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It’s New Years Day! And that means the end of 2010 has come and gone – the end of the first decade of the 2000s’, the end of another year of fantastic comics (upon other many wonderful things).
Just for a little living in the past on this first day of 2011, what better time to look back at 2010 with some favourites, surprises, disappointments and neat website tidbits. Sure it would’ve made more sense to have posted yesterday but who has time with all those celebrations going on… right?
It’s Thursday! And that means new comics were out on comic store shelves yesterdat. There weren’t a whole lot of books I wanted out this week but I still left with a few gems I look forward to jumping into tonight. For consistency’s sake, I’m also going to aim to have these Swag Bag editions up consistently on Thursdays, the day after I buy the bulk of my books. Any I buy other days I’ll save up for the next week’s edition. Can I handle this simple schedule? We shall see!
Two of my current Viz Media favourites came out today – Toriko (Vol. 03) and Pokemon Adventures (Vol. 10) – stories of monsters of very different kinds. I really enjoyed the second volume of Toriko, though I do lament the art on the covers that leaves much to be desired. It’s hard to hold it up to people as say ‘Hey, you should read this!’ and get anything but a funny look in return. This new volume of Pokemon Adventures also marks the start of the new artist. I really loved Mato’s stuff though Satoshi Yamamoto’s look pretty nice upon quick flip through – very similar inking style and layout work, just a notably different lead artist. My real concern though is whose this new girl? Where’s Red and Yellow?! Things got some epic in volume nine! Ah well, we shall see how this pans out.
To round off my small but much-loved purchases, I also picked up the new collected edition of Thor: The Mighty Avenger – an incredibly charming mix of wit and hilarious expressions about the most lovable version of this character Marvel’s ever managed to portray (in my opinion of course). I also bought Dragon Sword and Wind Child, a young adult novel that was one of my absolute favourites when I was a kid so I was excited to get the chance to buy a new edition by Viz Media’s Haikasoru novel imprint.
Also with me today was my roommate who purchased a few extra snazzy books I look forward to borrowing. She bought the last two volumes of Shaman Warrior, a really well illustrated manhwa with epic fight scenes – I can’t wait to see how it ends! I’d forgotten about it for such a long while, I’ll likely go back and reread the earlier volumes first. My roommate also bought a new UDON release, the Darkstalkers manga Red Earth which is done by Mami Otou, the artist for the disappointingly-cut-short manga, Pilgrim Jager. Her art style really suits the characters so I expect this will be a fun read!
How about you? Pick up anything shiny today?
New sale over at RightStuf this week – up to 33% off Dark Horse books! Lots to choose from so check out their entire library of titles.
This is also an extra perfect time for fellow Canadians to take advantage of such sales, with the Canadian dollar currently on par making these prices all the sweeter. Once you get to $150 worth of items, it’s free shipping so get some friends together and go to town! Just in time for some holiday shopping too.
RightStuf had a similar sale on Dark Horse books in May and all my same recommendations apply so I won’t repeat myself. Adding to the pile though, I highly recommend their new omnibus edition of Cardcaptor Sakura. This is book is gorgeous, with a tweaked translation, lots of full colour illustrations and great art reproduction. Plus the story itself is still as sweet as sugar. 576 pages for $13.39 should not be missed!
Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror. (See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)
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5. Kurosagi Delivery Service
Everyone has their own personal squick buttons. Kurosagi Delivery Service manages to push all of mine. If there’s one kind of horror that gets under my skin more than any other, it’s body horror. Body horror is known for being gross as much as it is for being scary. Bodily fluid and functions are often at the forefront of the scares, earning EWW!s as well as AHHH!s from the audience. But once you get past the disgusting surface, body horror is about something much deeper than humans’ gut reaction to grossness. Body horror forces us to confront the fact that, for all our dazzling intellect and capabilities to reason, we are still stuck in these hulking, often gross physical forms, which will eventually perish and rot away.
Aside from the works of David Cronenberg, Kurosagi Delivery Service is the best example of body horror out there. The series follows a group of students at a Buddhist university. All of them have different talents (embalming, dowsing, communicating with the dead, etc) but quickly realize it’s hard to find work using these skills. The most ambitious among them, a computer-savy woman named Sasaki, decides that what they need to do is start a company of their own. And so the Kurosagi Delivery Service is born. The way it works is that the group finds a corpse and promises the dead spirit they will carry out its last wish in return for payment. While it sounds like a straight forward premise, practically every case becomes a lot more complicated very fast, becoming more and more twisted (in every sense of the word) with each horrifying revelation.
Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is not only unnerving, it’s also very smart, with constant of commentary on society and its customs for both the living and the dead. Despite how dark and gory the stories can get, the cast manages to keep things light with their bickering and banter. Dark Horse is doing an amazing job with the series, including a ton of adaptation notes in the back which help highlight some of the manga’s themes and references.
Lissa has reviewed quite a few volumes of the manga right here.
I still haven’t completely finished unpacking what I bought at the recent New York Anime Fest (or finished my write-up about it for that matter – eep!) but that certainly hasn’t stopped me from my weekly trips to Strange Adventures for all that’s new, shiny and on sale.
