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Manga

US Manga Recap V [Week of January 29, 2013]

Weekly Shonen Jump - Feb 4 2013 cover

Just like that, January is over, and that marks one month that I’ve been doing this. Not a bad start, right? We’ve had a little bit of downtime here at All Fiction, but we’re back up and running now. It’s always strange how an unexpected break comes when you really want to blog, and once it ends you just can’t seem to get the motivation to finish things, ya know? At the least, I spent some time catching up on more manga from January, and even got to read this week’s issue of Weekly Shonen Jump (highly recommend you give it a try). Now…I’ve never been much a fan for digital anthologies or even digital volumes. I’m a book-guy. I need to hold it and feel it in my hands. Still…this is pretty darn cool, being able to read all these series simultaneously with Japan. And oh yeah, Dragonball Z in color looks pretty damn good.

Nevertheless, the show must go on, and this entry is yours to read.

Upcoming Releases for the Week of February 5, 2013

February is here, and VIZ per usual storms the month with a hefty list of releases. Not to be counted out, Vertical will be releasing the first volume of Nihei Tsutomu’s Knights of Sidonia (which everyone should all be totally picking up)! This is the kind of thing you’ll see time and again, at the beginning of every calendar month. VIZ Media always makes a point of opening strong and getting out as much material as possible.

Licensing News

Sherlock Bones JP 2

As I covered on Sunday, Sherlock Bones/Tanteiken Sherdock was licensed by Kodansha Comics. This is a peculiar little manga, and from what I’ve heard, it’ll be interesting. Sherlock Holmes is reincarnated into a dog in modern-day Japan and solves mysteries with the aide of his human master (who serves as the Watson of the story). Before you read into it more, there is apparently a decent bit of fanservice and the manga itself relies heavily on slapstick comedy. What kind of combination this truly means and the success it’ll see here in the States is yet to be seen, but hey…talking animals generally do alright. Volume 1 is due out on September 17.

Weekly Shonen Jump - Feb 4 2013 World Trigger license announcement

In Monday’s issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, it was announced that Ashihara Daisuke’s new manga, World Trigger, would make its debut in the February 11th issue. This is another brand-new series from Japan, so of course don’t place too much affection on it at first, because we all know how likely it’ll be canceled. In the meantime, the character design looks pretty cool, and the synopsis feels a bit like Psyren. I’ll still keep crossing my fingers for Assassination Classroom though!

 

 

Manga Solicitations

October is starting to fill out a bit more, now with Kodansha Comics and Vertical putting in their last titles for the month. We finally have a date for the 2nd Sailor Moon box set, which will complete the series and the next volume of Fairy Tail and Sankarea. For me, I’m personally looking forward to the second volume of Wolfsmund, as I said before…this is one of my anticipated titles for the year. Vertical understands my graphic, seinen manga needs, thankfully.

Manga Cover Updates

JF 7 - NnO 13PH 14 - S&W8nBD 8 - TB 1Haruhi 15 - Umineko 2-1

Manga News

DMP Kickstarter hint
DMP Kickstarter hint 2

DMP wastes no time and gets down to business, dropping a major hint that their next Kickstarter project will be something from prolific and legendary mangaka, Ishinomori Shotaro. Known probably best for his creation of the Cyborg 009 and Kamen Rider manga, Ishinomori was also once an assistant of “The God of Manga”, Tezuka Osamu. No matter what work Digital Manga pitches for this new Kickstarter it’s definitely going to cause quite a stir among fans and within the community itself. While I’d love to own Cyborg 009, I’d pretty much be happy with anything from Ishinomori. As always, keep your eyes peeled, and I’ll certainly be keeping track of this too.

VIZ’s boys-love imprint, SuBLime, celebrated their 1-year anniversary last Thursday. To make things a bit more festive, they announced 6 new licenses that’ll be released throughout the year. This was a good offset, since they had announced the day before, that Embracing Love, volume 1 had been pushed back from April to August.

proj_logo2Over at Project-H Books, they’ve been busy looking through new material, and posting some previews of upcoming releases. Last Friday they were showing off samples of RYOHZOH’s Colorful Dreams (イロドリ), so go ahead and click any of the links ahead, be be forewarned, they’re almost all NSFW: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 — So you can expect that, and a whole lot more once the volume is released on February 27th!

In addition to previews, Project-H also posted another another interview on their Facebook page: this time with Munyu, artist of See Me After Class, which was released last month.

Viz MediaVIZ Media’s Executive Vice-President of Publishing, Alvin Lu, recently parted ways with the company. For the day-to-day people and fans, this likely isn’t going to change much for us. As for what implications this has on VIZ, that is more of a guessing game. From the sounds of things, he helped spur their digital growth, which has been an area the publisher has focused heavily on in the last two years; pushing hard both with their VIZ Manga digital platform on e-readers and the emergence of Shonen Jump Alpha (now ‘Weekly Shonen Jump‘). Needless to say, this is going to leave some holes in the company for the time being, with Leyla Aker (Vice-President of Editorial) and Kevin Hamric (Director of Sales & Marketing) taking up the responsibilities for now.

On our last note, Vertical posted some of the rejected covers for Knights of Sidonia on their Tumblr on Friday. There are a few amazing designs, and some a bit more campy. But definitely go check those out!

You’d think that by now I would be getting quicker at this (it’s not the case). As always, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or critique, feel free to shout it out below or hit me up on Twitter (I do spend an inordinate amount of time there, ya know). The convention season is starting to creep towards us, and with that bringing more manga news to dissect and bring to everyone! Katsucon kicks off on February 15, and as I said before, Vertical has a few licenses to announce there and then its off to the big show: Sakura-Con on March 29, where we’ll likely be hearing from Dark Horse, VIZ Media and Yen Press (at least).

Until then, see ya next time!

[Dark Horse | Digital Manga | Fantagraphics | Kodansha Comics | Seven Seas]

[UDON Entertainment | Vertical, Inc. | Yen Press | VIZ Media]

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— Conner

Manga Editor- Obsessive manga collector, avid anime fan and spending way too much time on Twitter. Your friendly, neighborhood weeabro.

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