Rocket Bomber - found

Found:

Who is Miyamoto Usagi? Whence does he come? Why is he on my Manga Charts?

From the Amazon listing:

Created in 1984 as a supporting character for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo is a perennial favorite amongst children, especially boys, and adult fans. Usagi Yojimbo chronicles the action-packed wanderings of a funny-anima ronin in feudal Japan. In honor of his 25th anniversary, Fantagraphics is releasing a deluxe slipcase set collecting the seven first Usagi books, including the earliest stories; the origin story, “Samurai”, a full graphic novel; and literally dozens more. This is the complete, definitive Special Edition (our third in a line of repacking our most beloved classics). It will also have extra material, some from the long-out-of-print hardcover editions and some brand new: a complete full-color gallery of the more than 50 Usagi covers from that period (never-before-collected); many preparatory sketches; two “non-canon” Usagi stories by Sakai co-starring the TMNT (with whom Usagi also shared screen time in the TMNTs’ TV series); and a long career-spanning interview with Sakai.

The Usagi Yojimbo: Samurai GN namechecked above was originally published by Fantagraphics back in 1989. (And it’s a collection of earlier material) (and it’s only vol. 2 in the series, vol 1: Ronin, was first published in 1987)
—OEL Manga as a term can be applied to Sakai’s work, but he predates it. By a lot.

From the description above, this is merely a repackaging of the Fantagraphic editions of Usagi vols. 1-7, with maybe a new, eighth book with all those listed extras. If that’s all it is (1200 pages), it’s easily worth the $95. (not that we pay list price with all these websites out there trying to undercut each other)

isbn 9781606991541, as noted $95 list, currently advertised as a May 2009 release.

The ongoing adventures of Usagi Yojimbo are published by Dark Horse; vol. 22 came out last June.

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I’ve something special this evening.

I spend a lot of time looking at online sales sites. It’s an occupational hazard: I intend to keep up the odd habit (harvesting as much data as I can) until the sites catch on and wonder why one customer has to look at 150 pages of manga listings each and every week. Every now and then, I look past the manga because something in a sidebar or on an intro page catches my eye.

Found: 2 players, 1up:

A selection from Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix vol 4, as a video, by Viz via B&N Studio:

Link

2up: Same source, Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda:

Link

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Yet another one-shot from Shojo Beat (there seem to be quite a few of these…) this time from Rie Takada (mangaka of Punch!, Happy Hustle High, & Wild Act)

Found:

Gaba Kawa

hey!

A quick pass through a romaji-to-kana converter followed by mangling by Google MechaTranslationBots gives us a rough impression that Gaba Kawa means “what if I?” — but a stop by ANN for the actual Japanese title: ガバ♥カワ — and a second melee with the GogTranBot is only confusing. Obviously translation is a science that will be beyond me for quite some time; I mean, I get あ あ あ~ ん~~ … あ あ … ア~~ ン~ (and if you know your kana you might guess how I’m teaching myself to read Japanese) but onomatopoetics are much easier to grasp than, you know, actual words.

But Anyway the title of this one is Gaba Kawa which means “Gaba Kawa” and it’s shoujo (‘cause it’s from Shojo Beat) and if that’s the main character Rara on the cover then this looks to be a comic about one cute demon.

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There is some immediate interest garnered from my investment in a new Anime Chart: Oh, man, I had no idea this existed

Captain N: The Game Master

California teen Kevin Keene gets pulled into the world of Videoland, where he becomes Captain N (for Nintendo) and joins with Princess Lana, Kid Icarus, the supercomputer Gameboy and the rest of the N Team to battle the power-hungry evil Mother Brain. But Mother Brain has loads of video game monsters and villains at her disposal. Will Captain N and his helpers defeat Mother Brain, or will her minions zap them into oblivion?

Of course I can only enjoy this on an ironic-hipster-nostalgia level, but enjoy it I fully intend to. [wait, is that grammatically correct?]

It currently sits at #394-397 in my Netflix queue — so I’ll be watching this in 2010, at which point it will once again be a pleasant surprise. Unless it really, really sucks; sucks so hard that it takes all the ironic hipster enjoyment out of my appreciation of 1980s retro TV/Proto-Pseudo-Anime cartoons. (wasn’t there a Mario, and a Sonic thing as well?)

Found:

Edo Cats: Tails Of Old Tokyo
isbn 9784921205263
@ Amazon

Acclaimed manga artist and historian Ryuto Kanzaki takes readers on a whimsical tour of Edo (Old Tokyo) as seen through the eyes of the local cats. Discover the costumes, customs, and color of bygone Japan. Teeming with history and nostalgia, Edo Cats: Tails of Old Tokyo will delight manga fans and feline-lovers alike!

at 96 pages, this just has to be another small, 5“x5” hard cover gift book like Manga Sisters, Manga Moods, and 50 Things We Love About Japan. (I own 2/3 of those, and have been pleased with both of them.)

