC (the tsunami in Japan being cited as the number one reason), but there were still a few to look forward to thanks to Yen Press and Viz Media:

YEN PRESS:

Durarara - Akiyo Satorigi/Ryohgo Narita
Kore wa Zombie desu ka? - Shinichi Kimura/ Sacchi
Olimpos – Aki

VIZ MEDIA:

A Devil and Her Love Song – Miyoshi Tomori
The Earl and the Fairy – Mizue Tani/Ayuko

Admittedly of the three Yen Press titles I’m only excited about Aki’s Olimpos after enjoying her one-shot work, Utahime, as published by Digital Manga, but something is better than nothing! Both of Viz Media’s books look lovely though – I’ll definitely be picking those up! Overall not much for one of the biggest cons of the year but with NYAF coming up in October, fingers crossed we get some more titles announced then.

And as a brief but great-to-hear finish to the manga news, Naoki Usawara’s 20th Century Boys won an Eisner award for best Foreign Language (Asian) release this year. Congrats to him and Viz Media for their excellent work!

… anod some bonus awesome SDCC news:

- More information, character sheets and a trailer for the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender spin-off series – The Legend of Korra! I was one of many hanging onto every image, clip and word on Twitter as attendees at the panel posted them live. You can check out the trailer here to view the awesome  animation we’ve come to expect and crave after ATLA.

- Speaking of nice animation, a bunch of new clips for the upcoming Thundercats animated series have been posted. They look awesome! I’ve been watching a lot of the original Thundercats series for the first time lately thanks to Teletoon Retro so I’m really interested in seeing the new super shiny version.

A post over on the CLAMP_now community forums has confirmed what has long since begun to feel like the inevitable: CLAMP in America is officially cancelled.

“The title ‘Clamp in America’ has been cancelled. There is no tentative release date scheduled for this title at this time. The only pending volumes currently scheduled for release from Clamp are XXXHolic 17 in September of this year and XXXHolic 18 in December of this year.”

After initially being announced at San Diego Comic Con 2008, CLAMP in America was an informational and fandom oriented book about the manga group CLAMP and their history, influence and popularity in North America. It was (or would’ve been) written by Shaeon Garrity with interviews and input from fans, comic creators and CLAMP themselves. The book had been delayed every couple of months since then with no word from DelRey saying anything otherwise, until now.

This comes as a pretty big disappointment as I’d really been looking forward to it, both as a huge CLAMP fan and someone who enjoys Shaneon Garrity’s writing. That said, I’m not really surprised, especially since DelRey’s manga licenses recently shifted over to Kodansha Comics (with only XXXHolic currently remaining in their hands until it ends) and Dark Horse being the current CLAMP powerhouse with their omnibus editions. It’d be wonderful, however unlikely, if we could see the book shift over to Dark Horse; it’d be a great compliment to their CLAMP library.

Unfortunate and not the news we’d been waiting to hear but at least we’ve now heard something.

Why the brief pop culture lesson? Well I was thinking… what would manga publisher -tans look like? If you were to think of Tokyopop, Viz, Yen Press, etc. as little people, what would they look like? A business man? An excited fan decked out in merchandise? A classy connoisseur? A colourful combination?

I’m looking for your ideas, inspirations and fun brainstorming sessions – I’ll then be taking the most referenced qualities from readers and doing my best to give them some artistic life! Just a little fun during these snowy winter weeks. Or maybe you’ve seen or drawn your own? Feel free to share as well!

So how do you see a manga publisher getting a -tan?

Viz Media is starting the new year with a brand new website! And that is sadly where my enthusiasm ends.

I’d stated a short while back that I’d be continuing with my publisher website reviews, a longer than intended hiatus previously taken after several companies requested I wait. Viz Media’s website, or their old one at least, was my newest completed review, a rather frustrating irony in that so soon after I finished did this new site go up. But I digress, this is about the new site and naturally after finishing a review of their old site, and thoroughly going through my likes and dislikes of it to myself, I had presumptuously high hopes that I may see some of my complaints already addressed in this version when I saw it was live.

Alas… Viz Media, what were you thinking?

The change is definitely a big one, the white backgrounds and multi-column layout have been replaced with a more sparsely laid out grid and fancier Javascript based navigation and design. While the old site didn’t immediately scream ‘book publisher’, this new site makes it even less clear what they do and what kind of company they are. It looks like the beginnings of a store more than a publisher’s website with information of series difficult to find – or more accurately to say, completely non-existent.

The worst part, worth noting right off the bat, is that the majority of links clicked on lead to a maintenance page:

Page Under Maintenance

This page is currently undergoing maintenance. Please check back soon!

While one could argue invalidity in reviewing a website clearly labeled as undergoing maintenance, I’d refute that there’s no reason a site as unrefined and clearly unready to go was put live in the first place. Viz Media has put this out there as something they see fit for visitors and thusly as their chosen representation. Areas of the website that aren’t working include all informational pages on the series, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Contact, Jobs, Press Releases, FAQ… in fact, the only pages that are working seems to be the main page and the indexs of Manga, Anime and certain imprints.

