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Posts Tagged DM Guild

Review: Body Guard

By Lissa Pattillo on Thursday, August 15, 2013

Manga-ka: Kimiyoshi
Publisher: Digital Manga Guild
Rating: Mature (18+)
Release Date: May 2013

Synopsis: “Takahiro’s normal life as a high school student gets turned on its head when his father marries a super rich Hollywood actress named, Elizabeth Adley, and leaves Japan to be with her. Takahiro is forced to leave his apartment home move into a lavish hotel room. Fantasies of naked nights of porn and debauchery begin to fill Takahiro’s mind. Too bad his new mother in law has other plans. In order to protect Takahiro (and her money) from kidnappings, Elizabeth hires two bodyguards from a distinguished American company. Any thoughts of unsupervised nights of fun quickly rush from Takahiro’s mind. On the up side, his new bodyguards are totally cool.”

Sometimes there are books so bad that you almost have to recommend them as an important genre piece. Some books just make the good books look better. That said, Body Guard is still not a book I would recommend to many, but I would lying if I said I hadn’t shown select pages to a number of fellow boys’ love fans just to get a good laugh.

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Categories: Reviews
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, Digital, DM Guild, eManga, Manga

Review: Don’t Tell My Husband (Vol. 01)

By Lissa Pattillo on Monday, August 5, 2013

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Manga-ka: Kei Kousaki
Publisher: Digital Manga Guild
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: January 2013

Synopsis: “Because Minano has spent her entire life sheltered by her wealth and parents, she has seldom experienced the hardships of everyday life. Nothing changes after her marriage to a wealthy CEO, as she is still spoiled shamelessly by her husband. Why then, would she try and break into said husband’s company to steal a heavily guarded opal necklace? Or why, when she’s held up in a bank robbery, would she take matters into her own hands to thwart the robbers? Is she really who she seems? Does one high-heeled madam with nerves of steel even stand a chance against gun-wielding criminals? Just who is this sheltered wife?”

This is a strange little manga. I wasn’t sure what I was getting when I went into it, and I still wasn’t really sure when I finished. It’s an amusing little distraction but feels as flighty as its lead who fails to carry these episodic chapters.

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Categories: Reviews
Tags: Digital, DM Guild, eManga, Manga

Review: ULTRAS

By Shannon Fay on Sunday, December 2, 2012

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Manga-ka: Est em
Publisher: Digital Manga Guild
Rating: Mature (18+)
Release Date: June 2012

Synopsis: “An avid game of love between rivals! Soccer fans are notorious, but ULTRAS like Al and Leon take it to another level! They eat, breathe, and sleep for their beloved teams and their rivalries, like the rivalry between Liberta and FC Madrid. When the Spanish national soccer team wins the European championship, fans around the country unite to celebrate. Sparks fly when Al and Leon first meet amidst the festivities, but what happens when these two ULTRAS unknowingly find themselves on opposite sides of a passionate rivalry!?”

Soccer might seem like a weird thing to get all Romeo-and-Juliet over, but under Est Em’s direction it works. She has a skill for grounding her stories while keeping them interesting and quirky. It’s her skill and unique sensibilities that keeps ULTRAS from being a standard collection of yaoi short stories.

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Categories: Reviews
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, Digital, DM Guild, DMP, est em, Manga

Yaoi Con 2012: Digital Manga Deals Out New BL, Pups and eManga News

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, October 28, 2012

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Along with being the host for this year’s Yaoi Con, Digital Manga Publishing was also present still as publisher with licenses to announce and word of big changes coming to their online digital manga store, eManga.

