Category Archives: unshelved

Licensing Round-Up – Anime Expo 2013

3 Replies

I’m not at AX, but through the magic ability of being able to follow the tweets of those who are, I can give you my thought on what’s happening over there! There’s actually quite a bit of stuff brewing.

ax1

We started off with our friends at Vertical, Inc. They only had one license, but it looks like a lot of fun! Moyoco Anno is not only an award-winning mangaka, but she’s also married to otaku legend Hideki Anno. The one-volume Kantoku Fuyuki Todoki ran in Shodensha’s Feel Young magazine, and is a comedic yet heartwarming autobiographical look at what it’s like to be married to such a legendary otaku. Vertical will put it out under the title Insufficient Direction.

ax2

Digital Manga Publishing had some of the biggest news of the con, as they announced an agreement with Tezuka Pro for digital release in North America of the unlicensed Tezuka titles – all of them, supposedly. I admit, I’m not expecting some of the weirder, more adult or ‘problematic (antisemitism, etc.) titles anytime soon, but for the Tezuka fan this has to be an incredibly happy day. Much of his work had been released lately through Vertical, but DMP has been doing a few as well, including the Kickstarter projects of Barbara, Unico, and Atomcat. Given that it’s DMP, I’m also hoping these will be downloadable rather than cloud. Looking forward to more about this.

ax3

Most of Right Stuf’s announcements were, understandably, in the anime arena. But they surprised us at the very end by announcing, in partnership with Tokyopop (still around, in case you were wondering) the release of Axis Powers Hetalia Books 4 & 5 before the new year! I’ve made no secret that I really enjoy this goofy gag manga about anthropomorphic nations, which has moved beyond its sketchy WWII origins and embraced exaggerated stereotypes of every era! If you pre-order, you’ll get color pages as well, which are only available in the first printing.

ax4

Kodansha Comics didn’t have any new titles to announce (they indicated that SDCC in two weeks might be a different story), but this did not stop them from having a few big things to say anyway. It’s no secret that Attack on Titan has EXPLODED in fandom, particularly with the release of the anime. Kodansha, therefore, has decided to speed up the releases, similar to what they’re doing with Fairy Tail, till they catch up with Japan by the start of 2014. One a month, that’s a lot of titans.

Bigger news, though, particularly for me as I’ve been begging for it, is that they will be releasing their titles digitally on Nook, Kindle, and Google Play (and, in fact, shuttering their iTunes app, though you get to keep the books you have on it.) They’ve been Apple only for years, so this is fantastic news, as they were the last holdout (bar Seven Seas, who don’t have digital for their Japanese titles yet). Now Android users (such as myself can enjoy the following titles digitally:

Arisa
@ Full Moon
Attack on Titan
Bloody Monday
Cage of Eden
Danza
Fairy Tail
Genshiken (omnibus)
Genshiken: 2nd Season
I Am Here!
Kitchen Princess (omnibus)
Mardock Scramble
Missions of Love
Ninja Girls
No. 6
Sankarea
Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei
Until the Full Moon

In other words, most of their current lineup, with the major exception of Sailor Moon, which I suspect would require a lot more negotiating with Naoko Takeuchi. In particular, it’s great to see Zetsubou-sensei there. By the way, Kodansha still insists it’s not cancelled, but it’s still on hold due to low sales and being a pain in the ass to translate. Having tried my hand at the endnotes for Vol. 10, I can sympathize.

ax5

And that leaves Viz Media. They did not disappoint. There is a new seinen title (I am assuming it will be in the Signature line) called Gangsta, that runs in Shinchosha’s Comic @ Bunch magazine. It’s apparently very similar to Dogs: Bullets & Carnage. Nisekoi, which has its first three volumes out digital only, will start to run in print in January. They are re-releasing Dragon Ball in larger trim, around the size of US comics.

ax6

Deadman Wonderland is not only a Tokyopop license rescue, but also more than 10 volumes and still running, making it a surprising pickup in my mind. It’s a Shonen Ace series from Kadokawa that is another in the ever popular survival game genre… this one set in a very strange prison. And, big news for us old fogies… Ranma 1/2, back in print, unflipped! 2-in-1 omnibus volumes, starting in March! Given the digital app doesn’t do flipped, I wonder if this is a way to get it out digitally. In any case, great news for old-school fans!

