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Archive for the Misc Category

Some Early July Reading

By Lissa Pattillo on Thursday, July 3, 2008

A few interesting links worth checking out tonight:

KOSEN has posted some preview pictures of their upcoming Tokyopop release, Daemonium. The books look really nice and I’m looking forward to that August 15th release date!
Svetlana Chmakova has updated her site with a pretty new background image and word on her previously announced animated series, My Life Me as well as her upcoming series, Nightschool, which will be released in Yen Press’s anthology magazine, YenPlus.
Gia continues to share her mastery of con blogging with live blogs from Anime Expo. Always worth checking out so make sure to keep visiting her site over the weekend to keep up to date. So far she’s checked in from the ADV Sneak Peek panel and the Aniplex panel.
And though word has already spread to most corners of the internet, I share the good news here none-the-less! Funimation has stepped up and acquired a portion of Geneon’s titles for distribution. Join in the internet-wide blog reaction of finally. Thank you, Funi! Numerous collections shall now cry no longer (while wallets may continue weeping a tad).

Also, don’t forget to check out some of my recent manga reviews for my thoughts on some great titles worth picking up! With less days in the summer than I have reviews ready for posting, expect to see the occassional double reviews per day (like today) for the next little while.

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Categories: Misc
Tags: Anime

Michael Turner

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, June 28, 2008

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My condolences and wishes today go to the friends and family of Michael Turner, who passed away from cancer yesterday night. He was only 37 years old.

Michael Turner has become of the most iconic men in the comic industry. With his numerous popular series from Witchblade to Soulfire, and his gorgeous artwork which often protrayed not only his own characters but hundreds of others for Marvel and DC, his work can be seen just about anywhere. His eight year battle of cancer was a journey he went through with courage and dignity.

Michael Turner was one of my favourite artists and one of my greatest sources of inspiration, on not only how to be a great artist but a great person as well. He was such a strong and talented individual and he will be greatly missed by many.

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Categories: Misc

The First of Many

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, June 21, 2008

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Ryan over at Same Hat! Same Hat! had a post yesterday that I thought was really neat. A friend of his graced him with a copy of a 1978 edition of Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, which it seems pretty safe to say is most likely the first English translated manga. With handwritten text and an existance age of forty years, I’d definately say Ryan’s got himself a piece of manga industry there.

Ryan also asks for any readers who know of a possible contender, for that position as number one, to comment on the posting. I’m interested to see if there’s anything to challenge for the role of first.

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Categories: Misc

Japanese Animators Band Together

By Lissa Pattillo on Friday, June 20, 2008

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About a hundred Japanese animators are coming together this month to form a union titled JAniCA: Japan Animation Creators Association. They seek to bring attention to the working conditions of Japanese animators which include low pay and long, long days as well as support and general union rights to fellow animators in Japan.

Somehow I missed this news when ANN announced it back on June 6th but coming across it now, I’m really happy for the animators involved and wish them all the best. As someone working towards entering the North American animation industry (and as a current workforce employee in general), I can honestly say I’m saddened, and in minor disbelief, everytime I read something about the working conditions of Japanese animators. Minimum wage and 12+ hours a day with little luck of advancement or vacation? Goes to show how much goes into all the animes we enjoy, literal blood and sweat at times. I hope that this union helps and brings the animators some rightly deserved support in all regards.

(via Cartoon Brew)

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Categories: Misc
Tags: Anime

TP Restructuring Analysis over at CP

By Lissa Pattillo on Thursday, June 19, 2008

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Just a quick post directing Kuriousity visitors to ComiPress, where they’ve posted my round-up and brief analysis on the recent Tokyopop restructuring. A breakdown with lots of links to related content for those looking for more information on the subject. Don’t forget to splunk through CP’s article archives for lots more interesting reading material as well!

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Categories: Editorials, Misc
Tags: Tokyopop

Cancelled or Postponed? Tokyopop’s Chopping Block

By Lissa Pattillo on Wednesday, June 18, 2008

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Icarus Publishing’s blog has posted a list of titles (via MangaBlog) currently cancelled, or postponed, from Tokyopop’s July selection of releases. While many of the titles seemed to me as ones few will be too upset over, the two BLU titles did surprise me: Love Mode (Vol. 11, final) and Gakuen Heaven: Nakajima especially with them being some of BLU’s best-selling titles in the past.

I asked about it on the BLU forums and recieved this response from BLU’s forum rep and editor:

“Right now, these are postponed. Please support Love Mode 10 when it comes out in August. If it sells as well as volume 9 or better, it will be very difficult for us to not do volume 11.

It’s getting harder to do hardcore books because stores are often not ordering them. If you’ve had trouble buying our books in stores lately, please order them off Amazon. And I know you guys are already doing this, so thank you! Junjo 6 is currently the best-selling manga(all manga) on Amazon right now. Also, if you buy off of Amazon, the price is only $10.39!(not sure of the shipping rates though…)”

So looks like for now it’s a postponement over a flatout cancellation but as of now there’s no word on if the same applies to the other non-yaoi titles listed.

On the note of something else said in the forum reply, I noticed Junjo (Vol. 06) was currently number one the other day, beating out both Fruits Basket and Naruto, when I checked in on Amazon’s newly updated Manga shopping section. Interesting to see a yaoi, especially one of BLU’s, make the list. The recent anime adaptation of Junjo Romantica seems to have done quite a bit for it’s popularity as of late, based on reactions of various online communities I pop in on.