First off, I couldn’t help but pick up Dark Horse’s omnibus edition of Cardcaptor Sakura. I already own the floppies, Mixx tradebacks and Tokyopop editions of the series but this one was too shiny and high quality to ignore. If you’ve been looking to replace some old copies or haven’t had the pleasure of owning one of the most adorable and magical manga series ever made, then you owe it to yourself to pick this edition up. It’s printed on high-quality paper, has nice lettering work and a thus-smooth translation plus it’s stuffed with full colour illustration inserts. This is a beautiful book indeed!
Next I spelunked through the stack of new Yen Press books out this week and decided on the third volume of Black Butler. This series has so much fan-service that is absolutely, perfectly and deliberately tailored to me. Or at least that’s how it feels sometimes and judging by it’s time on the New York Time’s Best Sellers list, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
Next to enter my awaiting arms was the omnibus edition of Strawberry Panic which looks super pretty. I’ve heard good things so hopefully I am rewarded! I’m really falling in love with these omnibus editions, they’re fantastic.
Viz Media had a whole bunch of new books to choose from and there seemed no solution other than picking up most of them. For a new series, I picked up March Story (Vol. 01) and continuing a personal-favourite, Pokemon Adventures (Vol. 09). Naturally I had to make sure I nabbed a copy of 20th Century Boys (Vol. 11) while there was still one remaining and I was happy to see the second volume of Kingyo Used Books.
And rounding off my purchase of new releases and a new edition of a series I already own, I bought volume of boys’ love classic, Kizuna. It’s another beautiful omnibus edition of a great series. I will be enjoying some nostalgic reading this week for sure!
Then there was the discount shelf, full of snazzy and affordable little surprises to round out my purchases of the day. I picked up the first two volumes of Aegis from NetComics. I don’t own many of their books but have bought a number lately and liked the majority (though I have my share of complaints about their lettering – pet peeve of mine!). That said though, the lettering in Aegis actually looks quite a bit tidier than the others of theirs I’ve read so good start! Apparently it’s “a heart-thobbing sci-fi epic that echoes Lord of the Flies!“.
Lastly I got La Corda d’Oro (Vol. 08) and Togainu no Chi (Vol. 02), both of which I felt sort of lukewarm about prior volumes but I’m always up for giving series another book to impress me! I had opposite thoughts on them both – La Corda d’Oro has fantastic art but a meh story, where as I really disliked the art of this Togainu no Chi manga but like the original story. We’ll see where these volumes lead!
And to top it all off, though not manga, I had to buy a copy of UDON’s Vent anthology. It’s a collection of artwork from their company’s collection of contributing artists and it’s gorgeous.
Those were my purchases this week – what about yours?
Manga-ka: Toru Yamazaki
Publisher: Dark Horse
Rating: Mature (18+)
Release Date: April 2006
Synopsis: “Teenage monsters lose their hearts and heads in a relentlessly gory collection of dark humor and horror! Carving a comical niche in modern horror manga, Toru Yamazaki’s Octopus Girl serves up the most disgusting dishes of heartbreak and revenge found on land or at sea. Have a side order of nervous laughter with your main course of bloodcurdling fear, some gore with your teen angst, and some killer instincts with your kawaii!”
Octopus Girl is a horror-comedy with a sense of humour as black as a smoker’s lung. It is gross, disgusting, and morbid – the manga equivalent of a thousand dead baby jokes. But it is also alternately hilarious and horrifying, playing the different elements against each other in a way that enhances it all.
Dark Horse had its comic panel on Friday of New York Anime Fest, and while the time given to manga-related info stayed around the 3 minute mark out of the hour long panel, they still had two new license announcements to make that are bound to please fans of some of their most popular titles.
Bloodlines Battlefront is by Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun. The manga originally ran in the same manga that serialized Gantz, which feels a bit indicative of the tone this story will have. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic New York city where a vampire, werewolf and zombie work together to defend survivors living there from otherworldly creatures.
Drifters is by Kouta Hirano, the creator of Hellsing. This series is about a man who after being fatally injured in a battle, is whisked away to a strange dimension, inhabited by humans and fantasy creatures alike, where characters based on historical figures battle against both strange creatures and one another. It sounds like this series will have an overlaying tone of humour like Hellsing did as well.
Dark Horse will also be releasing Shinjuku Azul which is a sequel volume to their previously released illustrated novel, Shinjuku by Christopher “mink” Morrison and Yoshitaka Amano (artist best known for their Final Fantasy character designs).
Prior engagements meant I had to leave the Dark Horse panel a bit early, after which time they discussed upcoming plans for digital distribution. For more information on this, I recommend checking out Deb Aoki’s round-up of the panel.
A bit belated but back in September my review for Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse (Vol. 01) [phew, long name!] was posted over at AnimeNewsNetwork.
It’s been a long while since Dark Horse has had a manga series I was interested in (excluding the ever-engaging Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) but the art style and plot of this looked like something right up my alley. The fact it was Neon Genesis Evangelion was just an interesting quirk.
