Nigorimasen! Blog

I got the pulp copy of RightStuf’s Spring 2008 catalog in the mail today and found an odd coincidence: two different manga with homophonic names: Gacha Gacha and Gatcha Gacha. The former is a shonen title dealing with a girl’s multiple personalities with an ecchi bent (the story arc shown above, “Next Revolution”, involves a boy who swaps gender whenever he sneezes due to a VR game malfunction!) while the latter is a shoujo romantic comedy with a love square and hints of shoujo-ai. Thankfully the Wikipedia pages for both series offer links to the other (shonen to shoujo and vice-versa) in case you were off by a letter. Still hard to discern between the two if you only hear the titles, though.

From top to bottom: Japanese, German, English

When I was in Germany last August, I bought the first volume of Honey and Clover and wrote about how Tokyopop GmbH was releasing titles noticably ahead of US licensors. Now that Viz’s English version has hit shelves, I bought one of those and looked for differences and similarities between the German and American adaptations. What follows is a comparison of many features between the two in attempt to determine which is the better visual adaptation.
Read the rest of this entry »

ICv2 reported in its Guide #51: Anime/Manga that sales of anime DVDs in North America fell more than 20% in 2007 and that the estimated market size in retail dollars is $275-300 million. That drop of a fifth might seem shocking at first but once you also take into consideration a corresponding 21% drop in anime releases, the number doesn’t seem to be too much cause for alarm. The amount of releases decreased in 2006 as well to the tune of 19% so I believe the market is still consolidating through more calculated and fewer licenses. The guide writers are nevertheless optimistic about the future of anime in America based on signs we’ve heard before including a “growing awareness” among US audiences, the eagerness of US companies to shorten the gap between Japanese airings and DVD release, and those companies’ willingness to try new methods of digital distribution and lower-cost packaging.

On the manga front, it appears that 2007 was another strong year but its growth rate is beginning to taper. The profileration of new titles is still the major problem facing publishers and retailers, something that I think might become an issue for some publishers in the near future. The manga section at the Borders here in Davis almost takes up two full aisles and forced the fantasy books into another set of shelves. I personally think that the US manga market might become a bit oversaturated in the near future when I look at the projection in the ICv2 article of 33 volumes of manga being released a week but it’s just a small thought right now.

[via ANN]

There was a story on ANN a couple days ago about a mother who was shocked to the Shoujo Beat manga “Absolute Boyfriend” in the children’s section where her 11-year-old was browsing at a Books-A-Million in Lexington, SC. There was a link to the actual news story from the CBS affliate WLTX so I decided to grab the video report and upload it. Books-A-Million Vice President Jeff Skipper said that the store would relocate the manga section to another area of the store after they looked at the “proximity” of the two departments. (Absolute Boyfriend is rated Older Teen on its page on Viz’s website.)
Read the rest of this entry »

The September and December 2007 issues of Shonen Ace, respectively.

Last week I ordered two issues of Shonen Ace from Akadot Retail mainly for the pack-in extras (got the tip for December from Furu Anime Panikku) and got them in the mail Wednesday. The “appendix” for September’s issue was a Haruhi battery-operated fan while December had a medium size Evangelion T-shirt meant to celebrate the 13th anniversary of Shonen Ace. More pictures after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember a couple weeks ago when I posted about the decline in manga sales in Japan? Well, this month’s issue of Wired Magazine has a feature story about Japan’s manga industry as well as a 10-page manga-style history of Japanese comics in the United States. The main article begins at a dojinshi market called Comic Ichi, shifts to providing the reader a sense of the art format’s influence within Japan, and returns to the topic of dojinshi artists while suggesting that the pool of enthusiastic artists could hold hope for solving the industry’s issue of homogeneity.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was walking around with my parents at Apple Hill today, looking at bunches of apples, pumpkins, and various crafts when I saw the headline “Manga comics losing longtime hold on Japan” in a copy of yesterday’s USA Today that was in a trash bin. So I made a mental note of it, checked out the article when I got home, and apparently there is a big problem of sorts. Sales fell the fifth consecutive year in 2006 and manga magazine sales are far from their 1995 peak of 1.34 billion with a figure of 745 million last year, about a 44% drop. The reporter noted that that high year was when Weekly Shonen Jump stopped carrying Dragon Ball. There were four likely causes given that primarily involve the habits of young Japanese people.
Read the rest of this entry »

In an AP article about “Thunder Road”, the first comic to be released exclusively for US cell phones, there was a bit about Tokyopop and their offerings through GoComics:

Mobile comics have been a cellular mainstay for years in manga-crazy Japan, where some titles already begin life on cell phones before going to print.

Stu Levy, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based TokyoPop, one of the leading U.S. publishers of manga, said the domestic market is still way behind Japan. But he said he could see comics being released in the U.S. on mobile phones before coming out in print regularly in the next few years.

Levy, whose company provides most of GoComics’ manga titles, said his company already is experimenting with adding animation and other cinematic touches to manga stories and tying in manga-themed games, ring tones, wallpaper and other content.

“I think that we’re all still in the experimental stage,” Levy said. “But I think with video and with technology that will allow the experience on the cell phone to become more engaging and more involved, we’ll be able to touch more customers in a number of areas.”

I tried out the service on my Verizon phone and the first chapter of DramaCon looked pretty nice with a couple instances of cropping and focusing on speech bubbles. However, I don’t think I would do it regularly because I like to have the whole thing in my hands and be able to admire two-page spreads or flip through the pages. Another excuse is a reluctance to paying a monthly subscription of $4.49 and using airtime to access something that I can’t view on anything else. It’s similar to my stance on ringtones and wallpapers - I’d rather make my own for free and have a lot of options instead of paying for a limited selection.

When I picked up an issue of Daisuki a week ago, I came to like one series in particular. That was “Idol”, created by Dortmund resident Stella Brandner, which began serialization in May. Since then, I’ve bought the other three chapters through issues of the manga magazine and enjoyed what I’ve read thus far. The main plot is that 19-year-old Elle is a photographer and painter who is a fan of the rock band Sub Four, whose tour through Germany happens to make a stop in her home city of Dortmund. She goes to the concert with her best friend Sascha but is mistakenly pushed out by security and loses her sketchbook in the process. The lead singer of the band, 27-year-old Damien, picks up and goes over to her apartment to return it to her while offering her a job as the band’s tour photographer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I was walking down Immermannstrasse, the main street of Düsseldorf’s Japanese district, and went into a comic book store. Inside there were manga and American comics translated into German as one would expect. I ended up buying an issue each of Daisuki (think Shoujo Beat), Animania (comes with pack-in DVD), and Manga sZene as well as some sticker sheets and a couple Chibi mangas (small sized 56 pages long from German authors). Gonna try to translate some of it during my downtime…

Anyway, I found out through a free Tokyopop pamphlet I picked up that they have already put out the first six volumes of Honey and Clover in Germany (webpage for vol. 1) and volume 7 is coming out in September. Each volume costs 6.50 Euro, which right now converts to just under nine US dollars so not much difference from US manga prices. Speaking of America, Viz Media announced last weekend at Comic-Con that the manga will replace Nana in Shojo Beat next March and that the first volume will also debut that month. Concidentally, just as the series starts its release in the US, the tenth and final volume will likely come out in Germany that same March.