All previous links to Viz Media’s website now lead to broken pages with no redirectors put in place. Search engines have become almost entirely obsolete in finding the website or information specific to anything they offer and it’s unfortunately guaranteed to cause a plummet in their page rankings making it even harder to find their site once (we assume) it does finally does get off the ground.

Graphically the pages are fairly openly laid out, mostly light on text with a scattering of gridded images. The black backgrounds make for a richer looking appearance than before but the exact same layout on every page is stagnant. Regrettably their use of large graphics, which animatedly shift between different pieces of artwork, is a distracting eyesore, engulfing the entirety of the screen but offering little substance. All links on the artwork leading to what we assume is information pertaining to them is either not yet functional or broken. The majority of the pages themselves also aren’t probably sized to different screen sizes and cause cut-offs on the right side with scrolling to dead space. The bottom of the site also has blank white space for an inch or so which looks more like a mistake in coding than an intended design element.

When you load it up, the main page of the website looks like this (with different images rotating in):

It promotes one series at a time with a single graphic, definitely a domineering feature when you load the page so it’s effective at marketing a single volume or DVD at any rate. Any further information on the site however, such as recent release information, requires users to scroll down to find it. There’s also nowhere on page that introduces Viz Media as what they are or what they provide – no ‘About’ Viz Media with the exception of short introductory paragraphs on the Anime and Manga specific pages.

Navigation on the top of the site has been reduced to three specific headers – Store, Products and Company. Though tidy it also imbues the notion this site has very little to offer. Hovering the mouse over each one yields a drop-down menu with more options including links to different site imprint pages. The coding is a little choppy on this and flickering happens easily when trying to use them (plus they crashed the page out twice when trying to use them via Safari on my iPhone).

Upon using the navigation links to go to a specific imprint page, you’re greeted with a two-option page banner – the first a graphic heavy promotion of key titles under Features (which again sport no working links) – and the second is the option to click Series Listing which prompts an inline frame that has a list of all the series published under that name. Currently none of the titles on the list are linked to anything and provide no information past the title.

At the bottom of every page there is a New Releases and a Coming Soon section which have click-through lists of just what the sub-sections would indicate. Information provided is thumbnails, title, volume number, release date, imprint, age rating and a Buy Now button leading to Viz Media’s own store – all of which are great to have. It’s too bad though that this information is pushed down at the bottom of each page, and with no links leading to be in-depth information such as a synopsis or prior volume information, there’s a serious hampering of their effectiveness. Navigation of it also isn’t entirely clear, requiring button clicking at the bottom to move from Next or Previous which then utilizes an animated scroll screen to view more titles.

The top of the site has a large easy to find search feature and the results of which are the most promising of this new design. Typing in ‘Bleach’, as an example, returns a long page of thumbnails for all existing volumes of the manga, DVDs from the anime and the art books. It loads fast and is very thorough and tidy. Unfortunately the links either lead to the Viz Store or to another Page Not Found site.

Past missing the information itself, the site also lacks any reference to their submission policies and no more blog on the front page, adding to the Under Maintenance contact page to make this is a completely cut-off site communicatively with consumers. Thankfully all of Viz Media’s previous imprint specific websites such as ShojoBeat.com and ShonenSunday.com remain intact and provide the information their hub website now lacks.

All formalities aside, this is a rather big stinker of a website. The navigation is poor, the graphics and needless animations distracting (and really hurt my eyes I must admit) and the lack of information is mind-boggling. What’s worse though is why Viz Media would put such an unfinished website up in the first place – was the idea of starting the New Year with a new website more important than ensuring the quality of the site itself? This website may be framework for something better, but as it is it has no place live to their customers, providing little more than dead ends, broken links and a veritable style over substance approach to marketing.

My diagnosis – bad site. My recommendation (and hope) is that Viz Media puts the old site back up and offers this new one as a beta for preview purposes only in the meantime. They should get user feedback on the new look and keep adding new content and working out the bugs until it’s fully ready for the public.

Don’t get me wrong, this can be a good site but right now it definitely isn’t.

It’s New Years Day! And that means the end of 2010 has come and gone – the end of the first decade of the 2000s’, the end of another year of fantastic comics (upon other many wonderful things).

Just for a little living in the past on this first day of 2011, what better time to look back at 2010 with some favourites, surprises, disappointments and neat website tidbits. Sure it would’ve made more sense to have posted yesterday but who has time with all those celebrations going on… right?