Overall I enjoyed it, the art was really nice (non-NGE characters looked especially good with the freedom to design from scratch) and the plot was alright. I was irked at the end when Shinji stepped up as the stereotypical passive anime-hero to join this fight he never really gave enough thought to, but other than that I read the book with few complaints. Not overly exciting, but decent entertainment for those new and old to the franchise.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about CLAMP’s Gate 7 project hasn’t it? Over at the clamp_now community, news was posted that an ad for a Gate 7 short was spotted in the Japanese magazine, Jump Square, and with an actual street date no less. It will be a one-shot story, the plot of which isn’t known, though it does have another pretty piece of artwork to further whet appetites. The story is set to be published on November 4th. A one-page promo site has been posted for it as well.
Originally announced back in July 2007 (PR via MangaBlog), CLAMP was set to create a series of short manga stories (called ‘mangettes’) which were to released simulatenously in both Japan and North America. We got a glimpse of the plot in December 2008, a peek at the artwork in March 2009 and now perhaps an actual sign of life in September 2010. Dark Horse hasn’t said anything about whether they are or aren’t still in the game for a simultaneous release, or for this new short specifically, but we’ll assume they’re still in the game – they’re just waiting for it to actually start.
It’s too bad it’s taking as long as it has really, almost four years since the original announcement and we’ve yet to see even see a single page. But, I suppose it was hard to predict how their currently running series were going to play out at the time. Originally I believe they’d planned to end XXXHolic and Tsubasa at the same time – now popularity of the first has prompted an entire new ‘season’. Since it’s more XXXHolic, I think some CLAMP fans (or at least I?) can forgive the delays of newer work a while at least.
As a bonus piece of positive CLAMP news, it was announced earlier in the week that the 4-woman manga team would be providing the illustrations for a Japanese-released edition of Peter Pan. That’s two of my absolute favourite things mixed together! I smell a must-have collectible import…
Random pre-swag note: Swag Bag is a semi-weekly article I’d always wanted to do, mostly because I love reading similar posts (be it blog or forum) from others. Too long has the voice and excitement of those who actually buy been left to the shadows while scanlation readers and fansub watchers make up huge amounts of most online locales of discussion. Web stuff breeds web talk after all, I suppose. This isn’t intended to be another repetitive us-versus-them debacle, simply an observation I wanted to act upon – those who buy should be proud to share, recommend, and perhaps most helpfully, inspire. No more shadows, okay?
That said, this article (Daily Video: Fans Launch ‘Sustain the Industry’ Movement) posted on AnimeNewsNetwork made me happy. Great job to them doing it! It’s a fun idea and looks like they have fun doing it. It was a nice bright spot in the day, excluding the expected sigh-factor to see another handful arguing that buying instead of watching for free is more hurt than help to the industry. Blech. But, onto the swag!
A pretty light week for new manga releases but still some goodies to pick up. Along with a handful of new books, I also treated myself to some bargain bin finds as well.
Despite being a bit underwhelmed by the first, I couldn’t help but pick up the second volume of Chi’s Sweet Home. I’m not a cat person and it’s a story about a cat… just being a cat. But the adorable full colour art and great production values caught my eye again all the same. We’ll see if Chi can win me over in this one.
Speaking of catching my eye, the fourth volume of Karakuri Odette came out this week and I love the cover! Odette looks so silly and the outfits she and the presumably new character are wearing are really snazzy (makes the yuri fan in me squee just a tad, I’ll admit). I’ve no doubt the story inside shall prove just as fun. Super advanced robot tries to fit in at school and be like a real human girl – it’s continually proved itself 5x more charming than it initially sounds.
A new series I’ve been waiting for a while is finally out – NGE: Campus Apocalypse (Vol. 01). I was never huge into Evangelion but I’d consider myself a fan. Previous alternate-universe-esque takes on the original left me wanting anything but another, yet the artwork and plot of this one piqued my interest easy enough. Just flipping through after purchase, I know it was a good buy for the eye-candy alone. Really nice art, and past some similar character designs and names, it looks like a story that those not familiar with the franchise may be able to pick up and enjoy as well. We’ll see how this supernatural take pans out.
Thanks to a couple random items to round out a friend’s free-shipping with RightStuf purchase, I got the first two volumes of the Gravitation manga (old-school boys’ love!) and the one-shot novel. It’s really nostalgic reading them now, one of my first boys’ love stories from many a year ago! Forgot how sort of hideous the art is, though I still find the story charming in its own way – especially when Suiuchi outright proclaims his sexuality and affection for Eri. So refreshingly forthright, even today!
Also in my little RightStuf order, I got The 12 Kingdoms Novel (Vol. 03). I don’t own volumes one and two, but I will! The anime was amazing and I really look forward to reading the original books it was based off of.
And lastly, thanks to my local comic store Strange Adventures (which is where all my new purchases came from as well), I picked up volumes 1-6 of Trinity Blood. Admittedly I read the first volume a while back and wasn’t overly impressed. However, since then I’ve fallen head over heals for the out-there-oddity that is Zone-00 which has the same artist – so I’m giving Trinity Blood another go.
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