Given the subject matter, this would appear to be the gift that sits at the intersection of T.S. Eliot and Rurouni Kenshin. There has to be at least one fan out there… Releases in April ’09.

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I’d previously posted the Yaoi Gold bundle (isbn 9781933664385) and also made a passing reference to the similar Yaoi Gems bundle (isbn 9781933664392) and wondered aloud if these would be available direct from the publisher?

Yamila responds:

we would have offered the bundles directly, but we only produced 1000 of each of the two bundles, and Borders bought every single one. So…get it at Borders?

There you go. Not only a great deal, but also a ‘limited edition’ of sorts. (and an excuse to use one of those Borders coupons they keep emailing out.)

I’m sure — close to dead certain, in fact — that I’ve seen AX blogged about elsewhere:

Indeed, 3 seconds and Google gives us the skinny from Same Hat! Same Hat!

They broke this as news 10 weeks ago.

So I’m late to the party. Who cares? Let’s Party:

From the US Publisher:

AX is the premier Japanese magazine for alternative comics. Published bi-monthly for over ten years now, the pages of AX contain the most creative and cutting-edge works of independent comics in the world’s largest comics industry. Now Top Shelf presents a 400-page collection of stories from ten years of AX history, translated into English for the first time! This groundbreaking book includes work by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Akino Kondoh, Kazuichi Hanawa, Shinichi Abe, and many many more! — Softcover Graphic Novel with French Flaps, 400 pages, 6 ½” x 8 ½”

December. Of this year, 2009, not the December just passed. Going to be a long wait yet. (and yet… it’s already ranking as a pre-order; really far down the list, but still still ranking. Who pre-orders books 11 ½ months in advance?)

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Found:

Now, here’s a screen shot from the recent hourly bestseller chart over on Amazon — vintage, oh… 15 minutes ago

I call this to your attention for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with the featured title or the fact that it’s on sale for 20% off.
[*sarcasm*] “Amazon has books on sale? We had no idea… that’s crack internet journalism there, Mr. Blind, top notch.” [/sarcasm]

Note, however how the title is listed: Lovers And Souls (Yaoi) (Deux)

All the Deux titles seem to be listed this way — so if one were to plug Deux manga or Deux yaoi into Amazon’s search engine then one would be presented with a tidy little list. While it might be Amazon adding tags to titles to improve the user experience (might be happening) I’m more likely to credit publisher Aurora making the most of the tools available: by merely specifying how their title is listed and adding the search tags to the title they not only get more hits on Amazon —

Look at this:
http://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Souls-Yaoi-Deux-Miyamoto/dp/1934496405/

The url of the amazon page with their product also has the words Yaoi and Deux in it, so other searches for yaoi or Deux manga will also lead one to a place where the product is for sale.

A quick verification over at Google will prove the point: the top 10 results includes (at time of posting) an Amazon page with a Deux manga in it. (The rest are blog posts. Unavoidable; this is still the internet)

This is what we call Search Engine Optimization folks.

(a search just on Yaoi is less illustrative of my point — though perhaps more entertaining in it’s own way — as one has to click through to the 7th page to find the first Amazon sales listing, and given the way Google lumps ‘similar pages’ together in reporting results, that makes a single DMP June title the front for all 984 listings.) (damn. 984.)

Amazon knows which side of the greenback their sales are buttered on: here’s another screenshot from one of those [that is to say, Amazon’s] Yaoi search results:

Each of those is a clickable link (on Amazon — above is just a cropped screen-shot — I’m not set up as an affiliate otherwise I’d be glad to take a commission on all this free advertising I’ve just given Amazon. Damn, and they’re one of my competitors…)

I had no idea Salarymen in hot, elicit after-hours embrace (likely after-drinking, too, at least the first time) was it’s own freakin’ kink. Thank You, Japan, you are always educational.

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The nice thing about this feature is how quick I can write up a post, and how it gives the illusion of regular, substantive updates so long as I can find a cover photo or two to add visual bulk to what is, in actual point of fact, just a quick fifteen minute write-up.

Oh, but the gems I can find (not Yaoi Gems; well, not always — though there is in fact a Yaoi Gems Pack, that’s isbn 9781933664392 for the y-curious) and I seem to be casting my net further and further out: out of print, not yet released, smaller publishers, first-time manga publishers…

or established reference publishers coming to manga for the first time:

Found:
The Rough Guide to Manga by Jason Yadeo, coming August 2009. This appears to be Yadeo’s first work, which isn’t an accusation (just a citation, as I can find no previous works and a cursory Google search pulls up “The Rough Guide to Manga” on sales sites for the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic… Japan

[*ouch*] I think a rapidly closing recursive loop just strangled a chunk of my brain.

No Cover Pictures Yet. But Rough Guides had previously presented both the Rough Guide to Japan (travel guides are their bread and butter) and the Rough Guide to Graphic Novels.

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