It’s been a fun year here at Kuriousity with all the writers contributing their own to the site. At the beginning of 2010, we also welcomed our newest reviewer Jaime Samms to the team who has been covering boys’ love light novels. Yay! Below are some of our top posts:

Most Popular Non-Review Posts in 2010:

Scanlation Sentiments: My Answers to Your Statements
No New Del Rey Titles After November 2010?
Tyrant Who Falls In Love Listed for OVA Release
Vertical Licenses Osamu Tezuka’s Ayako
VIZ Launching Digital Supplement for Shonen Jump Subscribers

Most Popular Review Posts in 2010:

Incubus Master (Part One)
Twilight the Graphic Novel (Vol. 01)
Pig Bride (Vol. 03)
Cute Devil
Your Love Sickness

Total Number of Posts: 406
Reviews Posted: 200

So in 365 days we managed to review 200 books, not too bad (and the exact number of reviews posted in 2009 as well). But, curious about what books came out in 2010? AnimeNewsNetwork has a handy list to show you just that. The list shows 997 manga titles out in 2010, not including manhwa (Korean) and manhua (Chinese) titles. That is a lot of books!

It’s so hard to pick favourites of anything (and I try my best to steer clear of the word ‘best’ because I think that’s pretty subjective person to person) but I did my best to select from the long list of books out this year which were the ones most memorable to me, for better or worse in some cases. I also restricted myself to only naming a particular series once so in a more accurate me-world there’d be a lot of overlap but for the sake of having a nice and varied list, one per subject it is:

Favourite Continuing-Through-2010-and-Beyond Series:

(6-Way Tie) Black Jack, Pet Shop of Horrors Tokyo, 20th Century Boys, Pokemon Adventures, Yotsuba&!, Bunny Drop – It’s far too difficult to choose a favourite series but these six are my top picks, the series that when a new volume comes out, I need it. Now. There’s a good bit of variety in the selection but all have a combination of great characters and complimenting artwork that I just can’t get enough of! All six series are currently on-going so for all the volumes I enjoyed of them in 2010, it’s great to know there’s even more coming in 2011.

Favourite Where-Have-You-Been-All-My-Life Series:

Ouran Host Club – I was lucky to find a set of volumes 1-15 for super cheap at my local comic store and as a huge fan of the anime, I had to finally pick this manga series up. I’ve been reading through it at a pretty quick pace this last week of 2010. I’m ten volumes in and loving it. It’s such a unique, fun and absolutely adorable series – I just want to hug every single character. I can’t wait to finish these volumes and await the new ones.

Favourite Tear-Jerker:

Pluto - And by favourite I mean only and by tear-jerker I mean of course it made me sad enough to cry, not to mention it’s depressing in itself having this series come to an end this year. This series had it all – suspense, drama, romance, angst, explosions and giant robots. Naoki Urasawa took the basics from Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy and made something really special, an eight volume manga I’d recommend to any reader (above the age of 16).

Favourite Purchase of the Year:

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus (Vol. 01) – While reading this series wasn’t new to me, this re-release by Dark Horse was still one of my highlight purchases of the year. The quality of this book is incredible – from the sheer amount of pages you get, to the tweaked adaptation for more fluidity and the pages upon pages of full illustrations, this was a gorgeous blend of nostalgia and quality. Magical girl shows don’t get much better than this.

Favourite Series to Fangirl Over:

Black Butler – Do I ever love this series. Wow, though not really in the ‘this-is-top-notch-stuff’ way but in the ‘I’m-being-perfectly-catered-to-for-entertainment’ sort of way. Specifically the art and character designs, both of which are sleek, sharp and use lots of black. Gotta love that butler. Oh and the plot’s kind of cool too.

Favourite Surprise:

(Tie) Toriko & House of Five Leaves - There were two series I went into with little to no expectations: Toriko, because of it’s food-centric plot line and rather unattractive art style, and House of Five Leaves because of how boring I found the artist’s previously released series (Gente and Ristorante Paradiso). But both series surprised me and quickly became favourites. Toriko I’d easily say is my favourite shonen currently running and I was really eager to get my hands on volume two of House of Five Leaves for more of that brilliantly subtle character drama.

Favourite Art Style:

(Tie) XXXHolic & Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles – Does it count as a tie if the two series are done by the same people and overlap with one another? Either way, both excellent. If I had to choose one of the two, it’d be XXXHolic for CLAMP’s brilliant use of blacks and minimal toning but Tsubasa offers up some epic magical fight scenes and an assortment of gorgeous character designs. Tsubasa had its final volume released this year while XXXHolic continues on with Watanuki having an excuse to dress in jaw-dropping beautiful clothing and lazing about looking darn good.

Favourite Improvement:

(Tie) Bakuman & Rin-Ne – Both of these series I went into really wanting to like. Bakuman is a story of budding manga artists by the creators of Death Note, while Rin-Ne is the next series from Rumiko Takahashi. Unfortunately the first volumes left me feeling cold – one full of air-headed characters too and the other just flat-out dull. Thankfully their subsequent volumes have proven far more enthralling and now I await volume three of Bakuman and volume four of Rin-Ne with renewed enthusiasm. Huzzah!

