Earlier this week, ANN reported that numerous Kodansha and Bbmf manga such as Hataraki Man and Keroro Gunsou have been or will be added to the Japanese iTunes App Store to be read on iTouchs and iPhones. The chapters are mostly priced at 115 yen (a few are free in the case of Keroro and many BBmf offerings) and are in both English and Japanese, which I guess is why these are apps for that functionality alone.
An slightly different offering under the “Books” category is a 3-volume, 53-page Yoshitoshi ABe doujinshi called Pochiyama at the Pharmacy for 600 yen, which I would like read except I don’t currently own an iPod touch - a condition I hope to rectify in the near future as there is a rumored price drop/update happening next month. It would be my first Apple hardware product ever even though I have previously used Macs in campus computer labs and played with an iPhone inside an AT&T store. All those free games… [Just after posting this, I found out ANN wrote a story about Pochiyama a hour before. Whatever.]
I guess I should also talk about DMP’s initiative to also provide digital manga to the masses. Their method involves renting a volume for 72 hours for $4 that can be upgraded to unlimited use by re-renting for a total of $8, but the starting 3-day limit shouldn’t be a detraction for many people. The current offerings are BL and how-to drawing books, neither of which particularly pique my interest - Gia had some recommendations of non-yaoi titles they could add such as Enchanter. The interface was not perfect for me because while Panel Focus zooms in on each panel so you can read the text, I read manga while surveying the whole page. Luckily, I was able to switch to actual size at medium scaling and just drag around to see the rest.
The chapter drop-down menu, keyboard shortcuts and bookmarking features are nice touches that compete with Tokyopop’s online “player”, which allows you to view opposite pages simultaneously with readable text but at a lower resolution that what DMP is offering. (How do you play manga, anyway?) The eManga site is easier to remember and to navigate than Tokyopop’s site so I might use it in the future to preview titles or even rent one. The points system has a logical ratio of 100 pts to $1 but the option to actually add points 1,000 at a time isn’t available at the moment.
Like last year, I did not attend Otakon and instead watched the first days of the Beijing Olympics. Sorry, anime - sports trumped you this time. But I was able to catch up with the help of Gia-Japanator combo liveblogging as well as reading raw transcriptions from an IRC channel (I think I saw one of those guys at an AX panel). Surprisingly, ANN lagged behind in terms of reportsand also no video as of Wednesday evening, which is strange since they supposedly were taping the fansubbing panel based on one of Scott’s tweets. [UPDATE 8/16: ANN has posted a 79-minute video of the Fansubs and Industry Panel along with a breakdown of the event.] Read the rest of this entry »
Inventorspot (via Mahalo) reports that a number of companies such as Geo and Dibra are offering extra-wide contact lenses that are tinted prominently on the outer ring to mirror the big-eyed look familiar to those with 2D complexes. Contact lenses in cosplay are not new to me since The Contact Lens Company (yes, that’s their name) had a booth in AX’s dealer hall - those are strange on their own because the irises don’t appear to move and sometimes freak me out. These appear to be more general use lenses as they work like clear contacts and you can have them made to order. It’s just…*sigh* why aren’t normal sized eyes good enough? I know it’s Japan and some women want to appear younger but really?
P.S. If I had the choice between wearing glasses and wearing contacts I’d spring for glasses because I have an aversion to touching my own eyeballs and might have trouble putting in contacts. Plus you shouldn’t lose glasses as often. Thank goodness I have fine vision so I don’t have to deal with either.
Last week, I finally added an overdue comment policy explicitly telling readers not to post or request links to illicit material after seeing yet another comment asking where one can read the Karin (Chibi Vampire) manga online:
OMG Can enyone tell me where i can get Chibi on line!!!! its driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the unspoken rules of participating in viewing fansubs/scanlations is to not publicly ask for where to obtain such illicit goods. (Another is not to monetize it through donations or subscription fees but that’s another subject.) If you really want to read or watch content for free, then do your own damn research - it’s not that difficult, sadly. While I don’t believe that scanlations have as severe an effect on the manga industry as fansubbing does to anime, it can still breed the feeling that one deserves to read something for free.
