The new manga come out tomorrow, and Japanator’s God Len has the whole list, all four of them, while David Welsh lists his picks. And The Yaoi Review has a yaoi-centric list of June releases.
Deb Aoki covers a BEA panel on expanding the reach of manga to older and younger readers.
At Comics212, Christopher Butcher lists his Eisner picks, which are heavy on the manga.
Simon Jones (NSFW, but highly knowledgeable about publishing) speculates (scroll down) about DramaQueen’s troubles:
One possible scenario is that with sudden competition, DQ may have been inclined to snatch up more licenses than they could handle, and set release schedules they couldn’t possibly keep. The demand also surely drove up the expectations of Japanese licensors, along with the asking price. Now mix this together with bookstore distribution, where returnability and long lead times between shipping and payment mean higher upfront costs for new publishers, and a well-planned, promising yaoi upstart can suddenly become severely underfunded as investors grow skittish at the unexpected rise in outlay.
In fact, I remember talking to Tran a year and a half ago about the fact that I had never seen one of her books in a bookstore. That may have been part of the problem as well. In comments, Danielle Leigh points out that most succesful manga startups have a backer with deep pockets.
Meanwhile, Heidi MacDonald drops a dire hint about Tokyopop at The Beat.
Lissa Pattillo spots an item about My Life Me, a manga-based animated TV show designed by Svetlana Chmakova.
Same Hat reports that Osamu Tezuka’s MW is being made into a movie.
Alex Woolfson’s yaoi manga A Shot in the Dark is excerpted in the 2008 Prism Guide; it’s also downloadable in full at his site.
This is probably old news to a lot of people, but Geek Rodeo discovers the lost final chapter of Ken Akamastu’s A.I. Love You.
The LA Times takes an otaku tour of Akihabara.
News from Japan: Masaru Uchida, the former editor in chief of the manga magazine Shonen, has died. Elezend has the results of the latest Oricon poll, this one asking “Which manga is the role model for love?” (Via When Fangirls Attack.) Kenichi Sato of The Yomiuri Shimbun interviews Daisaku Tsuru, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and creator of the manga Nacun. And when Shonen Jump teams up with canned coffee… 3Yen has the result.
Reviews: Sakura Eries reviews vol. 19 of Fruits Basket and Ben Leary reads Dirty Pair Strike Again at Anime on DVD. Reviewer Wiggle takes a look at A Foreign Love Affair and Say Please at Boys on Boys on Film. At ANN, Theron Martin reviews vol. 4 of King of Thorn, which is apparently the volume where you finally find out what’s going on (as opposed to watching the characters escape from various perils). Also: Casey Brienza (she blogs as Kethylia) is now a regular reviewer at ANN, and she kicks things off with a look at vol. 1 of Vision of the Other Side, a Chinese manhua published by, unfortunately, DramaQueen. Cathy picks up The Gorgeous Life of Strawberry-Chan and makes the mistake of reading it on the streetcar; she posts some sample pages so you can see for yourself why she was giggling so hard. Lissa Pattillo kicks off a week of Yen Press reviews with a look at one of the manhwa they recently took over from Ice Kunion, vol. 4 of One Thousand and One Nights. Connie reviews Museum of Terror 2: Tomie 2 at Slightly Biased Manga. James Fleenor checks out vol. 1 of xxxHolic at Anime Sentinel. Julie finds vol. 1 of Kiichi and the Magic Books to be entertaining, if not the greatest story ever told, at the Manga Maniac Cafe. At Active Anime, Davey C. Jones takes a look at vol. 23 of Bleach and vol. 5 of Muhyo and Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation, Rachel Bentham reads vol. 2 of Monkey High, and Holly Ellingwood gives her take on vol. 2 of Honey and Clover.