Favourite Guilty Pleasure:

Zone-oo – Oh, Zone-00 – your plot makes little to no sense, your characters are downright insane and your art style is gorgeous. From boys who look like underage girls to guys so huge and hairy they can block out the sun, there’s no end to the over the top character designs that make this book a treat to read every time. The plot, though rather non-nonsensical, is at least helped along tremendously by the writing which utilizes some of the best slang and attitude in translated manga I own.

Favourite Production Values:

Chi’s Sweet Home – Not being a fan of cats, a series about a cat being, well, a cat, falls short on my list of favourites. What Chi’s Sweet Home does possess that still attracts me to it every time I see it on the shelf is the production values. From the cute trim size to the smooth paper and full colour printing, it’s a downright adorable book whether you care much for the content or not.

Favourite to Read When I Want A Great Laugh:

Butterflies, Flowers - This isn’t a series I’d ever recommend for a great relationship in terms of any actual substance, health or believability, but if you’re looking for one that fodders some great comedy then look no further. The first volume was hit or miss with more flop than flair thanks to the one-sided dynamic between the characters yet once it got going, it’s one of my favourite series to sit down with. I know that I’ll have plenty of laughs from this sexually-driven shoujo an (obviously) older audience.

Favourite Shoujo:

Shinobi Life – I was completely smitten with this series from the first volume. A school girl and a time-travelling ninja doesn’t immediately imbue the most confidence but Shinobi Life makes it work. Both characters read a bit more mature than your average shoujo leads and there’s a good combination of drama and action to save it from being just another ‘two-worlds-one-love’ story. Most recently the story delved into potentially too-cheesy-to-work angle with more time travel and younger selves yet it still makes it work!

Saddest To See End Too Soon:

Stolen Hearts – One of the casualties of CMX’s demise, Stolen Hearts is one of the most charming shoujo series I’ve ever read so I was most sad of all to see this series come to an abrupt end. It tells the story of a class’s tallest student and the class’s shortest student falling in love over spilled drinks and kimonos. It’s so charming and full of mush, I’d love to get a chance to read more.

Favourite Boys’ Love of 2010:

Tyrant Who Falls in Love – Say what you will about the non-consensuality of this series (a somewhat regrettably rampant trope in boys’ love) but I loved this first volume to no end. It helps Hinako Takanaga is one of my favourite manga-ka, hands down. The exaggerated artwork and over the top situations were either good for a laugh or a well-entertained sigh of WTF-ery and I’m certainly in for the long haul to see when this relationship hopefully becomes one with a bit less ‘force’ behind it.

Most Love-Hate Relationship:

Peepo Choo – Oh Peepo Choo, definitely the most gratuitously violent and sexualized  title I’ve read all year. It certainly had a vibe all its own and it’s commentary on geek groups was on the nose enough to offend some folks. Though some of its overlapping plot elements didn’t play out that well, I still found myself enjoying all the culture shock elements of the plot and the array of unlikable yet still entertaining characters.

Can’t-Believe-I-Don’t-Have-Them-Yet of 2010:

(Tie) One Thousand and One Nights (Vol. 11) & Dragonball Omnibus – These are two things I spent the duration of 2010 telling myself I needed to buy and for one reason or another haven’t yet. I’m a huge Dragonball fan but having already bought and read various editions of the manga, I couldn’t get myself to buy these new omnibus despite how much I want them. Next year! As for One Thousand and One Nights, I just had trouble finding this – it never popped up on any local book shelves despite the presence of the rest of the series and it was quickly listed as out of stock on Amazon.ca. Thankfully it came back up as available just this week so with an order placed, I should at least have this one to look forward to early 2011! Such a beautiful story with heart-wrenching tales told within it.

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And then to round things out, a few memorable-for-different-reasons-series:

So Bad They’re Almost Good:

(Tie) Stepping on Roses & Black Bird - The key phrase is almost good. Or maybe it’s so bad… either way, these are two shoujo series that make me cringe with their unlikeable characters and offensively one-sided relationship dynamics that are played seriously. Stepping on Roses is my least favoured of the two, with Black Bird being a tad more tolerable if only because I give an ounce of credit to people doing stupid things when you take into consideration how screwed up the lead female was in the first volume. That’s not really a compliment to the story though which is obviously released to appeal to the Twilight crowd, sharing a lot in common with the sparkling-vampire relationships.

Most Near-Impossible-To-Drag-Self-Through of 2010:

(Tie) Sasameke & Red Hot Chili Samurai - Not too much to say about these two books as I’ve yet to be able to even finish them in their entirety. Boring. Boring. Boring. The story of a boy  who loves soccer being forced to play soccer and a samurai who eats chili peppers just didn’t offer up anything but a deep, dull-induced groan.

