There’s a huge pile of manga in at Midtown, but most of it is the Viz stuff people got this week, so I’ll skip that, as I talked about it last week.

Digital Manga Publishing has a huge pile of yaoi out this week, mostly one-shots but with Vol. 2s of the unlucky at licensing series The Tyrant Falls In Love and the shonen fantasy Knights.

Seven Seas has the 9th volume of Dance in the Vampire Bund, a NYT bestseller which has vampires in it. And is possibly also really good and interesting. But which, well, does have vampires in it.

Tokyopop has the 3rd volume of the series Foxy Lady, which looks by the cover to appeal to guys who like harem girls with ears, but also runs in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum, which has a lot of female readership. So I’m giving up on pigeonholing this one.

Udon has the 3rd (and possibly final? information is thin on the ground) volume of Swans in Space, another in their series of manga for young kids. I hadn’t gotten any of these series, but I applaud the idea in general.

Viz has the first volume of Itsuwaribito, a new Shonen Sunday title about a liar who lies… on the side of GOOD! It’s apparently much creepier than you’d expect. Sunday also gives us the 4th volume of Arata, and the 55th and penultimate volume of Inu Yasha. One more to go! Also, for fans of gut-wrenching metal, there is Detroit Metal City Vol. 7, which runs in Young Animal but has less boobs than the other YA series.

And then there’s Yen, ending the year with a huge pile of things people want. First and foremost is the 9th volume of Yotsuba&!, everyone’s favorite kids’ title that’s actually for grownup guys. I am sure it will have much adorable stuff. We also see a one-shot, Not Love But Delicious Foods, from Yoshinaga Fumi, dealing with her love of food. Duh. Higurashi wraps up another arc (we’re at Vol. 10 technically), the last of the 2-volume series for now, as we see the Answer Arcs starting in February, which are longer. I’m always up for a new volume of Bamboo Blade, and I also quite like GA Art Design Class in a 4-koma way (despite it continuing not to feature Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro). And Sundome, one of Yen’s most surprising acquisitions, wraps up with Vol. 8.

What appeals to you?

At least I theorize it will be. As I’ve noted before, I get this list from a New York based comic shop called Midtown Comics, who post it (usually) on Thursday afternoon, well ahead of any other online retailer, and a full 4 days ahead of Diamond Comics. The problem is that Midtown frequently uses distributors other than Diamond for their manga. Sometimes this means they get it in sooner… and sometimes it’s stuff like this week.

Midtown lists two manga for this week. Both from Digital Manga Publishing, they have the 5th volume of seinen vampire thriller Vampire Hunter D, and the 2nd and last volume of a yaoi manga called Yokan Premonition. That’s it. No Viz whatsoever.

I’m fairly sure that Diamond, which already shipped Bleach this week, will have the rest of its giant pile of Jump/Beat releases on the 8th. I am therefore making an executive decision to include them here.

So… let’s see. In Jump manga, we have Vol. 33 of Bleach, which as I said before shipped to many this week already. It continues the Hueco Mundo arc, which is in no danger of ending anytime soon. No matter how much you beg. They have Hoshin Engi, a story inspired by Chinese Mythology that I never heard much chatter about, even though it’s at 21 volumes. Slam Dunk hits lucky Number 13, and Toriko hits Number 3. In a MANLY way!

Speaking of Manly, we see Volume 16 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It ends the 3rd ‘arc’ of the giant JoJo’s series, and is billed by Viz as the final volume. JoJo’s continues to this day, of course, though it sort of morphed into Steel Ball Run in Ultra Jump. On the other hand, it’s about 100 volumes long, and sells poorly here. So normally while I bitch about Viz writing ‘final volume’ when it isn’t (i.e. Shana), I can’t blame them at all for cutting ties here at a logical stopping place.

That’s not all for Jump, as we have its spinoff, Jump Square. There we find Rosario+Vampire, an immigrant from the Weekly Comic, which has Volume 3 of its 2nd season reboot. We also have the 3rd volume of the Stan Lee penned Ultimo, which many of my friends have given praise to. It is also, in case I had not mentioned it, written by Stan Lee. As I found at NYCC, this is a Big Effin Deal.

On the shoujo side, we have piles of new stuff from Hakusensha. On the Hana to Yume front, we have Volume 1 of Kamisama Kiss, the current title from Julietta Suzuki, the author of the popular-with-bloggers Karakuri Odette. We also get Vol. 22 of Skip Beat!, which finds Kyoko wrestling with finding the ‘character’ of her latest role, as well as dealing with the usual infighting. In its monthly companion Betsuhana, we also get Volume 7 of Rasetsu, the supernatural sequel to Yurara.

And in the big monthly magazine, LaLa, we see new volumes of huge sellers Ouran High School Host Club and Vampire Knight. As well as Vol. 3 of Library Wars: Love & War, which doesn’t have enough library combat for some, apparently.

Shueisha’s entry in the shoujo stakes this week consists of just one: the final volume of Cactus’s Secret, a cute 4 volume manga from Ribon that succeeds very well in being cute and only 4 volumes.

As for the more mature-skewing titles from Shogakukan, we have Vol. 3 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Betsucomi), which has proven to be an excellent title for me. We have the 6th, and possibly last, volume of Honey Hunt (Cheese!), which is currently on hiatus in Japan. And skewing even older, we have the 5th volume of the smutty yet utterly silly josei comedy Butterflies, Flowers.

What suits your fancy?

Comic stores get their manga on Thursday next week owing to this week’s Thanksgiving holidays. This should be the last time this happens in 2010 – apparently the Christmas and New Year’s holidays do not disrupt UPS quite as much.

Though Diamond shipped it to everyone but the Northeast this week, for me it’s the final shipment of Del Rey titles. I’ll miss them. Tsubasa and Psycho Busters finish before the gun, but the other series shipping this week are left in limboland until Kodansha USA announces plans. I’ll especially miss Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei and its love of observational humor combined with its love of insane schoolgirls.

Two Tokyopop titles that didn’t show up this week are here next week, as we get Vol. 7s for Lagoon Engine and NG Life. Lagoon Engine has caught up with Japan, so volumes are few and far between. Meanwhile, Tokyopop may want to push NG Life out the door as fast as possible – 8 ships next month. (I note, despite my hoping, that Gatcha Gacha 8 did NOT ship this week, and isn’t out next week either. I don’t know where it is, but hope it will appear as soon as possible.)

Bandai has Volume 4 of Gundam-00F, the latest in the long franchise. It runs in Gundam Ace, Kadokawa’s shonen spinoff from Shonen Ace that’s devoted to Gundam titles. That’s how big Gundam is over there. Even One Piece doesn’t get a One Piece Jump, for contrast.

Udon finishes off its Magical Girl title Fairy Idol Kanon, which is drawn by an artist known for her yuri series, but as this was put out by Poplar, a Japanese company that markets to kindergartners, I wouldn’t expect any in this. They also have a new Street Fighter title.

And Vertical not only has the 2nd of their horror manga 7 Billion Needles, but also the debut of a new Tezuka title, Ayako. This is a big omnibus of the 3 volumes that came out in Japan, in one 720-page brick. It originally ran in Shogakukan’s manly Big Comic from 1972-1973, and is eagerly awaited by all. I definitely recommend it.

Despite being the first week of the month, Midtown doesn’t list any Viz titles. Sometimes if the 1st falls on a Wednesday, they’ll bump all Viz’s stuff back a week. That seems to be what’s happened here.