Digital Manga’s new for-print license announcements were:

As Many as There Are Stars – Matsumo Miecohouse
Does the Flower Bloom? – Shoko Hidaka
Kinoko Inu, the Mushroom Pup – Kimama Aoboshi
(A) New Season of Young Leaves – Venio Tachibana & Akeno Kitahata

Admittedly I was surprised by how little Digital Manga Publishing how to announce, especially at what is now pretty much their convention. It wasn’t even all boys’ love they announced either, and while that’s not in itself a bad thing, this was Yaoi Con after all. And then there’s the fact that what is likely their biggest announcement – Shimotsuki Kari’s Brave 10 (pictured above on the left) – will be digital only and published via their quality-inconsistent, Digital Manga Guild.

As Many as There Are Stars is a boys’ love one-shot by an artist being published for the first time in English. I can’t say much about it except for a really cute cover staring a very androgynous looking lead (Amazon.jp). A New Season of Young Leaves is another one-shot boys’ love book (Amazon.jp), which I can’t say anything about concretely past there’s likely students, one has glasses and they very, very likely will be romantically involved. Yep!

Does The Flower Bloom is a multi-volume boys’ love series by Shoko Hidaka, who has had two books released by DMP in the past (Restart & Not Enough Time). Currently the series is three volumes long and stars a budding relationship between a college student and older salary man who bond over a magazine they both read.

The two series DMP announced that aren’t boys’ love are Kinoko Inu and Brave 10. Granted, Brave 10 does seem ripe with boys’ love subtext and is also by the same creator of BLU’s Madness. I would be most interested in this one if not published via DMG, which combines two of my very few pet-peeves about manga publishing – digital only and poor quality control. Kinoko Inu is a one-shot title (though it does look to have a follow-up volume) starring a chubby little dog with a mushroom head decoration. And it’s… pink? Said ‘mushroom pup’ pictured in this post’s header image and that’s all I’ve got on it (DMP – please start including synopsis with all your licensing announcements, please and thank you!). Cute though, definitely looks cute.

DMP also announced new volumes of titles they’re currently publishing – Depression of the Antiromanticist (Vol. 02), Hey, Class President (Vol. 05), ZE (Vol. 08-11) and Itazura na Kiss (Vol. 12).

Digital Manga also announced that eManga will be going through a big transformation that will include being able to download their manga after you purchase it, giving readers a lot more control over how and where they read it. I don’t purchase digital manga often, but when I have purchased manga volumes it’s only been via DRM-free files that I can read freely on my iPad without internet dependence . Plus, no more point system! I’m a lot more likely to explore DMP’s digital-only library when they relaunch eManga this way, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they roll out in November.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, Conventions, Digital, DM Guild, DMP, June, Manga, Yaoi Con 2012

Building Their Hentai Heaven – Project-H Licenses 20 New Books for Print

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, July 29, 2012

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Digital Manga wasn’t at this weekend’s anime convention, Otakon, but they delivered a wallop of new licenses for their Project-H imprint all the same. Announced first via their Twitter account, this batch of new licenses includes twenty individual volumes.

Because that’s a lot of books, you can read the full list of titles and some info on them under the cut:

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: DM Guild, Hentai, Manga, Project-H

Digital Manga Grabs a Snack with Mr. Mini Mart, Announces Yaoi Con GOH

By Lissa Pattillo on Wednesday, June 6, 2012

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Convention season is officially underway and Digital Manga was at Fanime with some news to share. Just before that though they announced another new boys’ love license: Junko’s Mr. Mini Mart.

The book is scheduled to be released in print next year (Summer 2013) at a cost of $12.95. This license announcement even came with a plot synopsis, something I’ve bemoaned DMP before for lacking, so yay on actually knowing the plot of a book so I can properly anticipate it!

“NEET shut-in Endou just wants to get his life back on track, but employment at a convenience store brings the rude Yamai Kouhei into his life…soon Endou finds himself troubled by his past and trying to get along with Yamai.”

During their Fanime panels, Digital Manga shared current and upcoming plans for their digital-only release group, Digital Manga Guild, including news they’ll be releasing translated light novels and have licensed Erementar Gerade: Flag of Blue for a digital-only release (they’re currently releasing Erementar Gerade this way). They also let fans know that success of their previous two Kickstarter projects has prompted them to put another Osamu Tezuka title into the works to be funded the same way. No word yet on what the title is.

