Monday update

ICv2 seems to be working its way around the industry talking to all the honchos. This week’s get is John Ledford of ADV, but don’t expect any insight into when the next volume of Yotsuba&! is coming out. Manga doesn’t get a single mention in the interview, not even when ICv2 asks about ADV’s product mix going forward. Also, when the interviewer asks whether ADV has been able to find fresh capital after breaking up with Sojitz, Ledford talks for quite a while about other things, “reinvent our business,” “reached out to new partners,” “focused on our core strengths,” etc. Presumably if they had found a new investor, the answer would have boiled down to a simple “yes.” That wasn’t the case here, although they did have some anime announcements to make.

Yamila Abraham of Yaoi Press follows up her previous post about the state of the global manga business with some more optimistic thoughts for creators.

Tiamat’s Disciple follows up a discussion on this blog with his own thoughts on scanlations and how publishers can increase sales. At the Icarus blog (NSFW), Simon Jones points out that Google ads for pirate manga sites turn scanlations (and just plain scans) into a commercial activity.

I’ve seen all the justifications, and the continually moving goal posts… ”we can scanlate because these aren’t licensed”, then “we can scanlate because these aren’t commercially available yet”, then “we can scanlate because the official translations are awful.” I may disagree with some of those arguments, but they are rooted in legitimate grievances, and all within the realm of reason. But a line has to be drawn somewhere, and for the love of Tezuka, if the fandom as a whole cannot come out and roundly denounce the illicit profit-making off of scanlations and scans of commercially-available manga before turning this into another entitlement debate, then there’s no hope for this industry at all.

John Thomas continues his discussion of the perils of translation at Mecha Mecha Media.

Deb Aoki has an insightful interview with Wendy Pini, creator of Elfquest and Masque of the Red Death, about publishing, bringing girls to comics, and more.

Erica Friedman rounds up this week’s yuri news at Okazu.

Matt Blind has crunched the summer online sales numbers and presents them in five different formats: an info dump of all the data, the top 10 series and volumes, the top 150 series, estimated publisher market share (with a colorful pie chart!), and a publishers’ scorecard.

The Viz blog spotlights Eagle, a manga that features an Asian-American candidate for president. (Via Manga Recon.)

Japanator is giving away free manga to two randomly selected readers. Drop them a comment to enter.

News from Japan: Monthly Dragon Age magazine has announced a new manga series will be based on the Chrome Shelled Regios light novels by Shūsuke Amagi. This will be the fourth series based on the novels. And here’s a post from a travel blog on where to buy manga in English when you’re in Japan.

Reviews: Madeline Ashby took my advice and read vol. 1 of Astral Project, and she’s glad she did; her review reflects her own experiences in Japan. Lissa Pattillo has short reviews of ten good Halloween reads as well as a longer look at vol. 8 of Loveless at Kuriousity. Ed Sizemore critiques vol. 2 of Toto! The Wonderful Adventure at Comics Worth Reading. Deb Aoki reviews MW at About.com. At ComicMix, Andrew Wheeler reviews three manga that have little in common: the first volumes of B.Ichi, Wild Animals, and Mao-Chan. At Manga Recon, Kate Dacey and Michelle Smith are On the Shojo Beat with a look at vol. 1 of Blank Slate and vol. 1 of Captive Hearts. Dan Polley isn’t too impressed with vol. 1 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Official Casebook. EvilOmar posts a flurry of short manga reviews at About Heroes. Michelle Smith checks out vol. 4 of Fairy Tail and vol. 2 of Silver Diamond at Soliloquy in Blue. Hazel has a positive review of Red Colored Elegy at Anime Infatuation. Tiamat’s Disciple reads vol. 1 of Wild Animals and vol. 5 of Cynical Orange. Mangamaniac Julie reviews Lover’s Pledge at the MangaCast and Angel’s Coffin and vol. 13 of Nana at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Erica Friedman looks at a Japanese yuri title, vol. 1 of Hakodate Youjin Buraijou Himegami, at Okazu. Ferdinand checks out vol. 1 of Slam Dunk at Prospero’s Manga. Tangognat reads vol. 5 of High School Debut. Sesho checks out vol. 2 of Vampire Knight at Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews.

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Comments

  1. Hey, thanks! Speaking of those Japan experiences, I had one that might be relevant to Mr. Handley’s situation (and scanlations, come to think of it): http://www.escapingthetrunk.net/?p=96

  2. And because he doesn’t hear it enough, three cheers to Matt Blind and his number crunching.

  3. At this point I have a pretty passionate hate for ADV and secretly probably wish they would go out of business (which could still come true). They have never done anything right for the manga reading community. They singlehandedly almost destroyed the manga market a couple of years ago with their “1000” volumes promise of idiocy. I think that only the arrival of Del Rey on the scene shored up the market. They never had any respect for their readers. This was apparent in the hubris they had back in 2004 and has always been apparent by the fact that they went about a millenium without updating the manga section of their website. They probably haven’t updated in over 2 years…or more. WHERE is Gunslinger Girl, Cromartie, and Yotsuba!!!??? its been a year since they’ve released any volumes. And then when they do interviews, it’s like they don’t want to acknowledge the dirty little secret that they’ve shafted manga fans and continue to do so to this day. At least say something about the state of their titles! They should just get out of the manga business completely and let their titles go to better and more competent companies, just like they did with their newer anime titles. That’s all they would have to do to make amends. I have always been a fan of their ANIME side (but even that was shaken with their failure to complete multiple series). They are not a company to be trusted and I would hesitate to buy any new product from them out of the fear that they will not follow through. They should have kept at least ONE book on the market, like Yotsuba, just to keep reader confidence that they could keep a manga going. I actually stopped reading Gunslinger Girl because the wait between volumes was too long. When they relaunched the title, I started buying them again, but it soon went on hiatus again. Have I mentioned that I hate ADV? It is actually probably too late for me as a customer. If they came out with new volumes of any of the series I mentioned above, there would be a good chance that I wouldn’t even buy them.

  4. You guy talk to much i need data on the number of shojo beats they sold to each state or I might fail math!!!!