This year, Kodansha is celebrating 10 years of publishing manga in English. For the “10 Years of Kodansha Comics” event, every month, they will spotlight a classic series. The January title is Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, first published by Kodansha in October 2009. They have since released a hardcover Akira 35th Anniversary Edition Box Set, which won Eisners last year for Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books and Best Publication Design. It’s the story of motorcycle gangs in the post-apocalypse […]

Screw piracy! You want to read manga for free, at the same time it’s available in its home country? Viz is there for you! As of next Monday, December 17, the manga publisher will be releasing chapters digitally weekly, simultaneously with Japan, on shonenjump.com or via their app. Titles include One Piece, My Hero Academia, Boruto, and Dragon Ball Super. What’s the catch? To read chapters beyond the three most recent, you have to become a member for archive access, […]

Kodansha has announced, for the next week, an almost 50% off sale for over 800 volumes of digital manga. This is the time to buy, as $6 (for example) makes a lot more sense for a digital volume than $11. Sale ends Monday, November 12. If you’re looking for some recommendations, here are series I’ve enjoyed: Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? — reviewed here Tokyo Alice — reviewed here Those Summer Days Perfect World The Full-Time Wife Escapist […]

In amongst more isekai titles — although the press releases meant I learned that word, which describes a normal person trapped in another universe, usually a fantasy or video game world — Seven Seas will be releasing some interesting-sounding titles next year. The most prominent is Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, a manga autobiography by Akiko Higashimura, who created the much-loved Princess Jellyfish and Tokyo Tarareba Girls. It’s due out May 21, 2019. High schooler Akiko has big plans […]

It’s a common plotline in the many manga series that deal with some aspect of the entertainment industry: “We can’t reveal our romantic interest in each other because we’ll lose our careers! Our managers won’t let us date!” Now, it’s happened in real life, and it made the NY Times. Two of South Korea’s pop idols, HyunA and E’Dawn, have learned of the painful cost of falling in love and declaring their relationship in public: On Thursday, they were fired […]

New manga publisher Denpa Books will be putting out its first two titles this year, and they’re now available to preorder at Amazon.com. Both are due out November 22. Inside Mari volume 1 by Shuzo Oshimi (Happiness, The Flowers of Evil) is $12.95 for 192 pages. It’s a body-swap story. College dropout Isao Komori wakes up one morning to find himself in the body of a high school girl. How did this happen and what happened to the girl whose […]

Ed Chavez, previously marketing director at Vertical, appeared at Otakon this weekend representing new manga publisher Denpa. What little information is available comes from their new Twitter feed, where they list themselves as the “home of Kaiji, Inside Mari, Futurelog, PEZ, panpanya, and Maiden Railways“. There’s been a little information on the various titles, but they seem to be aimed a little older than the teen manga audience and have some more unusual choices. PEZ by Hiroyuki Asada Full color […]

In this roundup of recent manga announcements comes mention in passing of a beloved manga series returning. Aria, the gorgeously illustrated story by Kozue Amano of women apprenticing to be gondoliers on Mars in a sci-fi future, was first published in the US by ADV Manga in 2004. They put out three volumes, then Tokyopop picked up the license and released six, plus a two-volume prequel, Aqua, beginning in 2007. The sixth book came out in 2010, although the series […]