Friday, July 09, 2004
Manga news...
Here's a couple of news items that have been going around lately:
Tokyopop loses Ribon titles?
First is rumorville! It might be possible that Tokyopop has lost the rights to Kodocha and Marmalade Boy. Fans recently discovered that all traces of these two titles have disappeared, something that hasn't happened even for other out-of-print titles. You might assume it was a glitch, but these are also their only two titles from Ribon Comics. Aparantly there seems to be low stock at some various retailers as well.
Interestingly enough, none of the other companies have any Ribon titles at all, except for the newly announced CMX label (with titles like Gals). Of course these two were also fairly early titles for TP, so that might have something to do with it as well (but why be removed entirely from the site?). It may turn out to be nothing, but if you've been waiting to buy these, you should probably consider putting them at a higher priority.
Jump jumps over Yu-Gi-Oh arcs
Aparantly after the latest arcs finish, Shonen Jump will be skipping a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh and go straight into the latest Pharoah's Memories story. The volumes in-between will go straight to GN at an accelerated rate. It seems like the anime covered a lot of these intermediary arcs, so going to the last one will get them straight into material that no one has read about yet. It'll be a bit disconcerting for those of us not buying the GNs and who haven't seen the anime, but I believe I've heard very good things about this latest arc, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure they'll have a description to get people up to speed.
Also mentioned in that thread by one of the Viz staff was the possibility of Jump itself moving to bi-weekly eventually. This is very very preliminary and he said it'd only even become an option when Jump's circulation reaches 500k a month, but it'd be pretty cool if it did happen. I could certainly afford to pay $60 a year instead of $30, would be getting the material twice as fast, and it'd speed up the GN releases as well...
Kenshin's god-like speed
With all this talk of speed, it should also be mentioned that Kenshin is now monthly, as opposed to the previous bi-monthly schedule. Good news for all he red-headed rurouni fans. :)
Digital Manga with unusual offerings
This is a little late, but Digital Manga just released information on some new series. There is Edu-Manga, featuring illustrated biographies of historial figures (narrated classic characters like Astro Boy).
This actually reminds me of some books I had as a kid (a hard-cover subscription thing). Each one was on a different figure, was illustrated, and usually had a talking animal which helped explain things. Then the last page had a real photo and a dense text bio for additional information. It'll be interesting to see if a manga variety will work out in the US.
Also in the non-fiction department, they have a series coming over called Project X, based on a TV series about a real-life entrepreneurs.
Most interesting to me personally is a series called BAMBi by Kaneko Atsushi. It seems like Atsushi is a semi-underground pop-art type artist, also doing a lot of work for things like album covers. BAMBi seems to be compared a bit to Tank Girl, with an insane protagonist on a road trip. Andrew Cunningham linked to the first cover. Some additional pics here and a description of it here. According to that page, there are six regular volumes and an additional BAMBi Alternative volume. For those looking for something different from the norm, this seems like it could be something to check out.
Tokyopop loses Ribon titles?
First is rumorville! It might be possible that Tokyopop has lost the rights to Kodocha and Marmalade Boy. Fans recently discovered that all traces of these two titles have disappeared, something that hasn't happened even for other out-of-print titles. You might assume it was a glitch, but these are also their only two titles from Ribon Comics. Aparantly there seems to be low stock at some various retailers as well.
Interestingly enough, none of the other companies have any Ribon titles at all, except for the newly announced CMX label (with titles like Gals). Of course these two were also fairly early titles for TP, so that might have something to do with it as well (but why be removed entirely from the site?). It may turn out to be nothing, but if you've been waiting to buy these, you should probably consider putting them at a higher priority.
Jump jumps over Yu-Gi-Oh arcs
Aparantly after the latest arcs finish, Shonen Jump will be skipping a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh and go straight into the latest Pharoah's Memories story. The volumes in-between will go straight to GN at an accelerated rate. It seems like the anime covered a lot of these intermediary arcs, so going to the last one will get them straight into material that no one has read about yet. It'll be a bit disconcerting for those of us not buying the GNs and who haven't seen the anime, but I believe I've heard very good things about this latest arc, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure they'll have a description to get people up to speed.
Also mentioned in that thread by one of the Viz staff was the possibility of Jump itself moving to bi-weekly eventually. This is very very preliminary and he said it'd only even become an option when Jump's circulation reaches 500k a month, but it'd be pretty cool if it did happen. I could certainly afford to pay $60 a year instead of $30, would be getting the material twice as fast, and it'd speed up the GN releases as well...
Kenshin's god-like speed
With all this talk of speed, it should also be mentioned that Kenshin is now monthly, as opposed to the previous bi-monthly schedule. Good news for all he red-headed rurouni fans. :)
Digital Manga with unusual offerings
This is a little late, but Digital Manga just released information on some new series. There is Edu-Manga, featuring illustrated biographies of historial figures (narrated classic characters like Astro Boy).
This actually reminds me of some books I had as a kid (a hard-cover subscription thing). Each one was on a different figure, was illustrated, and usually had a talking animal which helped explain things. Then the last page had a real photo and a dense text bio for additional information. It'll be interesting to see if a manga variety will work out in the US.
Also in the non-fiction department, they have a series coming over called Project X, based on a TV series about a real-life entrepreneurs.
Most interesting to me personally is a series called BAMBi by Kaneko Atsushi. It seems like Atsushi is a semi-underground pop-art type artist, also doing a lot of work for things like album covers. BAMBi seems to be compared a bit to Tank Girl, with an insane protagonist on a road trip. Andrew Cunningham linked to the first cover. Some additional pics here and a description of it here. According to that page, there are six regular volumes and an additional BAMBi Alternative volume. For those looking for something different from the norm, this seems like it could be something to check out.
