2008: The year of mangettes and light novels?

The Dark Horse folks came a Powell’s Bookstore in Seattle recently to meet the people, and Gia Manry was there. She alerts us to watch for their 20th anniversary in April, the first volume of the CLAMP “mangette” sometime in the spring, and a possible movie down the road.

Speaking of Dark Horse, Shaenon Garrity gives Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service the Overlooked Manga Festival treatment.

Jason Thompson has a new column, Manga Salad, at Comixology; this month he talks about Historie, a historical manga by Parasyte creator Hitoshi Iwaaki that is currently available in English only in scanlation.

Will 2008 be the year of the light novel? At MangaCast, Ed Chavez gazes into the crystal ball and sees plenty of prose in our future.

Christopher Butcher analyzes the media kit for PiQ, the replacement for Newtype USA magazine. It looks like PiQ will be a completely new magazine, with a different format, more diverse content (anime and manga, but also video games, U.S. comics, and genre movies), and different target audience. Also: Chris highlights upcoming Drawn & Quarterly titles, including two alternative manga: Good-Bye, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Red Colored Elegy, by Seiichi Hayashi.

ComiPress translates an interview with one member of the manga team Fujiko Fujio about life in Tokiwa-so, an apartment building that was home to many manga-ka, including Osamu Tezuka.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson reads The Building Opposite and wonders “What makes it manga?”

Director’s cut: Jake Forbes posts the script of a deleted scene from vol. 2 of Return to Labyrinth. Also, did you know Jake’s sister is the adaptor for Suppli and Demon Flowers?

David Welsh looks at the books that didn’t make the cut for the Yalsa Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, and he’s surprised.

John Jakala’s daughter fails to see the awesomeness of vol. 2 of Gon.

All good things must come to an end: ANN reports that several manga series, including Emma, are ending in Japan.

Yaoi Press has a new printer, this one in China. This is a really interesting post for those of us who are interested in how books are made, as publisher Yamila Abraham discusses the limitations of different printers, screentones, moires, etc.

Meanwhile, at Iris Print, publisher Kellie Lynch recaps the first week since announcing their troubles; they’re not out of the woods yet, but there’s some sunlight filtering through the leaves.

The Nichi Bei Times looks at the popularity of manga in France.

The Sunny Side Up Anime Blog has a short list of new manga releases in Indonesia.

Reviews: Head over to Comics Village, where there’s a new batch of reviews fresh from the oven: Charles Tan on Sexy Voice and Robo, John Thomas on vol. 1 of MPD-Psycho, Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Sand Chronicles, and Lissa Patillo on Alcohol, Shirt & Kiss. At her own blog, Lissa Patillo reviews two more yaoi titles, From Up Above and Freefall Romance. Xavier Guilbert writes about Hideshi Hino’s The Red Snake at du9. Greg Hackmann checks out vol. 1 of Special A (a.k.a. S.A.) at Anime on DVD. Huamulan03 reviews vol. 1 of Monkey High at the Sunny Side Up Anime Blog. Rachel Bentham reads vol. 9 of Pastel and Holly Ellingwood checks out vol. 9 of Kage Tora at Active Anime. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie gives her take on vol. 17 of Eyeshield 21, vol. 4 of Hoshin Engi, vol. 4 of I.N.V.U., vol. 3 of Ark Angels, vol. 5 of Elemental Gelade, and vol. 20 of Get Backers. Eric Turner reviews vol. 8 of High School Girls and Lissa Patillo (she’s everywhere!) checks out vol. 2 of Love is Like a Hurricane at Manga Jouhou. Kethylia gets ahead of the trend and pans a light novel, vol. 1 of Ai no Kusabi. Erica Friedman focuses on the yuri aspect in her review of vols. 3 and 4 of Loveless at Okazu. At the Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie reviews vol. 4 of Canon and vol. 1 of Le Chevalier d’Eon. Jessica Severs has a pithy review of The Manga Bible at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

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Comments

  1. You know, one thing that was addressed at the Dark Horse event that I didn’t mention was novels. Carl Horn made the interesting point that novels are the one thing that a non-Japanese-speaking/reading fan can really have no access to— music has a language of its own, manga and anime both have pictures that can be followed. But a novel? You have to be pretty fluent in reading kanji to even get started.

    He also said that they were pleasantly surprised at how well their novels have done. (Their first Oh My Goddess novel was released in December, and their first Dirty Pair novel comes out in February.)”

    So as always, Ed is probably spot on! ;)

  2. I was pretty surprised by how many novels DH has licensed, and have ordered some of the Vampire Hunter D ones…. novels of Dirty Pair and A Wind named Amnesia is stuff I never thought I’d see otherwise.

    I don’t know if light novels will ever take over, but they’ve carved a nice niche, and it adds some diversity to collections….

  3. Hi there, thanks for the news! Did they really suggested that there might be a movie adaptation for CLAMP’s Mangetes?

  4. No, sorry, that was two different items. They were hinting broadly about a manga-related movie of some sort but not specifically CLAMP.

  5. I read the post again and I realized that I was wrong, sorry ^^”

  6. I have been massively impressed by the Vampire Hunter D novels and the Ghost in the Shell novels. I have also just gotten into the Guin Saga novels, and the first one is WOW.

    Actually, the first Dirty Pair novel in English came out last September. The second Dirty Pair novel should be out in February.

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