At ComicSnob, Matt Blind posts this week’s new manga and asks whether anyone is interested in criticism, rather than just reviews of brand-new books. For the record: I am!
Chloe looks at online sales numbers at Shuchaku-East and finds some interesting results.
At MangaCast, Ed has the 411 on new titles from Yaoi Press, Udon, and Infinity, and he notes that Udon and Tokyopop are teaming up on the WarCraft and StarCraft titles. He also posts on Mangazenkan, a store that sells only complete sets of manga.
News from Japan: Canned Dogs has a breakdown of the readership of Zero-Sum and the other Ichijinsha magazines by age and gender.
Reviews: Erin F. reviews two Fanfare/Ponent Mon books, The Ice Wanderer and Disappearance Diary, at PopCultureShock. Kethylia enjoyed Disappearance Diary as well. Julie reviews vol. 1 of A Strange and Mystifying Story at MangaCast and vol. 12 of Skip Beat! at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Snow Wildsmith checks out All Nippon Air Lines at Manga Jouhou. Ferdinand reads vol. 1 of Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro at Prospero’s Manga.
I am not sure why there is an effort to review what is NEW over things that are even a little old. Matt Blind brings up a great topic that I feel like has been sitting just in front of me but I have never seen before. Titles have so many strikes against them (getting noticed in the crowd) and it is not fair to act like they go rotten after a certain amount of time. Many of what we read from Japan is years if not decades old. I will make an effort to include reviews of older titles that deserve a second look…
I always looked at reviews for what’s new coming not only from wanting to post what people ‘want’ to see, but what reviewers are reading at the time. When it’s new and you get hands on it, you review it then, so logically what’s new is what will be on the most pages. I’m sure a lot more people reread old bookshelf discoveries much more than review sites reflect though unfortunately. There’s no difference in quality from a release we got yesterday and one we got four years ago. Review what I’m reading is my policy, regardless of how old it is. That’s why my manga reviews range from new and old (soon to be a lot more older titles due to suffering college student budget ;) )
For me, i review whatever takes my fancy. I’ve done old and new. As i read it i’ll review it if i think it’s worth writing about.
Sure there’s more new stuff being done lately, since thats mostly what i’ve been buying. but the west is behind the times with manga really. Certain series have finished in japan a long time ago, but are only upto say volume 4 or 5 in the west. Others go on long holds and then come back.
Also publishers abandon older series, look at Marmalade Boy and Basara, two of my favorites licensed by Tokyopop and Viz, both are old series that are well worth a second, third and fouth look :) But they’ve been abandoned by their publishers. Marmalade Boy is totaly out of print, and Basara’s early volumes are nigh on impossible to find
I am not sure if it is the publishers that abandon titles so much as the readers. If a title isn’t selling, a publisher has little choice but to drop it. I am happy we are seeing some cases, like MPD-Psycho, where Dark Horse has said they are printing the entire series no matter what.
The last thing publishers want to do is jump ship on a series midstream. It disappoints a small but dedicated group of fans that may not want to start another new series to see it stopped mid-way.
Tiamat’s Disciple, you have a great blog…and I am going to try to expand my thinking to include some of the older stuff (which I absolutely love) as well.
hehe thanks, i try :)
The thing is though when publishers allow currently running series to fall out of print, such as Basara. How can they expectnew fans who pick up the last volume when its released this month, to buy the entire series, when the first 10 or so volumes are almost impossible to get, without eityher spending hours hunting through websites and book shops, or paying insane prices.
I did a quick check earlier and found i had a few other series in my scanlation collection that were licensed, so i went looking for them, and what diud i find, yet again they’re out of print. It’s hard for new fans to get into older series, not because of the lack of reviews, but due to the lack of availability. I’m not suggesting that puiblishers end up stock piling boxes of manga in the vain hope of a wave of new fans, but their has to be a middle ground somewhere.