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Categories: Misc

Making the Cut

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, June 15, 2008

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In the last few days, artists have been coming forward to let their fans know whose global manga series are hit by the Tokyopop chopping block. While some, such as Rivkah’s Steady Beat will be printed on web only, other’s such as Bettina’s My Cat Loki will not see publication by TP at all. Despite that, it doesn’t seem Tokyopop is cutting all ties with its artists whose series are dropped however:

…so sad to say…as of now, there will be no My Cat Loki 3…~,~ With all the cuts TP had made recently, MCL just didn’t do well enough to make it. *sigh*

While I’m sad to see it end without an actual ending, I’m a little relieved, as it frees my time up for bigger and better story ideas I’d like to pitch to other companies. But for now, TP has plenty of licensed property work for me, enough to keep me busy for the next 1 1/2-2 years…

Over at her DeviantArt gallery, Christy Lijewski is happy to announce that her series RE:Play is still scheduled to print as she continues work on volume three. She also sends her support to fellow artists who’ve been cancelled and urges fans to do the same.

Contrary to what all the manga and anime news sites are reporting not EVERY OEL from TokyoPop is canceled/direct to web.
I’m happy to say that RE: Play made the cut and that the 3rd volume will be coming out in print, on schedule, as planned!

So please don’t think I’m out of the game ha ha ha, I’m still around and the series will be going on as planned :3

However the fact still remains that most of my friends series have been canceled and/or delegated to the web, so please if you know any OEL artists that have been sacked, don’t be rude about it. Even if you don’t like OEL know that the people behind these series, we all work REALLY hard to do our best to get books out that we really have love for. So please, if you know a TokyoPop OEL artist now would be a great time to give them your support, because dammit, if times aren’t tough!

Seems safe to say we’ll be hearing similiar messages from other authors and artists in the coming while, not to mention the wails of those who still anxiously wait to see which manga series in general don’t survive Tokyopop’s slimming down.

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Categories: Misc

The whats-up

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, June 14, 2008

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Just a quick update today to apologize for the lapse in reviews the last few days and thus the stall in my android week. The remaining two reviews (June 15th edit: Only one review it seems, sorry!) will be posted over the weekend, and next week will focus on some more reviews for recent books. A bunch of double shifts at work (I shall not miss you, shift work), art commissions and some comic collaboration work has kept me super busy the last few days but it should wrap itself up shortly! All patience appreciated.

In the meantime, I recommend checking out my last post about global manga, in particular the comments. A lot of great points were made as a bunch of people graciously shared their thoughts; very interesting read!

And also on the note of global mangas, a few new appearances on Amazon.com in recent days: Hollow Fields (Vol. 03), Invisible, Wolverine: Prodigal Son (Vol. 01) and X-Men: Misfits (Vol. 01) (see above image).

And finally on a more disappointing note, Rivkah says that she was told by her Tokyopop editor that Steady Beat, volume 3, will not be seeing print. It’s a series I’ve really enjoyed and was looking forward to the third and final volume. Rivkah is currently seeing if she can get the print rights back from Tokyopop and atleast things are looking surprising good in that regard so far!

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Categories: Misc, Reviews, Site Updates

Taking BigPfeiffer.com for a Test Run

By Lissa Pattillo on Tuesday, June 10, 2008

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Something a little different this afternoon with some pluggage and review of a recent new addition to the anime/manga online shopping front for Canadians, BigPfeiffer.com.

I originally found out about them through Animaritime, as they were dealers there as well as frequent visitors to the forums. After being impressed with the prices in their site catalog for numerous older Tokyopop books, I sat down the other day to place my order.

At $4 a piece, I purchased volumes 4-10 of Suikoden III and volumes 2-3 of Cardcaptor Sakura (as I’d previously only owned the floppie versions), as well as an adorable little Uryuu Ishida keychain ($2.50) I’d been eyeing on my continuing quest to own any piece of merchandise with his face on it. The shipping is a flat rate of $7.50.

The site accepts PayPal as its sole method of payment and immediately I ran into a problem. PayPal attempted to charge me twice for the purchase. Boo on their part. So I e-mailed BigPfeiffer with my problem. I recieved a quick response and got things sorted out within a day (with the exception of my refund issues with the people over at PP).

Having made my order on a Friday and having the payment problem dealt with promptly on Saturday (I was impressed by the response on a weekend), the package was mailed to me on Monday morning and I recieved it early Tuesday. Prompt shipping = awesome.

The books all showed up in good quality, minus black marker strikes on their page tops, though I suppose a small quip for a $4 back issue. I love my little Ishida keychain (which is really nice quality, btw), and I was also sent two little… somethings… as a gift for the payment issues.

So cheap prices, quick service, polite staff and fast shipping made me a happy BigPfeiffer customer. Only complaint is that there was no warning about the black marks on the graphic novels. Overall though, a good and fast experience so I recommend checking them out!

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Categories: Misc
Tags: Canada

New Yaoi on the horizon?

By Lissa Pattillo on Monday, June 9, 2008

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Looks like there’s a new yaoi publisher ready to make its debut (via MangaBlog). Yaoi Generation’s website popped up when YG was listed as one of the dealers at the upcoming YaoiCon. While their website doesn’t have anything too specific, upcoming products include English edition mangas (estimated 24 a year), merchandise and a magazine.

“Yaoi Generation is a publishing company that brings the flourishing yaoi genre to English-speaking countries around the world. We are committed to delivering high quality publications to our readers, translated seamlessly into colloquial English while maintaining the coherency and brilliance of the original work. Look for our exciting titles this winter 2008!”

Rumours are already going around on if Yaoi Generation is a new independant group or a part of a previous company (such as Yaoi Press), but either way it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of this, especially in light of recent industry tremors involving Tokyopop’s BLU and DramaQueen.

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Categories: Licensing, Misc
Tags: Yaoi Generation