Now that Digital Manga are owners of Yaoi-Con, they’ve announced their guest of honour for the 2012 boys’ love event is Uki Ogasawara. DMP has currently released two volumes of her series, Black Sun (review), while DramaQueen previously released two other stories, Chronicle of the Divine Sword (correction: this title was licensed, but never released) and Virtuoso di Amore (review).

This is going to be my first year at Yaoi Con and I was really hoping for a bigger name guest, notably more akin to previous guests such as Fusanosuke Inariya, Ayano Yamane or Hinako Takanaga. I still feel the leftover tears from not being able to attend the years those artists were there. Uki Ogasawara is still a good guest, of course, as a published manga artist and a new comer to the event, but with this being Digital Manga’s first year as Yaoi Con management (and them facing scrutiny over how they’ll handle it), I was expecting a more fan-favourite creator to wow the crowds. Of course Yaoi Con 2010 had almost a dozen artistic guests so who knows what else could be announced between now and the convention this October.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: 801Media, Boys' Love/Yaoi, Conventions, DM Guild, DMP, Hinako Takanaga, June, Manga, Yaoi Con

Digital Manga Says See Me After Class, President Momoi Kun

By Lissa Pattillo on Monday, April 2, 2012

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It’s new manga license time-! Again! Digital Manga sent out an e-mail about two new manga licenses, continuing their recent trend of revealing new licenses in pairs or trios of hentai and boys’ love. This week’s new licenses are:

See Me After Class (Vol.01) – Munyu (Project-H)
President Momoi Kun – Higashi Nishida (June)

Both books are scheduled for a print release in Spring 2013. See Me After Class will be $17.95/US, while President Momoi Kun is being listed at $12.95/US. You can see a few preview pages for President Momoi Kun over at its Amazon.jp page.

Digital Manga also recently sent out press releases announcing two new partnerships to release more manga digitally – Papyless (publisher of young woman’s comics) and Leed Publishing (hentai titles). I’m still not very keen on reading manga digitally but some of those Papyless titles are certainly tempting me to make some exceptions. We shall see!

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, DM Guild, DMP, Hentai, June, Manga, Project-H

Cute Guys and Cats – DMP Licenses Three New Titles for Fall

By Lissa Pattillo on Friday, March 9, 2012

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With barely a breather between them, Digital Manga has announced another three new licenses to be released this fall:

Secret Thorns – Kikuko Kikyua (June)
Start With a Happy Ending – Risa Motoyama (DMP)
The Hentai Prince And The Stony Cat (Vol.01) – Okomeken / So Sagara / Kantoku (DMP)

Secret Thorns and Start With A Happy Ending were both announced via Digital Manga’s social media accounts and their website’s blog. The Hentai Prince And The Stony Cat was listed admist the string of new titles in their recently e-mailed Digital Manga Newsletter.

Secret Thorns is a one-shot boys’ love title by the same creator as the book, Entangled Circumstances, that DMP released last year. It’s a romance title set against the backdrop of an editor and author’s turbulent relationship when being lovers is thrown into the equation.

Start With A Happy Ending is a multi-volume series collecting a number of short stories and looks to be one for the cat lovers out there. The main title is about an individual who is reincarnated as a cat with seven days to live and reflect on their life before moving on. The series is only one volume currently but is on-going in Japan.

Despite its title, The Hentai Prince And The Stony Cat isn’t a hentai (18+) and will be released under the DMP line of books. Its story sounds as bizarre as the title though – it follows a young man who has obvious perverse intent behind everything he does and yet no one seems to acknowledge it. He wants people to see him for who he truly is and stop hiding his true feelings to save face. When a friend recommends a fix, he seeks out a stone cat that he hears can grant wishes. It’s there he meets a girl who wants the ability to actually hide her true self. Quirky, pervy hilarity apparently ensues! A short preview of The Hentai Prince and The Stony Cat can be seen at Amazon.jp.

