You can get the first volume for free. Teen angst and fetish suits sold separately.
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Tags Neon Genesis Evangelion, VIZ, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

If you read manga, you probably read some Square Enix series. They don't publish manga under their own name in the U.S., but their titles are licensed by Viz and Yen Press. In December, Square Enix launched an online manga store, so I decided to check it out.

The best thing about the site is the selection of books: Black Butler, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero Tales (a favorite of mine), Black God, Pandora Hearts. Unfortunately, that's the last nice thing I'm going to be able to say about it. The design is terrible, the registration process is way too complicated, and the reading software is unwieldy and locks the user in to one or two computers. Oh, and it's only available in the U.S.; the rest of the world is locked out. But if you're reading this in Canada or some other exotic place, let me reassure you: You're not missing much. Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, Manga, Square Enix, VIZ, Yen Press

Ten years after its debut, the arty, PS2-era action-adventure game gets a novel through VIZ's Haikasoru imprint in August.

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Tags Haikasoru, Ico, Ico: Castle In the Mist, Miyuki Miyabe, PS2, PS3, Team Ico, VIZ

MTV Geek is pleased to present an exclusive excerpt from the new science-fiction novel from Viz's Haikasoru imprint, "Good Luck, Yukikaze" by Chohei Kambayashi:

The alien JAM has been at war with humanity for over thirty years... or have they? Rei Fukai of the FAF's Special Air Force and his intelligent tactical reconnaissance fighter plane Yukikaze have seen endless battles, but after declaring "Humans are unnecessary now," and forcibly ejecting Fukai, Yukikaze is on its own. Is the target of the JAM's hostility really Earth's machines?

Author Kambayashi, whose reality-blurring work has been compared to that of Philip K. Dick, is best-known in Japan for the first novel in the series, "Yukikaze," of which "Good Luck, Yukikaze" is the sequel. An anime series based on "Yukikaze" by Gonzo and Bandai Visual was released in 2002.

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Tags Good Luck Yukikaze, Haikasoru, science fiction, VIZ

The wandering samurai finds a home at Warner Brothers.
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Tags Nobuhiro Watsuki, Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai X, Takeru Sato, VIZ, Warner Bros.

I didn't know that manga writer/artist Oh!Great's (the pen name for Ito Ōgure) high school fight manga Tenjo Tenge ran for 12 years, only recently ending its run in 2010. I wonder where it can and will go, given that its lead characters--Souichiro, Bob, and Aya--are all first-year high school students and that 12 years is a long time to be a freshman. All three of the characters, members of the Juken martial arts club at Toudou Academy, want to be stronger, to master their respective fighting styles for their own personal reasons. Maybe in the grand scheme of things a decade isn't enough time to master a particular fighting skill or hit such a broad target as becoming stronger, but they seem to be off to a good start in the first and second volumes presented here in Viz's Full Contact Edition.

The series might be a love-it-or-hate-it prospect for most readers, with its mix of elaborate martial arts, supernatural portents, graphic violence, and nearly as graphic nudity. It's a martial arts exploitation story in comic form. Those last sentences may have already sent some readers out to pre-order their copy of this volume, which is presented uncut in the wake of the Teen-rated editions released by the recently-folded CMX imprint.

For those of you who might still be on the fence about picking this volume up when it's released, and who are of age to pick up M-rated titles, I'll say that in spite of its pretty gnarly content, it's got an engaging story that moves along very quickly. The characters are all types, with Souichiro being the hothead with a heart of gold, Aya a ditz with deep reserves of ability and backbone, and Bob, the stoic outsider who's always there for his best friend. However, these characters are caught up in a plot that establishes an air of mystery for its them and their circumstances, tells you just enough to keep it intriguing, and never allows fights to go on longer than necessary (a pitfall of many fight-based manga titles). There are actually several parallel mysteries going on in the story, including the nature of Souichiro's power as well as the reason for the continued domination of the Executive Council over Toudou Academy and the root of their animosity towards the tiny Juken club. Read more...

Tags Manga, Oh!Great, Tenjo Tenge, Viz Signature

The Viz Manga iPhone app is a smaller version of their iPad app, with much of the same functionality, and it certainly is a convenient way to always have a volume of manga on your person.

The Viz iPad app is one of the nicest comics apps I have seen. It's sleek and simple, individual series and volumes are easy to find, and it works very intuitively. The iPad is a great medium for reading manga because the screen size is slightly larger than a manga page, so it feels a bit less cramped and more luxurious. Because it is a single-publisher app, the Viz app doesn't overwhelm you with a barrage of different comics; they highlight a few and make it easy to find the rest with a drop-down menu that gives you a single page for each series. None of this is all that different from other comics apps; it just is executed a little more elegantly.

I tested the iPhone/iPod Touch app on my two-year-old iPod Touch, which runs version 4.2.1 of iOS. I was given a designer's build of the iPhone app, so I couldn't test how it synced with the iPad app, but overall it ran smoothly on the iPod Touch. The interface is simple, and Viz gets bonus points for putting a Settings button on the main menu, something other comics app developers often neglect.

The app opens up to a store, which took a few seconds to load, and the scrolling was a little jerky. Like the iPad app, it offers featured volumes and lets the user search for any series with a drop-down menu. Each volume has a brief catalog page with title and creator info, rating, and a capsule summary. Downloads were reasonably quick, about a minute for a full volume. Because Viz only publishes translated Japanese manga, and doesn't flip it, the app is set up for right-to-left orientation, which means you swipe to the right to turn pages—the opposite of American comics apps. Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, IPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Manga, VIZ

At the Viz panel at FanimeCon this weekend, Marketing Director Candice Uyloan announced that Viz will publish two "film comics" based on the new Studio Ghibli movie Arrietty the Borrower (Karigurashi no Arietti), and Viz spokesperson told MTV Geek that the company is also planning to publish a picture book and an art book based on the movie, which will be released in the UK in July and the U.S. next February. (The English-language voice cast includes Carol Burnett and Amy Poehler.)

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Tags Anime, Arrietty the Borrower, Manga, Movies, Studio Ghibli, Viz Media