Most Disappointing Manga of 2010:

(Tie) Ayako & Ghost Hunt (Vol. 11) – My two biggest disappointments of the year, both I awaited with high hopes and eager eyes only to feel dissatisfied upon finishing. I’ve enjoyed nearly every Osamu Tezuka work I’ve read but Ayako is a definite exception, a dry and overly-dreary story about equally dry and overly-dreary people doing  bad things. Ghost Hunt (Vol. 11) was like the crescendo of the continually dwindling quality in the series including some really lazy looking artwork and a story that stops without resolution, not to mention benching almost all the main characters. Much sadness.

Most ‘Blech’ Manga of 2010:

AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga – Not only the worst book I read this year, but easily one of the most terrible manga I’ve ever read – speaking from my own personal opinion of course. This is definitely something you would say ‘is not for me’. Pretentious stories that relied on gross and gory to be edgy offered little in the way of thought-provoking stories or any especially memorable commentary of any kind past ‘look what we can do and call art!’. It felt like it expected a full pass on its mediocrity by stamping ‘artsy’ on itself. Worse off though I suppose was the surprise I felt at the mass amount of critical praise for a collection I couldn’t fathom ever touching again. Just goes to show how diverse some peoples’ tastes can be (and welcomingly so despite any disagreements).

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And that’s my semi-brief round-up of memorable 2010 reading! What were some of your favourites? Some of your least favourites? Or some of the titles  you missed that you intend to catch up with in 2011. Later this week I’ll also be posting my most-anticipated for 2011 so I hope you come by to share what titles you’re most looking forward to in the new year.

But all that said - HAPPY NEW YEAR! May 2011 be a great one.

This past week Square Enix officially opened it’s online manga store. You can check out their press release for all the nitty-gritty details and of course visit their website yourself to have a surf around. In short, the company is offering volumes of the manga they hold the rights to through their site for a set price. The volumes, once purchased, are available to be read via a browser based reader on their site, a very similar set-up to Digital Manga’s eManga website.

Square Enix’s site has been in the works for a while and it offers up unique possibilities for North American manga readers with its selection of manga from different publishers, currently Viz Media and Yen Press. Unfortunately it’s launch has left some readers cold and I can’t help but look at it as an embodiment of many elements I think are what have been holding digital manga back. This isn’t meant to be anything against Square Enix specifically but browsing through their site got my brain going on the concept itself. It’s got some good things going for it but has some big scare-away first impressions for consumers.

For many in the same boat as I, the “can only be purchased by U.S. residents” is the big kicker and end-all right there but I’ll go forward looking at this as a more broad look at digital manga. WhileI share my thoughts under the cut, I’m interested in knowing what our readers here think of digital manga – yay or nay, why and how? What are you looking for in the format, price and content of digital manga?

Format

Square Enix’s website utilizes an online reader to view their manga, very similar to the readers utilized by Viz Media, Tokyopop, Digital Manga and Yen Plus. Their players works well, it loads quickly and the pages turn smoothly – it even has a snazzy page-turn effect by ‘grabbing’ the corner of the pages. It’s not anything that makes the reading experience any easier but it’s a nice visual touch.

The reader has a few small glitches, namely clicking certain places on the player result in a big Square Enix logo instead of your manga page. Sometimes the pages would also load up blank but this could be a momentary server glitch over the player itself so it’s a fairly small quip regardless. The largest downside to the player itself is the use of Flash, which means you can’t read it on many mobile devices. This is a huge issue for those who like digital for its mobility, something Yen Press was able to get around by presenting Yen Plus using javascript. There’s also the pesky need to download something to make the reader play properly for some which won’t go over well with everyone, such as rightfully concerned folks about what clutters up their computer installation-wise.

Right of Ownership

This is for many the biggest issue of them all when it comes to digital content- when paying to buy something digitally, do you really own it? For sites like Square Enix’s, when you pay for a volume of manga you’re not paying to own it,  you’re paying to have access to it (as quoted from SE: “a license to view”).

“You do not have any property rights in the Manga; instead you have a terminable, revocable license.” – Square Enix’s Term of Use

Sure it saves on needing to buy a special device to play it or have the space to store it, but it also means you’re restricted to reading what you’ve paid for only when you have access to the site itself (and thus internet access). And what if the site goes down for technical issues? What if the site completely shuts down someday? What is the extent that this purchase price entails?

Recently issues have arisen with Amazon and their KINDLE device that really drive home the issue of ‘ownership’ and just what kind of rights we have with digital content we’ve paid for. If you buy a paper book, it’s yours – you put it in your bag, take it home, read it and put it on your shelf. It’s yours to keep, sell, donate or lend how you please. Recent claimed acts by Amazon (I personally can’t confirm this happened) have shown that despite downloading onto your own system, presumably then ‘owning’ it, Amazon reserves the right to take it back. At their discretion, it was said they were deleting eBooks off consumers devices after they’d been paid for. I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty scary thought to me and hardly the relationship between consumer and seller that I’ve come to appreciate.