Other extra tidbits in the newsletter include the license of Hinako Takanaga’s final volume of Tyrant Who Falls In Love (Vol.08) and affirmation that the first twelve volumes of Erementar Gerade will be “using translations adapted from the original English releases” (from Tokyopop), with volumes 13-18 being adapted by the Digital Manga Guild.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, DM Guild, DMP, Hinako Takanaga, June, Manga

Erementar Gerade Re-Licensed By DMP For Digital Release

By Lissa Pattillo on Friday, February 10, 2012

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Digital Manga Publishing announced via their Twitter Thursday night that they’ve re-licensed the manga series, Erementar Gerade (followed up with a post about it as well).

The series was originally released in English by Tokyopop under the name Elemental Gelade, but they stopped production of the series with volume twelve in August 2010. The series is eighteen volumes total and complete in Japan, but has a currently on-going sequel.

“After a routine raid, rookie air pirate Coud Van Giruet discovers a most unusual bounty: Ren, an “Edyll Raid,” is a living weapon that reacts with a human to become a fighting machine. As he realizes that Ren is even more prized than he thought, she is captured by an evil man who sells Edyll Raids on the black market. Can Coud and the agents of the Elemental Gelade Protection Agency team join forces and rescue her without killing themselves… or each other?” – Elemental Gelade (Vol. 01)

Having never read the series, and being unfamiliar with its selling history, I wasn’t sure what and where the demand was which prompted Digital Manga to pick it up. Is there a demand big enough to warrant a re-release? It became easier to understand why the company would take a risk on a title that never seemed to be a big hit when they announced via Twitter tonight that it would be digital only, starting from volume one.

Erementar Gerade is now scheduled to be a part of their Digital Manga Guild offerings where translation, editing and lettering will be done by the guild’s members instead of Digital Manga’s full-time or freelance staff. The title will then, if released the same as their other titles, be available through their eManga website and Amazon’s Kindle.

Any manga license announced as digital-only still leaves a big pit in my stomach as I make no secret of my heavy preference for print. Optimistically in this instance, at least, I’ve met and read of quite a few Kindle owners frustrated by the overwhelming amounts of boys’ love content compared to anything else available to purchase. It’s good to see these individuals will have some more different material to choose from in the future as Digital Manga branches out genres with their guild offerings. With questions coming up regarding the quality of the guild’s work varying wildly group to group (Twitter folks, always food for thought there!), it’ll be interesting to see if any further editorial oversight is given to a series that will likely face a much broader audience.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Digital, DM Guild, DMP, Manga

Digital Manga Acquires, Hires and Seeks More Fans’ Help

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, November 12, 2011

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Digital Manga‘s newsletter came out yesterday and had an assortment of interesting news to share – some great, some neat and some that just left me scratching my head in confusion.

The company has licensed a new boys’ love title – Docchi mo Docchi by Nozomu Hiiragi. It’s a one-shot title about two men employed at the same company. Both are well known with the ladies and rivals at their jobs. When the two somehow end up in bed together, the big question becomes who’s meant to be on top?

Digital Manga also noted that they’ve acquired the license to the third volume of Dog x Cat. Neither title has a release date yet.

The newsletter also reminded readers of job listings posted on Digital Manga’s website. Those currently listed as new and ‘permanent’ there are: Manga-Comic Editor/ Production Associate, PHP Developer, Accountant, Production Associate, Graphic Designer/Marketing Assistant and E-commerce Sales Associates.

The weird news of the week from Digital Manga though is that they’ve launched a Kickstarter program to fund a second-printing of Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth. Kickstarter is a site where individuals or groups can start up a funding project where they look to the community to pledge money to support it. I’ve seen this work successfully for independent creators who don’t have the initial means to afford print runs but a company size of Digital Manga doing it?