I personally have not read or looked for scanlations for about a year and that was just to see what Shirow Miwa’s Dogs and Sakae Esuno’s Mirai Nikki were about by reading a few chapters. I will try to check Dogs out further whenever it hits American shelves along with Maid-sama, Shinji Ikari Raising Project and some others I can’t recall at the moment.
That short list of my anticipated releases says something about my limited interest in the manga scene, which makes my authoring of this post a bit strange from my standing as a fringe reader. I never understood the rationale of complaining that something became licensed in your region because that means it becomes more easily accessible; this is more so for manga than anime because you can now read them in paper form, assuming you couldn’t read Japanese and didn’t have a Kinokuniya nearby. You can even sit on a couch in a bookstore and read whole volumes - I don’t care, just stop complaining that you cannot access a series or, worse, brazenly continue to do so.
Saying that you’re reading it in a browser and not downloading is a faulty excuse just as watching an licensed anime series on YouTube, Veoh, or even Crunchyroll is - you are still consuming the media in a non-sanctioned manner assuming it hasn’t been uploading by the actual rights holders.
I have since removed the comments that involved links or requests but you can read them in chronological order after the jump, with the links obviously taken out. Read the rest of this entry »
If you haven’t heard by now, “leading lifestyle destination for men” CraveOnline has acquired social networking website MyAnimeList. Unlike Mania’s buyout of AnimeOnDVD, I would not expect there to be drastic visual overhauls and it is comforting to know that Xinil will remain lead administrator and editor-in-chief.
This acquisition enables MAL to continue to grow without being burdened by rising server and bandwidth fees (which have increased a lot lately), and helps us branch out into more beneficial features (think video). CraveOnline has no plans to change our community or thwart the direction we’re headed. If anything, they’ll help us get the things we need faster and more efficiently.
Onto the slightly worrying part: in the press release, Mike Dodge, SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline (CraveOnline’s parent company), said that “MyAnimeList continues to bolster CraveOnline’s leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market“. As far as I know, the general anime and manga fan community is diverse between both genders and MAL shouldn’t be too different.
A quick advanced search of MAL’s user base conducted this afternoon shows that 14,107 of its 79,056 users have described themselves as female, 19,364 as male, and 45,585 have not specified a gender. So that means out of the 33,471 who picked one or the other, it’s 58% male and 42% female which seems to be a pretty good balance.
I’m not intending to make a mountain out of a molehill so I apologize if it appears that way but my minor worrying is based on a perception of AtomicOnline’s attitude toward its brands. While I know MAL won’t be totally messed with, there could be a change in the way it is marketed toward non-users and in potential shifts in on-site advertising including cross-site promotions.
Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B have acquired the rights to adapt Mark Crilley’s four-volume OEL manga Miki Falls into a movie with Sera Gamble, a producer and writer for “Supernatural”, attached to the project as the scriptwriter. Crilley is best known for his Akiko series of comic books targeted at 9- to 12-year-olds; all four volumes of this latest series are being published on HarperCollins’ HarperTeen label.
Miki Falls‘ beginning plot is that Miki Yoshida is starting her last year of high school when she falls in love with new boy in town Hiro, except that he doesn’t want anything to do with her or her town. She decides to be his friend but she finds out he is a Deliverer, someone who monitors couples about to break up and snatch their before it dies to pass onto another couple. Deliverers are forbidden from falling in love but Miki ignores that rule and acts on her ambitions. The series takes place over the seasons of a year so it would seem natural for the film to start in spring and end in winter.