Lastly, some hope for fans of cancelled Jump series Gintama and Reborn – SJ is looking into bringing them back digitally, though no promises just yet. I imagine if they do well they may look into continuing them digitally as well.

What in this list excites you the most?

New Licenses from Dark Horse and Yen Press

3 Replies

Another week, another con. Two cons, in fact. Sakuracon was the place to be for manga folks, though, as both Dark Horse and Yen had panels with brand new announcements! (Viz had a panel as well, but they already did their big announcements last month, so did not have anything new on the print manga front.)

shinlone

New print titles to start. Fans of Lone Wolf and Cub will be pleased to see that Dark Horse has licensed the sequel, New Lone Wolf and Cub. Old-school manga followers may note that they announced this back in 2006, but it got put on the back burner for reasons that have to do with the Japanese licensor, I’m guessing. It has the same writer but a different artist, and ran in the magazine Jin till that folded, whereupon it moved to the online magazine Katana. Expect much samurai action.

vocaloid

Vocaloid is a fandom that has taken off both here and in Japan to an unprecedented degree, so it’s no surprise that someone was going to pick up a cute comic manga featuring the leads, though Dark Horse being the one may be a bit of a surprise. They’ve tried to shed their grim ‘n’ gritty manga image quite a few times recently, so my guess is this is another opportunity. Maker Hikoushiki Hatsune Mix ran in Comic Rush magazine a few years back, and sounds like it’s cute slice-of-idol life stuff.

The big news from Dark Horse may be on the digital front, though. They’ve already added quite a few of their Kadokawa titles to their online store, including Evangelion spinoffs, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, and Ghost Talker’s Daydream. Trigun and Hellsing are also now on there, as is Appleseed, the classic Shirow title. That said, two of their biggest series were still missing. Well, that’s going to change. Starting next month we’ll be seeing Oh My Goddess! and Blade of the Immortal digitally. Given the length of both series, digital may definitely be the way to go in order to gain new readers.

inuboku1

Yen, meanwhile, had three new announcements, a couple of which will be quite exciting to fans who’ve seen the anime adaptations of these. Inu x Boku SS is a Gangan Joker series, still ongoing at 8+ volumes (I smell an omnibus release from Yen), and it’s got everything. Yokai schoolgirls, Fox-tailed secret service butler bodyguards, reincarnation, star-crossed love, and boarding houses. It also has quite a plot twist halfway through, which I won’t spoil here.

notpopular1

Do you love long drawn out manga titles that end in an exclamation point? Japan certainly does, and lately North America has started to as well. So on the heels of Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nain Dakara ne!! and Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai comes Gangan Online’s Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaete mo Omaera ga Warui!, aka WataMote, aka It’s Not My Fault I’m Not Popular!. This one stars a high schooler who is a master of otome game life, but fails at real life, possibly as she looks like a giant Gloomy Gus. The humor comes when she resolves to try and turn her life around and become sociable. This was a long-awaited title, and does not seem, at first glance, to be filled with incest, so I’m hoping Yen is on to a winner here.

wolfchildren

And for those who enjoyed the Wolf Children movie, Yen has licensed the 3-volume manga adaptation of it, Oukami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki, which ran in Kadokawa’s Young Ace. It’ll come out in a convenient one-volume omnibus, and is the touching story of a young mother trying to bring up her children… who are part-wolf. Judging by the cover art, I think ‘heartwarming’ is the word of the day for this series.

Lastly, they’ve rescued the Kingdom Hearts manga titles, and plan to start releasing those, with both stuff that already came out via Tokyopop and new material.

2013 solicits are almost over, as we’re seeing November release date news now! What’s your top license of the year?

