manganews.net

San Francisco, CA, June 19, 2008 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced that one of its parent companies, Japanese publisher Shueisha, Inc., has made an investment in Shogakukan Production Company Ltd., the licensing and merchandising subsidiary of Japanese publisher Shogakukan, Inc., another of VIZ Media’s parent companies. ShoPro will be renamed Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd.

Representatives from both Shueisha and Shogakukan stated in a recent press conference in Japan that the strategic move was made to give more flexibility in developing titles for the overseas marketplace, including the burgeoning graphic novel/manga market in North America and Europe, and to streamline internal operations. Masao Yagi has been named President of the new Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd.

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SAN JOSE, CA – June, 2008 – DrMaster Publications announces the licensing of the fantasy shojo manga Divine Melody. Divine Melody is a fantastic tale set in mystical ancient China, where fairies and demons secretly coexist with humans. I-Huan, the popular author of Real/Fake Princess, creates another splendidly enchanting series that weaves swoon-worthy romances, heart-wrenching drama, and mystifying exhilarating action and adventure into her divinely beautiful tapestry of artwork that will leave readers entranced in her fantasy world.

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Divine Melody will be available January 2009, and will be priced at $9.95. The series has six volumes and will be released bi-monthly.

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Pop Japan Travel's Mind Over Manga tour this Aug. 21 to 27 offers guests the unprecendented chance to print their own comic in Japanese and sell it directly to Japanese customers at Comitia, one of Tokyo's most respected dojinshi (indie comics) events. Several artists have already taken us up on this offer, but now, with the tour deadline rapidly approaching (and the $100 early discount available only until this Monday!), PJT has released complete details of the dojinshi option, including printing, translation and lettering costs.

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New York, NY – May 28, 2008 – Hiro Mashima, the popular Japanese manga creator of Fairy Tail, will make his first-ever US convention appearance at Comic-Con International San Diego 2008, running Thursday, July 24 through Sunday, July 27. Manga and anime fans from the US and across the world will be able to meet one of their favorite creators in a rare appearance that will include a panel and signing. Kodansha Ltd., Mashima’s Japanese publisher, and Del Rey Manga, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group and the US publisher of Mashima’s Fairy Tail, will sponsor his visit.

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MJ News Bites: bits and pieces of news to entertain, enlighten, and inform!

Vampire Hunter D Author Hideyuki Kikuchi at NY Anime Festival: From ANN we have a report that Hideyuki Kikuchi of A Wind Named Amnesia and Vampire Hunter D fame will be attending the New York Anime Festival this summer as a guest of Dark Horse. NYAF will be held September the 26th to the 28th at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in NYC.

Atlas Books to Distribute Fanfare Licensed Manga: Publishers Weekly has the scoop on Ashalnd, Ohio based Atlas Book's deal to distribute U.K. publisher Fanfare's titles here in the states. Titles from Fanfare's Spanish publishing partner, Ponent Mon, will also be included in the deal.

Drama Queen Lives, Flexes Muscles: Jouhou's own Lissa Pattillo has a report on her site that Drama Queen has sent out a reminder to everyone that they really are still alive and planning to make a dramatic comeback in a fairly, well, dramatic way: sending cease and desists letters to scanlators.

Manga-fied X-Men: As has been previously announced, Marvel is hard at work creating a manga flavored version of their hit comic series, X-Men. Japanator's Zac Bentz gives us a look at some of the horrific early designs.

eBookJapan Turns to Manga: Active Anime has a translated press release about eBookJapan's (Japan’s largest online bookseller) launching of their online manga service, Manga Daimokuroku. The site is fully searchable and is reported to hold over eighteen thousand titles already.

Adult Manga Previews for June: Over on his always NWS blog, Icarus Publishing head honcho Simon Jones gives us a run down on forthcoming adult manga titles.

One of the more - ah - engaging things about fandoms is, of course, the debates they inspire. Get two wildly enthusiastic members of the same fandom together, let them find out that they stand on opposite sides of the Big Debate that splits across that fandom, and you are likely to see impassioned arguments with both sides attacking and defending their points with all the seriousness of a discourse on the proper method of stopping the proliferation of nuclear armaments. Largely this is a good thing I think, since the emotional weight of such a debate shows the power that fandom has to inspire it's members and is much preferable to a more general sense of apathy that it could be marked by instead.

Every fandom's Big Debate is something special to them, and tends to help define the fandom as a whole. For Star Trek fans it's the old Kirk vs Picard argument, for comic fans it's Marve vs DC, and for anime fans it's Subbed vs Dubbed. While it lacks the vitriol of these other Big Debates, for manga fans it's Unfipped vs Flipped. In the US at least the debate as been mostly made moot, since the wild success of Tokopop's unflipped line of manga has made it the general standard for the publishing format. Elsewhere however the debate still rages, with a slight twist:

With more publishing houses translating Japanese and Chinese manga (comics) into Vietnamese, young bookworms may have to learn to start reading from the last page.

