It's a bit of a slow week for new manga, with a fresh batch of titles from Viz but just one each from everyone else.

Last week, Viz released a stack of new volumes, mostly in their Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump lines. The second week of the month brings a smaller but more varied selection, mostly from Shonen Sunday. The pick of this month's litter is definitely vol. 17 of 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa's sprawling tale of a cult whose plans for global domination are based on a childhood game. Johanna Draper Carlson admits to some frustration with the suspense in this series in her short review (scroll down) at Comics Worth Reading, but even so, Urasawa's skill as a storyteller is undeniable.

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Tags Dark Horse, Digital Manga Publishing, JManga.com, Kodansha Comics, Manga, VIZ

Online bargains: As I noted earlier this week, the online manga site JManga.com has cut prices for the month of October. You still have to sign up in order to get points ($10 for 1,000 points, plus a bonus, each month), but your points will go farther since they have cut prices from 899 to 499 points for most books. And they have three new ones up there: The first two volumes of Hitohira, a high-school romantic comedy about a shy girl who joins the drama club, which was originally published by Aurora in the U.S.; Sherlock Holmes, a manga take on the classic detective that has two hot guys chasing shadowy, supernatural creatures; and Nogi, an action series. Read more...

Tags Azumanga Daioh, JManga.com, Julietta Suzuki, Manga, Sailor Moon, Takehiko Inoue, Vertical

The first week of the month always brings a wave of new manga from Viz, and this month is no exception. And at the leading edge is vol. 1 of Psyren, Viz's newest Shonen Jump series. Psyren is the story of a high school boy who tries to rescue a friend from the shadowy Psyren Secret Society and ends up in the middle of a survival game. It mashes together a lot of different elements—the faux-utopian cult of 20th Century Boys, with the deadly game of Battle Royale and a million other manga—but it's a good yarn and it moves fast.

Also up from Viz this week is vol. 13 of Vampire Knight, in which Yuki is injured and more secrets are revealed. This first week of the month tends to be heavy on Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump titles, and that means plenty of fan favorites: vol. 7 of Bakuman, vol. 4 of Blue Exorcist, vol. 37 of Eyeshield 21, vol. 5 of Kamisama Kiss, vol. 9 of Natsume's Book of Friends, vol. 5 of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, vol. 6 of Rosario + Vampire: Season II, vol. 4 of Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura, vol. 8 of Seiho Boys' High School, vol. 25 of Skip Beat!, and vol. 18 of Slam Dunk. If you like your manga in big doses, there are the third volumes of the Bleach and Fullmetal Alchemist omnibuses, and for kiddies and gamers, there's vol. 3 of Pokemon Adventures: Diamond and Pearl Platinum. So really, Viz alone could keep you occupied for the whole long weekend. Read more...

Tags Bandai, Code Geass, Gandhi, Kodansha, Manga, Orson Scott Card, Penguin, Seven Seas, Tor, Vampire Knight, VIZ

When the online manga service JManga launched last August, our biggest criticism was price. The website offered a lot of interesting manga titles, but they were charging print prices for digital manga—$8.99 and up for most volumes.

Well, now they are fixing that, at least for this month by marking down prices by 45% to 60% for the month of October. Manga that cost $8.99 is now priced at $4.99, and the most expensive titles will go from $19.99 to $7.99. Individual chapters have been marked down as well. And in a particularly nice twist, JManga is giving a partial refund to people who bought their manga before the sale started.

Manga on the JManga site are priced in points, not dollars. The points cost about a penny each, but you can't just buy 899 points. You have to subscribe, to the tune of $10 per month, which actually gets you 1,500 points the first month and 1,050 each month thereafter. Additional points are sold in increments of $5, $10, or $25. Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, JManga, Manga

Vertical, Inc., marketing director Ed Chavez had a surprise announcement for fans at the Vertical panel at Anime Weekend Atlanta this past Friday: The company has licensed Flowers of Evil, which is currently running in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine. If you're curious to see what it looks like, Kodansha published the first chapter online for free, as part of the magazine's launch two years ago.

