Monday quickies

If you liked… In this week’s Flipped column, David Welsh takes a look at Ohikkoshi, from Dark Horse, a collection of self-contained stories that may indeed apeal to indie fans.

Sweatdrop Studios has two anthologies with a twist: The two volumes, called Pink is for Girls and Blue is for Boys, tell the same nine stories but with different styles and points of view. They’ll be launching them at the London MCM Expo next weekend, but if you don’t happen to be in London, you can check out some samples of Pink and Blue.

At Comics-and-more, Dave skips the regular Manga Monday reviews and treats us to some cool links instead.

Posters on the AoD forum agree: Tokyopop is too slow with the releases these days.

Here’s an opportunity to show some love for your favorite manga: Nominate it for The Cybils, the 2006 Children’s and YA Bloggers’ Literary Awards. Check the site for the rules, but they’re pretty straightforward: The book must be published in English in 2006, and only one nomination per category.

ChunHyang72 has divided her posts into a Manga Minute, with latest news and reviews culled from the TokyoSpace blogs, and the Tokyopop Roundup, featuring the best of the blogs, art, columns, etc. Elsewhere in TokyoPopLand, Lillian DP posts a Dramacon fan video.

At The Star of Malaysia, Kitty Sensei reviews volume 2 of ES: Eternal Sabbath. At Anime on DVD, Matthew Alexander reviews the Tokyopop one-shot Daphne in the Brilliant Blue. And if you’ve been thinking that La Corda D’Oro might be another Nodame Cantabile, Mangalife has some bad news for you.

This is slightly off topic, but given the prominence of France in manga, not too far off: Apparently some Japanese tourists are traumatized by the realities of Paris:

“Fragile travellers can lose their bearings. When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover it can provoke a crisis,” psychologist Herve Benhamou told newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

Bernard Delage of Jeunes Japon, an association that helps Japanese families, said: “In Japanese shops, the customer is king, whereas here assistants hardly look at them… people using public transport all look stern, and handbag snatchers increase the ill feeling.”

I have to say that although it has its good points, Paris is one of my least favorite cities. The Japanese would do better to shun it and hit one of the small provincial towns, where people are not in such a hurry.

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Comments

  1. Thanks for the news report on the Sweatdrop titles! However, the sample pages are on the product pages, and don’t require registration to view:
    http://www.sweatdrop.com/products/pinkisforgirls.php
    http://www.sweatdrop.com/products/blueisforboys.php

  2. Thanks! I put the links into the main post so everyone will see them.

  3. I’ve spent entirely 24 hours in Paris, but I have to say, I loved it. I think it was the food. That said, I think 24 hours is about as long of a stretch as I’d like to spend there, and I’d rather go out into the countryside if I ever go back to France.

  4. Around January I sent TokyoPop an email commenting that they lost focus with their traditional licensed/translated books and were putting out too much peripheral books like OEL and cine-manga. Suggesting they were spread thin and my book (Beck) being published very sporadicallly.

    Now in October, I have guesses business-wise why they have to publish so much and why their focus has indeed switched. I’ve recently had a influx of TP books to look at and IMO — even though TP is considered the “Top 3”, i’d probably want them to pick up a license I like maybe 5th or 6th. In terms of quality, other publishers “beneath” them have surpassed them in quality and since they’re smaller they can pay more attention to each title.

    Also, IMO it’s not just an issue of frequency. Del Rey has occasional instances of long wait times but they publish a schedule they strictly adhere to, so fans see their plan for basically a year at a time. I’m only aware of one title last year that contradicted the schedule. So my thought is that they do a better job of managing the fans by being honest, communicating well and doing their job by releasing series on time.

  5. ChunHyang72 says

    Maybe it’s just all those years of playing in youth orchestras, but neither “Nodame Cantabile” nor “La Cordo d’Oro” appealed to me. Both rehearse a lot of silly, romantic ideas about music-making that make my inner oboist want to scream.