One of the ways I get material for MangaBlog is through various e-mail alerts. Today I’m clearing out my in-box and serving up some juicy leftovers, articles that I somehow missed the first time around. All the links are still good—I checked! (After all, this is “old” in internet time, which means a couple of weeks at most.)
Scott Meaney reports on the Graphic Novels panel at BEA.
Kokoro Media takes apart that recent Wall Street Journal article on girls’ comics.
The Anime Today podcast features an interview with Shojo Beat editors Marc Weidenbaum and Megan Bates.
What if Nymphet were fine art? The Village Voice doesn’t quite know what to make of a lolicon-inspired art exhibit.
The Daily Yomiuri reports on the decline of manga magazines, and what publishers are doing about it.
At Comic Pants, Dan Grendell posts brief reviews of a month’s worth of manga.
Del Rey has previews up of Le Chevalier d’Eon and Dragon Eye. (Via Advanced Media Network.)
Trendspotting has lots of info on manga downloading in Japan and wonders whether it will spread to other countries.
Artist Jun-Pierre Shiozawa drew a manga about viewing Leonardo da Vinci’s “Annunciation.” (Via Metafilter.)
Sony has come up with software to turn blog posts into manga. No one is sure why.
A Singapore company is bringing manga to India.
Here’s a blog by a guy who wants to do manga. In fact, he has already done one in Japan. And he’s right here in Boston. Cool!
Lindsay Beaumont reviews Translucent and Bill Sherman checks out vol. 1 of Fake for Blogcritics. On his own blog, Bill catches up with recent volumes of GTO, Monster, and Naruto. Tina Tsai reviews shojo with attitude, Crimson Hero and Skip-Beat! for the Asian Times. At the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Jason Yadao looks over the many iterations of Train Man. Julie Gray reads vol. 1 of Kitchen Princess and Leroy Douresseaux reviews vol. 1 of King of Thorn and vol. 1 of the Trinity Blood novels for Comic Book Bin. In the they-should-know department, Zac Bentz of Japanator reviews the first issue of Otaku USA.
On the Voice story: I’m not a fan of lolicon (quite the opposite, actually, I find it more than a little disturbing) but Mr’s work is strangely fascinating.
He used to do performance art pieces where he would wear a full bunny costume (that completely obscured his identity) and draw with crayons on notebook paper until the white fur of the costume would be grubby and stained with crayon residue. Like any of the Superflat artists, his work provides tremendous psychological insight into the hard-core otaku mindset.
Another of the Superflat artists, Chiho Aoshima, has an exhibition running at the ICA Boston through October. Less psychologically disturbing than MR, but interesting stuff.