Greg McElhatton from Read About Comics’ reviewed of the first volume, Spring, last July and described it as “well-rounded” with a “very soft, relaxing art style” that could appeal to readers outside its intended audience. All Ages Reads, whose review crew is a teacher and her grade-school daughters, also liked the series and recommended it for the 10-and-up crowd as the romance is confined to kissing. In September, Brigid at MangaBlog published the full version of an interview she conducted with Crilley in July 2007 for a Publisher’s Weekly article (that’s where I got the story description).
For this week’s edition of the Nigorimasen Podcast, I interviewed Omo from Omonomono and we also talked about conventions, the PS3 download experience, indescribable Japanese terms, and AMV’s. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments or e-mail questions, guest suggestions, or other concerns to podcast [at] nigorimasen [dot] com.
Music
Opening: “The Clear Blue Sky” by Aki Misawa (from Sound Online’s The Clear Blue Sky)
Ending: “Tabibito” by Ikeda Ayako (B-side from Dennou Coil single)
Have you ever wanted to see characters from your favorite anime series face off on a ballfield diamond? Well, some enterprising Japanese person set up a 16-team tournament (作品別対抗大会) using Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 14 to simulate the matches and posted the results on NicoNicoDouga with some added graphics to make them seem more televised. While there were obvious baseball inclusions such as Oofuri and Dokaben, there were also a few obscure choices like Maple Senchi and shojo manga Muteki no Venus by Ayumi Shiina. An added bonus was that the uploader also took the time to craft relevant chants for each team (i.e. “Star Rise” from Bamboo Blade), which made the whole thing all the more authentic, at least as much as a video game can be real.
Anyway, if you are a baseball nerd like myself and if you want to watch the matches, there is a video playlist containing them in sequence but for those who are not (and also lack Nico accounts), I’m also posting the results after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night, I tuned into Sci-Fi Channel to watch the TV premiere of the Bang Zoom-produced Gurren Lagann dub. I actually thought it was pretty good and something I’d watch weekly but then again, I am more forgiving of dubs than other, more purist fans may be. Kamina didn’t seem to possess all the machismo that he should’ve and Leeron’s voice may have played up a certain angle a bit too much but Simon (aka Simoun), strong Yoko, and the extras sounded good. Now we have to wait for next week to see how Viral, Kittan and his sisters stack up. (Other bloggers’ reactions: DTZ loved it, CJ called it “bearable”, xephfyre played it safe, Author-san: “quite palatable”, and Mr. Miao rightfully hates on the commercials.)
While I’m on the subject, I’d like to talk about the short Gainax interview that ANN posted yesterday. At the end of it, TTGL product manager and Gainax co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga said, “We hope to be working on Gurren Lagann for the next decade. This work we know as Gurren Lagann will continue.” They have already released most of their Parallel Works project (which has been halted until just before the Sept. 6 premiere of series recap film #1 of 2), a DS game last fall (review from a Destructoid C-blog), a cancelled MMORPG involving first-person digging of tunnels, and a manga adaptation drawn by Kotaro Mori. It’s obvious that the studio will focus on its other projects including Shikabane Hime over the next few years but this franchise is too popular not to expand upon sometime in 2010 or 2011, although I hope it won’t get overly revised like Eva did.
I was flipping through a recent issue of Time Magazine (July 14th) that was lying around the house and saw a feature called “Famous Authors’ Guilty Pleasures”. What struck me was that Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz chose the Monster manga as his, although I probably shouldn’t have been surprised after reading the front flap of his immigrant-family novel, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao:
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien, and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú — the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim — until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last.
Diaz described Monster’s Johan as “one of the weirdest, most attractive psychotic masterminds in literature” and mentioned other characters like Nina, Inspector Runge and Eva as components of Tenma’s “epic quest”. I am idly interested to see how US sales of the manga are affected by this mention in a mainstream magazine and I might have to take a peek at Oscar Wao because it seems interesting…and because it won an award, like Monster won the 2001 General Shogakukan Manga Award. (I also want to check out The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps for a different reason.)
And yes, I did discover that ANN wrote about this two weeks ago during this post’s composition but it was news to me so I’m posting about it anyway.
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