Paying for something on a subscription basis, which generally comes with a pre-established time period, is one thing perhaps but when you’re buying to own a volume, has digital found a way to truly offer the security and dependability many buyers are looking for?

“SQUARE ENIX reserves the right to discontinue all or part of the Service at any time with or without prior notice to you, at which time the User Agreement will be terminated for all affected users.”

Content

Content is something that really stood out to me with Square Enix’s site in particular. The offerings of books from both Yen Press and Viz Media was nice but it’s hard to get excited about volumes that have already been available in English in print from these companies for a long time, and are still easily available today. Full Metal Alchemist, Soul Eater, Record of a Fallen Vampire… Is there still a big audience for these books?

On one hand you have those who’ve already bought and read the original books – what reason would they have to purchase these from Square Enix’s site? The restriction of being able to read them only on the site means they don’t have any more accessibility then before as an eReader addition could offer, and from what I can see it doesn’t offer anything new such as extras that the original license holder could offer making such a repurchase worth it. It’s really disappointing to see no ‘new’ titles offered to really show their ability to offer more than we’ve already got.

Looking at this from the perspective of new readers, the original books are still available for them to purchase or borrow – so what benefit does this online store offer to them in terms of purchasing complete volumes? The site does thankfully offer free previews of the volumes but even then they seem more useful for those considering purchase of the books. This is especially easy to presume when taking into consideration the price of the volumes…

Price

Square Enix is currently selling their digital volume access at $5.99 per, this being the “special introductory price”. It leads one to wonder what the regular price will be per volume. Even simply looking at this special price, it’s pretty darn steep. $5.99 for the right to view a manga volume through their website, when for only a couple dollars more you could own the physical copy?

I see these prices and I feel confused as to what Square Enix feels the value is to the customer to warrant these prices (when comparing to what we currently pay for print editions). At least when buying the book copies from publishers, I understand the costs of licensing, translating, adapting, lettering, printing and then distribution, all while trying to keep the costs as low as possible for buyers. In this instance with the digital copies, the adaptation and lettering has been done already and I can only assume they don’t have much else in the way of licensing fees as they themselves own the original series, though I don’t fully understand if Viz Media or Yen Press receive compensation for these versions.

Unfortunately for both Square Enix and buyers like myself, I simply don’t see the benefit of these digital volumes past a quick fix online, and frankly we all know the big looming shadow word that’ve long been the easy quick fixes. A $5.99 price-tag is not about to inspire many to seek alternative means of getting their manga, especially when it just seems to scream cash-grab with little innovation to support it. Where’s the new content? Out of print content? The totally-worthwhile convenience?

“The prices for each license will be set forth on the Service website and may change without advance notice.”

This line from their ToS doesn’t invoke the most faith either, even if a fairly common thing to hear for any such sites. It’s worrisome more so if Square Enix ever tries a subscription route, I never like those uncertainties when my manga or money is involved!

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Square Enix’s manga store is another jumping into the fray to see what works, but I think they may be starting with expectations too high for what they’re offering. Online manga should be aiming to offer readers what scanlations are always touted as providing in their purest intentions – manga the reader can’t get in their language or in print at all. Until sites start offering this, and at prices comparable to the value manga readers are used to paying for a fully-owned, physical copy, I don’t think digital manga will be fully embraced just yet.

Reading manga digitally in general has yet to win me over, and with my overwhelming preference for reading on paper I doubt it ever will completely (my eyes see enough screen time as it is!), but I still look forward to the day when manga is widely available in a format that works for consumers and creators alike. Digital manga is clearly that future whether paper purists like me like it or not, and the past two years has been full of new ventures offering just such a thing as publishers experiment with formats and distributions, such as the launch of Viz Media’s SigIKKI and Shonen Sunday, Yen Plus going fully digital and Digital Manga’s fledgling DM Guild, to name a few.

Whether it’s offering manga for free reading online to promote book sales as Viz Media is doing, offering chapter previews of each volume as Tokyopop is doing or simply offering manga to buy cheap-ish through devices such as the iPad, be it as a new reader or an owner of the paper book, there’re some initiatives that seem to be working well for their audience. Still, companies are really in a position of throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, and while it’s bound to make a good-sized mess at first (or maybe a slight dull thud for Square Enix), it’s still good to see them going at it.

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Vaguely unrelated fun note: Check out Square Enix’s ‘Submission Guidelines‘. Honesty is the best policy!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Gardena, CA (December 8, 2010) – After a busy 2010 that saw the company run more tours in a single year than ever before, Pop Japan Travel (PJT), the premier provider of pop culture-themed tours of Japan, is proud to announce their first tour on the 2011 schedule: the Cold Steel Redux Tour.