"At first, I thought the bookbinding was wrong. I began to hear complaints from my young customers, saying their eyes were tired. Then I discovered that the publishers hadn’t changed their right-to-left script, for example, in Japan’s Get Love and Naruto,"says Nguyen Thu Phuong, who rents comic books to readers in Ha Noi.

According to publishers, the translation is kept in the same reading format to keep the version as close as possible to its original.

While their concerns are a little different then the ones held by early manga fans here in the US, it is interesting to see that the debate is still ongoing elsewhere.

Image © ICV2

From Deb's Manga Blog comes the news that Patrick Macias, Editor-in-Chief of the Otaku USA magazine, conducted an interview for The Japan Times with Comics legend Stan Lee about his upcoming collaboration with Hiroyuki Takei of Shaman King fame. The two of them are joining forces to create a new series, Ultimo, which will be running in Jump SQ II before coming here stateside in a release by Viz media. From the Viz press release on the series:

High above Farmless City, citizens are stunned by the sudden appearance of two floating figures. Are they human boys, monolithic robots, or something much more strange? As the battle ensues between them, destruction and devastation fall on the hapless city. One figure is Vice, and seems to be as evil as his name implies. The other is Ultimo, intent on trying to stop Vice from wreaking more havoc. But who are Vice and Ultimo really? Where did they come from? A new mystery begins with the fate of the world possibly hanging in the balance!"

The news of the groundbreaking partnership first came at last month's NYCC, and has generated plenty of buzz for the project ever since. Lee's comic creations are beloved to millions of fans here in the states, as the enormous success of the receint Iron Man move has proven yet again, and it will be interesting to see if he can replicate this level of fan support in a new (for him) medium. Certainly having a partner as popular in his own right as Takei can only help.

The Japanese site Chuosha has the news that Mizue Tani's popular period fantasy novel series Hakushaku to Yōsei (The Count and the Fairy), already tapped to be anime, will now receive a manga adaptation as well. From ANN's piece on the announcement:

The June issue (released on May 17) of Shueisha's Cobalt shōjo fiction magazine has announced that the Hakushaku to Yōsei (The Count and The Fairy) historical fantasy light novels will be adapted as a manga. Set in Victorian-era England, the light novels follow a 17-year-old named Lydia Carlton whose fascination with fairies led to her nickname, the "Fairy Doctor." While sailing to London, Lydia encounters Edgar J.C. Ashenheart, the Count of the Blue Knights, and joins him on his search for the sword of his family lineage.

The series is set to debut in the October issue of the shoujo magazine Margaret.

The word on the street is that Japanese publisher Libre have at last got the ball rolling on relicensing Yamane Ayano's immensely popular Finder series for an English release. The title had been licensed and released here in the states with much fanfare, with Ayano even making the trip to Yaoi Con back in 2004 partly to promote the series, with licensing being handled by CPM's Be Beautiful Yaoi line.

It was a year or so ago when the wheels fell off, so to speak. CPM had bought their release license from publisher Biblos, who then filed for bankruptcy in April of 2006. This in turn caused the business rights to Biblos's titles to end up in the hands of Libre, who made headlines when they accused CPM of failing to renegotiate rights for the Biblos titles CPM held, including the Finder series. We e-mailed Libre about the situation and got a more detailed breakdown of the issue (from their perspective of course) in response to our questions. Since then things have been quite, aside from CPM's breaking silence on the issue in an impromptu interview from NYAF where CPM head honcho John O'Donnell revealed that Libre had been avoiding attempts to resolve the matter, possibly (he theorized) to hurt sales of the books and stonewall things until the licenses expired naturally, leaving Libre free to shop the titles back out to other publishers.

As it turns out, this may very well be exactly what has happened. As reported over on Simon Jones' most excellent (and most NWS) Icarus Blog, Gia over at A Geek By Any Other Name (who, in fact, conducted the interview with John linked above) is reporting that comments made by Libre Editors on their forum have revealed that relicensing the series is underway, though they do not of course say to whom. There are a number of possibilities of course, with the large number of Yaoi publishers that have come out in recient years, and it is also possibly (but not, I think, highly likely) that CPM and Libre has resolved their issues and will be working to get the series out. At this point, only time will tell.

ANN reports that the popular shoujo volleyball manga Crimson Hero is set to begin its final story arc in the July issue of Bessatsu Margaret. The series had run for twelve volumes so far and is licensed here in the states by Viz, who has released 8 volumes so far.

Also announced was the final installment of Chocolate Underground. Aiji Yamakawa's tale of two boys smuggling chocolate is based on British author Alex Shearer's book Bootleg, also being adapted in anime form by Production IG as part of a venture into creating anime designed specifically for streaming onto mobile phones.