Some Thoughts on the End of JManga

11 Replies

When I got up this morning and saw the news, I had a pretty emotional reaction. JManga was shutting down and taking its manga with it. I heard my friends who rail against Cloud in my head pointing at me and laughing, and I made a few tweets. You may have seen some of them. Now, of course, I’ve had a whole day to think about it, so let’s discuss what happened.

wonder3

This is the sort of thing that everyone knows could happen with content stored on the “cloud” rather than as physical files, but for the most part it hadn’t really happened until today. What’s more, JManga’s digital-only format makes this especially hard for them. If Viz shuts down its digital manga site tomorrow, I’ll lose my digital Excel Sagas, but they’re still in print volumes somewhere, even if they’re out of print. EDIT: Viz has noted that since you have to download the mangas to your tablet/device, you would not lose them in a “cloud”-type way, and can read them till you remove them. Thanks for that correction of my error. Same with most Kindle purchases, or the Yen titles on the Nook. But come the end of May, the JManga titles I purchased will be gone. No print, no digital copies, nada. And that’s hard to take. Despite it being the current business practice for many companies, it’s hard to get shoved in your face.

We’re not really sure yet why this happened – the immediate gut feeling is to say “money”, but who knows? While I suspect scanlation had an effect on some of the more specific titles on the site – The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, Sun-Ken Rock – I’d argue it did have an effect on the general feeling about online manga, which is “why should I pay for it?” And I do think that some tweets today may have been from folks saying “I knew this would happen, glad I never bought anything”, are from that scan crowd. But really, I do think that my enthusiasm for JManga – the plugging of their site, reviewing of their titles, and money I paid for the volumes – is part of why my reaction was so fierce this morning. It can be hard seeing something you love die so fast.

And so now I’m left with disappointment, and wondering what comes next. JManga always seemed to have an issue or two. They were web-only for the longest time, and never did hit Apple. Their mobile app continued to be a work in progress. There was the infamous launch that included dozens of “theoretical titles” – mostly from Kadokawa Shoten – none of which ever appeared. The points system – especially given that 1 point was clearly one cent – seemed highly confusing to most users. And they never did get that knockout title that would bring users to the site – there was no Naruto, or Soul Eater, or even a cute Evangelion 4-koma. The big draw for NYCC was the creator of SoreMachi, a slice-of-life manga few had heard of before the con. And, of course, everyone at NYCC seemed to sense this in the wind – not just for JManga. Everyone asked “How do we own this content?” at DC and Marvel panels as well.

And yet I loved so much about them as well. They were committed to showing North America – and lately other countries, a process that always seemed like pulling teeth with the Japanese licensors – titles that you’d never think to see over here. Not just obvious things but josei soap opera manga like Wonder!, seinen salaryman manga such as Ninja Papa, retranslated “rescue” titles such as High School Girls. There was manga with cats solving mysteries. There was erotic horror manga. There was dog training manga. There was fighting maid manga. There was educational science manga. There was… I’m not even sure WHAT Young-kun was. These creators now have a fanbase, however small, that they may never have had before.

I am saddened at JManga’s passing, and this is why. I will miss it. I had lots of stuff queued up to read that I likely will never get the chance to, which is depressing. And, of course, there’s the real-life fallout – a bunch of people just lost their jobs. They all did the best job they could, and I hope they bounce back as quickly as possible. And now I wonder what’s next. As Deb Aoki noted, is this going to scare people away? I sense if everyone waits for companies to give them downloadable PDF files, they’re going to be waiting a long time. Cloud is here to stay, whether we like it or not. That said, what’s the next company going to do? Because there will be others. Some smaller companies are already putting out their own titles, and Japan will likely try to find a way to do this again. Can they learn lessons from JManga, both the good and bad?

I have to admit, if a new JManga pops up, I’ll probably get stuff from it as well. I like supporting creators and their content, given the option. JManga gave it a good try at doing that. I can’t thank them enough for it.