Weekend linkblogging

Yesterday I went to Vericon, a sci-fi/gaming/fantasy/anime con at Harvard, not because I’m into any of those things but because Shaenon Garrity, whose Overlooked Manga Festival always causes me to erupt in unseemly whoops of laughter, was part of their webcomics panel. I was late to the panel (which I blogged about for Digital Strips) but afterwards I had the opportunity to chat with Shaenon about her work as a freelance editor for Viz and how she chooses overlooked manga. I’m hoping we will be able to do an interview in the near future; in the meantime, here is her latest OMF, in which she takes on the only slightly overlooked Ode to Kirihito

A Tokyopop operative interviews the duo known as Peach-Pit.

John Jakala’s defense of manga, discussed below, was sparked by Fantagraphics art director Jacob Covey’s blanket pronouncement that “manga is crap.” (It looks like Covey has erased that post.) Leave it to Simon Jones of Icarus to reveal that in fact, Fantagraphics does publish manga. Ero-manga. Pretty good ero-manga at that. Oh, the irony! (Icarus link is NSFW.)

Meanwhile, at coffeeandink, Mely says even within the shoujo genre, there is a lot of variety in art styles. A commenter disagrees, and an interesting discussion ensues.

Animeblogger Hazel turns her hand to manga from time to time, and whenever she does it’s worth a look. Here are brief reviews of manga-related books and a list of “manga I’m not sure exists.” The latter is a handful of titles that list January release dates but don’t seem to show up in catalogs or elsewhere, including the elusive Sweet Cream and Red Strawberries, by Kiriko Nananan. And she checks out some series debuting in January.

MangaCast has the scoop on some new series from Udon, as well as the week’s doujinshi ratings.

At the Mangamaniaccafe, Julie samples vol. 2 of Chibi Vampire and vol. 2 of Baby & Me. Okazu’s Erica Friedman enjoyed vol. 7 of Yuri Hime much more than the previous volume. Anime on DVD’s Jarred Pine has mixed feelings about vol. 1 of Utopia’s Avenger. At Active Anime, Blake Waymire opens the door to vol. 1 of Banya the Explosive Delivery Man and Holly Ellingwood reviews vol. 2 of Punch! At MangaCast, Ed reviews Blood Alone, Council of Carnality, and Unbalance Unbalance.

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Comments

  1. I must say, Brigid, that I’m still amazed that you are so into manga yet you have no interest in sci-fi, gaming, or even anime. It’s like you’re a old-school Japanese female manga fan who sees manga as more of an art form than a pasttime. It’s just so sad that there’s no fully realized Josei manga line here for you to dig deeper – I think you’ll enjoy them more than the typical shonen/shoujo fair translated here.

Trackbacks

  1. […] (Last link via Brigid Alverson, who also links to a blog post by Mely discussing the range of art styles found within shoujo manga alone — and be sure to scroll down to the comment by JennyN, which notes that what manga has been so successful at selling to readers isn’t artwork, but story.) […]