Market meditations, new CLAMP, and more

At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon meditates on Kai-Ming Cha’s recent post about the limitations of the manga market. Precocious Curmudgeon’s David Welsh, meanwhile, takes the long view. And Kai-Ming herself follows up with more thoughts on the topic. And John Jakala has some cheery thoughts to get us through the hard times. (Image is of the latest volume of Suppli, one of those “grown-up manga” that more grown-ups need to read.)

Deb Aoki catches the high points of the publishers roundtable at Anime Expo. It’s an interesting glimpse at some unvarnished discussion of sales trends, marketing, and the future of global manga.

CLAMP is drawing a one-shot manga for the Japanese magazine Monthly Kindai Mahjong Original. It’s going to be based on a gambling manga called Washizu ~Enma no Touhai~ and will presumably be about mah jong. Gia has more. (Image from ANN.)

The MangaCast crack team of manga readers lists their picks from this week’s new releases. Also, Ed posts some information on Tokyopop’s newly announced titles, the Japanese manga rankings (from Taiyosha) and, just for fun, some summer manga magazine covers.

Lori Henderson gives her take on this week’s new manga at Manga Village.

Vol. 30 of Naruto makes it to number 45 on the USA Today best-seller list, up from 134 last week, and vol. 20 of Fruits Basket is sitting pretty at number 63.

Newsarama’s Benjamin Ong Pang Kean talks to Chuck Austen about the tortured life and ultimate demise of Boys of Summer. It’s a good cautionary tale for creators and publishers, well worth a read.

Erica Friedman checks in with Seven Seas and verifies that their Strawberry line of yuri manga is still going, despite speculation to the contrary. And vol. 2 of the Strawberry Panic light novel is out. Here’s Erica’s endorsement:

let me warn you in advance that the translation is EXCELLENT. It’s just that the original text is really quite laughably bad. LOL.

(Image is of the first volume, which is beautiful if a bit… well, Erica’s right, but it’s interesting.)

I don’t think I linked to this article on the many manga Bibles, so thanks to Jason Thompson for pointing it out.

Svetlana Chmakova takes a break from penciling Nightschool to draw a bit of FreakAngels fanart.

Reviews: Start off your day with Carlo Santos’ thoughtful take on vol. 2 of Cat-Eyed Boy. I am reading vol. 1 right now, and I agree with some of his criticisms, although I am enjoying it anyway. At Okazu, Erica Friedman was ready to hate Hanayashiki no Junin-tachi but ended up… not hating it; interestingly, it’s drawn by the artists of Blood+. Eric Turner checks out vol. 1 of Vampire Hunter D at Manga Jouhou. Danielle Van Gorder gives her take on vol. 1 of Steal Moon, vol. 5 of Black Sun, Silver Moon, vol. 1 of Fairy Cube, and vol. 23 of Bleach at Anime on DVD. New reviews are up at Manga Village: Sabrina on COWA!, Dan Polley on vol. 4 of Mushishi, Charles Tan on vol. 4 of Eyeshield 21, John Thomas on vol. 1 of GANTZ, and Lori Henderson on vol. 9 of Kaze Hikaru. Julie reads vol. 1 of Chibi-Vampire, the novel, at Manga Maniac Cafe.

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Comments

  1. Surprised to see CLAMP’s artwork not looking ‘cardcaptor sakura’ like.

  2. Kai-Ming Cha sounds just the least bit like what you would call a literary snob. Like she’s chiding the manga audience for not growing up. Like the audience for manga is a bunch of snot nosed flighty kids that don’t know what real manga is. You can’t scientifically judge how large or passionate a fanbase for a title is simply based on how much they holler at a convention! If more mature series do not sell, is that the fault of the consumer? To me, that is the fault of the marketplace. If nobody buys it, or few do, this means nothing more than there is not a big market for it. And what is up with her preaching down from her hobbyhorse, poopooing anime?! Oh silly Cha, anime isnt simply for kids either. Anime isn’t as “sophisticated” as manga? Yeah, right. If kids don’t grow into more mature manga readers, they simply don’t. What’s to lament about? You can’t control them. I would feel sorry for the manga and anime buyers out there if Cha got a hold of a death note. She would be picking and choosing who is a true manga fan or not.

  3. Kai-Ming is not a snob! I didn’t see her putting down manga for younger readers at all in the original post. What she is talking about is an expansion of the manga market to include titles written for older readers. That’s something a lot of people have speculated will happen—as the readers grow older, they will want more mature manga.

    I think this is her take: There is a large cohort of young readers who like manga because it is manga, or maybe because it is the book form of anime. She doesn’t see them growing up to read Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service or Suppli. Instead, she sees comics readers who sample a lot of different genres discovering these more mature titles and reading them because they are good comics, not because they are manga. It’s two different groups reading in two different ways, and one isn’t necessarily better than the other (although Kai-Ming, not being a teenager any more, naturally prefers the older titles).

  4. That article on manga bibles although thorough, reiterates the the ignorance of the world about manga. The Christian publishers rather openly admit they are using the manga name to rope in readers. Jason Thompson’s comments are perfect but this comment about how Korean comics can be called manga as “Both words are written with the same kanji characters.” If you think reading Japanese means you will be able to read Korean, then I’d I have a bridge in Tokyo I’d like to sell you.

  5. James Moar says

    If I’m reading it correctly, the article only says that the words “manhwa” and “manga” are written with the same characters — which is true if hanja instead of hangul is being used.