A variation on the company’s popular “Cold Steel” tour series, the 2011 tour will include a flight to the northern island of Hokkaido for the Sapporo Snow Festival, Japan’s largest and most popular winter festival. While in Hokkaido, guests will also be whisked to the Shikotsu Ice Festival for a fireworks display, shop in the city of Sapporo, and visit a traditional country hot spring. The tour then returns to Tokyo to visit the numerous attractions the big city has to offer, including Harajuku, Akihabara, and Shinjuku. Finally, for guests interested in exploring a different side of winter in Japan, PJT is offering a tour extension that goes to the Kamakura Festival in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, where local residents in giant igloos invite visitors in to visit and partake in traditional food, snacks and drinks. The extension also lets visitors have a crack at some of the finest skiing and snowboarding that Japan has to offer.

Despite the notion that international travelers prefer to visit warmer destinations when they travel in the winter, PJT Director of Operations Gigi Guiting promises that Cold Steel guests will get a winter vacation that is worlds apart from anything else: “Once people see the detail that artists put into the snow sculptures in Sapporo, see fireworks illuminate the night sky over giant ice castles, and snack on mochi with newfound friends in an igloo,” says Guiting, “we’re absolutely certain they’ll be glad they chose Japan over places like Cancun and the Caribbean.”

The Cold Steel Redux Tour is scheduled to take place from February 7 until February 14, with the extension to Yokote and Akita running through February 16. The cost of the tour includes all accommodations, round trip airfare to Japan from Los Angeles, round trip airfare to Sapporo, full tours of numerous Tokyo hotspots, transportation, professional bilingual tour guides, entrance fees to all activities, and a customized guidebook created exclusively for the tour. People interested in taking the tour may visit http://www.popjapantravel.com/ or e-mail popjapantravel@gmail.com to sign up. All applications are due by January 7.

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Since 2003, POP JAPAN TRAVEL has operated countless group tours and custom tours with themes focused on Japanese anime, manga, video games, music, fashion (to name a few) – all at an affordable price. Pop Japan Travel tours offer a careful balance of the hyper-modern world of J-pop culture and the rich traditions of ancient Japan. Additionally, PJT is the ONLY tour agency to provide exclusive experiences such as visits to anime and game studios, meetings with manga artists or designers, and classes at an actual manga school. On every group tour, a friendly, accommodating, knowledgeable, and bilingual guide will make sure your experience in Japan is everything you could ever hope it would be, and more.

It’s Thursday! And that means new comics were out on comic store shelves yesterdat. There weren’t a whole lot of books I wanted out this week but I still left with a few gems I look forward to jumping into tonight. For consistency’s sake, I’m also going to aim to have these Swag Bag editions up consistently on Thursdays, the day after I buy the bulk of my books. Any I buy other days I’ll save up for the next week’s edition. Can I handle this simple schedule? We shall see!

Two of my current Viz Media favourites came out today – Toriko (Vol. 03) and Pokemon Adventures (Vol. 10) – stories of monsters of very different kinds. I really enjoyed the second volume of Toriko, though I do lament the art on the covers that leaves much to be desired. It’s hard to hold it up to people as say ‘Hey, you should read this!’ and get anything but a funny look in return. This new volume of Pokemon Adventures also marks the start of the new artist. I really loved Mato’s stuff though Satoshi Yamamoto’s look pretty nice upon quick flip through – very similar inking style and layout work, just a notably different lead artist. My real concern though is whose this new girl? Where’s Red and Yellow?! Things got some epic in volume nine! Ah well, we shall see how this pans out.

To round off my small but much-loved purchases, I also picked up the new collected edition of Thor: The Mighty Avenger – an incredibly charming mix of wit and hilarious expressions about the most lovable version of this character Marvel’s ever managed to portray (in my opinion of course). I also bought Dragon Sword and Wind Child, a young adult novel that was one of my absolute favourites when I was a kid so I was excited to get the chance to buy a new edition by Viz Media’s Haikasoru novel imprint.

Also with me today was my roommate who purchased a few extra snazzy books I look forward to borrowing. She bought the last two volumes of Shaman Warrior, a really well illustrated manhwa with epic fight scenes – I can’t wait to see how it ends! I’d forgotten about it for such a long while, I’ll likely go back and reread the earlier volumes first. My roommate also bought a new UDON release, the Darkstalkers manga Red Earth which is done by Mami Otou, the artist for the disappointingly-cut-short manga, Pilgrim Jager. Her art style really suits the characters so I expect this will be a fun read!

How about you? Pick up anything shiny today?

Viz Media announced the launch of their new iPad application earlier in the week – a digital shop downloadable on iPads where users can purchase volumes of their manga.

Volumes in this digital format will cost $4.99 each and Viz Media is currently offering the first volume of Death Note for free so readers can test out the program. Currently they’re offering the company’s big-name titles such as One Piece, Naruto and Dragonball. iTunes lists volumes of One Piece as being the top sellers on the app since its debut.