The story, titled Aku no Hana in Japanese, is a high-school romance with a blackmail twist: Takao Kasuga, a high school student who is more comfortable reading the poems of Baudelaire (the title refers to Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal) than making small talk, steals the gym clothes of the girl he likes; another girl catches him in the act and uses the incident to blackmail him. It's a plot we have seen before, although more often in shoujo manga.

Sean Gaffney has some comments on Flowers of Evil at A Case Suitable for Treatment, where he notes that Flowers of Evil is ongoing, and five volumes have been released so far in Japan. He adds,

This is another ‘mainstream’ release after they announced GTO Shonan 14 Days earlier in the year. Although it does seem somewhat eccentric for a shonen title, and I suspect may be more along the lines of what Genkaku Picasso was for Jump Square. Let’s see what it does to try and grab us!

Vertical will release the first volume in May 2012 and plans to release a new volume every other month.

Related Posts:
A Week of Manga News: Special Sailor Moon Edition
Manga Review: GEN, the Online Manga Magazine

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Tags Flowers Of Evil, Manga, Vertical

This week's news was dominated by pretty soldiers in sailor suits. The first volumes of Sailor Moon and Codename Sailor V have been out in bookstores for two weeks now, and they are just showing up in comics shops this week. The first two volumes of Sailor Moon were the top two manga in terms of online sales last week, according to Matt Blind's analysis, with Codename Sailor V just behind them at number 4. I reviewed Codename Sailor V earlier this month, but with all the buzz, I thought I would devote this week's news roundup to what everyone else is saying. Wintermuted's Why the World Needs Sailor Moon, which I linked to last week, is a good starting point. And don't miss the latest Manga Out Loud podcast, which features a discussion of Sailor Moon by Ed Sizemore, Johanna Draper Carlson, Emily Snodgrass, and Erica Friedman. Read more...

Tags Kodansha, Manga, Sailor Moon

The online manga magazine GEN launched in April, and at first, it looked a bit dubious. The first issue, which contained the first chapters of four different series, was free. Each new issue costs $2.99, but once two more issues come out, it becomes free as well, so with the debut of issue 5, readers can access issues 1-3 for free. It's a little complicated, but it makes a lot of sense: Readers can catch up on the stories for nothing, then pay a small amount to get the latest chapters. In an interview with Otaku News, editor-in-chief Robert McGuire said that the magazine is covering its costs and looks like it will be good in the long run. Eventually, he says, he will collect the stories into volumes, just as other manga publishers do now.

While many manga publishers place restrictions on their content, allowing it to be read only in a particular app and only in certain countries, GEN is DRM-free. You download the PDF, and that's it—it's yours to keep, to move around from computer to iPad to any other device that reads PDFs. It won't expire, and if the company goes belly-up, you'll still be able to read your manga.

This is truly a subversive idea, letting readers all over the world just download the comics and read them. GEN is currently published in English and Japanese, but McGuire said that readers in other languages have expressed interest, so French, German, and Italian editions are possible in the near future. Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, GEN, Manga

How many different kinds of cuteness are there? An artist named Charuca counts the ways in I Love Kawaii, a small but beautifully produced art book that introduces 32 different artists that create big-headed children, smiling hamburgers, happy cats and dogs, and literally hundreds of other adorable mascots and characters. Read more...

Tags Aranzi Aronzo, design, Japan, kawaii

Those of us who buy our manga in bookstores are a couple of weeks ahead of the comics-shop crowd, who are just getting Sailor Moon and Codename Sailor V this week. Since Viz and Yen Press had their big releases a few weeks ago, there aren't a lot of new volumes out this week, but there are still a few good choices.

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Tags Bandai, Del Rey, Digital Comics, JManga.com, Kodansha, Manga, VIZ

This first volume of Codename Sailor V reads like the first draft of Sailor Moon, and in a way, it is. Sailor V came first, and you can see Naoko Takeuchi working out the basic ideas that would make Sailor Moon a classic, but Codename Sailor V is a bit more raw. Nonetheless, this earlier version has a great deal of charm of its own, largely because of its spirited heroine, Minako Aino. Read more...

Tags Kodansha, Manga, Sailor Moon