Long ago (2009), I wrote about Yokohama Shopping Trip (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou). It was a scanted manga series where “sometime in the future, the world (or maybe just Japan) flooded. Fewer people live in smaller villages as a result, leading to a return to the simple life. The story follows Alpha, a robot (although you wouldn’t know it to look at her) who owns a coffee shop with almost no customers.” It’s a charming slice-of-life series that I adored because […]

The Summit of the Gods was a mountaineering manga published in English by Fanfare/Ponent Mon between 2009 and 2015. (I’ve previously reviewed Volume 2 and Volume 3.) The appeal for me was the amazing art by Jiro Taniguchi. I’ve just noticed that it was adapted into an animated film by French director Patrick Imbert and is now available on Netflix in the US. (It had previously been a live-action film in Japan in 2016.) From an interview with Imbert: In […]

Kodansha has announced that until August 2nd, you can get free digital copies of a number of their series. Additionally, second volumes are 99 cents, and third volumes are $1.99. Three volumes of these popular series for three bucks is a terrific summer reading deal! Check your favorite digital vendor for this offer. I recommend grabbing the first of any you’re interested in and reading them in the next two weeks so you can buy more if you like them. […]

Given that I don’t read Japanese, it’s rare I get to make direct comparisons between an original manga volume and its English translation. So I was excited to see how much I could find out about Sherlock: The Great Game. This is the third, concluding volume in the manga series telling the story of the BBC show Sherlock‘s first season. It was published in English by Titan in 2018. I have a copy of the original Japanese printing of the […]

Kodansha has announced today that they are unifying their “English-language publishing program” with a new website, kodansha.us (formerly KodanshaComics.com), and the elimination of Vertical as a label. Well, they didn’t exactly announce that last part, but that’s one of the results. The combined website “spotlights not only the Kodansha manga you know and love but also highlights all of Kodansha’s award-winning and fan-favorite English-language, novels, cookbooks, craft guides, historical/cultural literature, and more.” This includes what was formerly Kodansha Comics, Kodansha […]

In the new Mangasplaining podcast (updated weekly), some comic and manga heavyweights — Deb Aoki, David Brothers, and Christopher Butcher — try to convince Chip Zdarsky to read manga by talking about great titles. The first episode covers Akira volume 1. I’m eagerly waiting for the second episode, about Delicious in Dungeon.

Mangajin ran from 1990-1997, a total of 70 issues. It was an English-language magazine that taught Japanese by using manga pages with translations and commentaries. Now, someone’s put the entire run online. I thought some readers might find this interesting for studying how manga became a factor in American popular culture and cross-cultural presentation.