Personally this news doesn’t interest me much because, well, I don’t own an iPad. Even if I did, I prefer books in paper-format – personal preferable. For those who have an iPad and enjoy reading comics digitally, however, I can of course see the more jump-for-joy reasoning here.

Looking at from sheerly from an audience perspective, those who own an iPad have proven themselves already the type more apt to pay money for their hobbies and entertainment. It’s a perfect environment to find manga fans and create new ones on those grounds alone. Still, I have to wonder – those who own the iPad, are they the 12-16 year old audience that thebooks Viz Media is offering are aimed for? Highly doubtful. That Viz Media wouldn’t come out of the gate with more mature titles such as their Sig Ikki series, most of which already have at least some kind of digital rights as they’re posted to the imprint’s website on a weekly basis, boggles my mind and is a bit disappointing.

I’m not saying that readers of any age can’t or don’t enjoy the Shonen Jump big-guns, and there’s certainly value in putting out the big-sellers, but they hardly seem strong titles to use in reaching out to the vast majority of iPad owners who likely don’t read manga in the first place. It feels a mix-match of audiences.

Then again, the app has only been out since November 2nd, so who knows how many or how potentially diverse their manga offerings could be in the future.

Early September  marked the first issue of Yen Plus in its digital format for subscribers. For only $2.99 a month – which is set up via PayPal – readers now have access to that month’s issue, which also now includes new chapters of K-on and Yotsuba&! (which was reason enough for me to subscribe right off the bat).

In their first issue they also officially launched their search for new talent to be potential new additions to the monthly magazine. At their request, information was kept off other sites to give subscribers the early-bird advantage. As of today however, the information for their New Talent Search has been posted publicly on Yen Press’s site so now all interested and qualifying artists can read the details.

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“…we’re finally introducing our New Talent Search! I know many of you out there have waiting for this, so I hope all the apisiring artists are eager to show off their skills. Additional details can be found (below), but here’s a tip: make sure to show your work to the people around you and get as much feedback as possible to help you finish your story. Having as many “readers” as possible is the key to honing your ability. We can’t wait to see your work! (Ah, and course our search for professional artists continues too!)”

- JuYoun Lee

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CALLING ALL (AMATEUR) ARTISTS!

Are you an aspiring artist looking to make your debut? YEN PLUS is pleased to announce its long-anticipated NEW TALENT SEARCH!!!

Who is eligible: Any artist who has NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED may enter.

What to send: Create a 32-page short story using the page parameters* below:
Size of each page of printed digital art should be 7 inches wide by 10 3/8 inches tall. The live area of each page is 4 5/8 inches by 1 1/8 inches (that is, 1 3/8 inches from the edger of the page). Please keep panels and “important art” within this live area. As long as these proportions are maintained, you may size your pages as you wish.

Deadline: January 3, 2011
If you submission catches our eye, you may receive a contract for publication in YEN PLUS!

Please send your completed short story to:

Please do not send original art as no art will be returned. We will not be able to respond or provide feedback on all inquiries. If we are interested in your submission, we will contact you. Please do not attempt to contact the editors directly.

GOOD LUCK!!

* An image of the layout requirements can be seen on Yen Press’s Talent Search page.

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While this submission call is for never-before-published artists only, Yen Press’s regular submission call remains open and available to read on their website as well.

Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror. (See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)

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1. Uzumaki

There’s a game I like to play with Uzumaki. The rules are simple: open up any volume to any page and see if it shows you something horribly grotesque, unnatural, gory or just plain creepy. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, it will. And you never know what it will be: vampires who use drills instead of teeth, human beings maiming and contorting their bodies into unnatural shapes, giant snail people. And that’s just some of the weird stuff that goes on in this series.

Uzumaki is the tale of a small town called Kurôzu-cho, a seaside town that becomes plagued by spirals. It starts off slowly, with one resident of the town becoming obsessed with the shape. He starts collecting every example he can find and eating only food that have spirals in them (i.e. spiral patterned fish cakes). But what starts out as a weird quirk soon turns into something more deadly when spirals start turning up all over town. The smoke from the crematorium swirls sinisterly over the town, whirlwinds spring up out of nowhere, eddies appear randomly in streams. And then things get really weird. One resident, in her fear of spirals, snips the skin off of her fingertips. A girl’s tiny cresent-shaped scar twists and becomes a huge gaping vortex that sucks in everyone around her. People start turning into giant snails.

Kirie and Shuichi, two teenagers living in the town, seem to be the only ones who notice how Kurôzu-cho it slowly going crazy. But eventually (around the time people start turning into giant snail creatures) the other citizens start to take notice as well. But by then it’s too late, as the town is already in the grip of the spiral.

Uzumaki is the most inventive horror story I’ve ever seen in any medium. The wealth of ideas present and their fantastic execution makes this not only one of my favourite horror manga, but one of my favourite manga ever. If you only read one horror series this Halloween, it should be Uzumaki.