News

Kodansha's 3rd Morning International Manga Competition is now accepting submissions. The deadline for the third competition is September 30th, 2008:

Submissions for the 3rd Morning International Manga Competition are now being accepted.

The deadline is September 30th,2008.

Professional artists are also welcome to this competition.

Besides manga, we accept all types of comics, including superhero comics, cartoons, and bandes dessine'es and so on.

The grand prize winner will receive $5,000, as well as having their work featured in Morning or Morning 2.

Ichijinsha has announced that it will launch a new light novel label called "Ichijinsha Bunko" on May 20th, 2008. The lineup of light novels to be released under this label will be composed of "boy's" light novels and "girl's" light novels.

Source: LightNovel.org

Moon Phase is reporting that according to the current issue of MediaWorks' Dengeki Daioh, the magazine Dengeki Comic Gao will be suspended after this month's issue. Series currently serialized in Dengeki Comic Gao, such as Venus Versus Virus, ef - a fairy tale of the two and Gurren Lagann, will be moved to Dengeki Daioh.

Source: Heisei Democracy

Kodansha's 2nd Morning International Manga Competition (M.I.M.C.) has announced the results of its initial screening, 31 works are selected, the final results will be announced in April.

According to this post from AoD (Via MangaCast), several new titles have appeared on Simon Says under Viz Media, scheduled for release in October/November 2008:

According to an article from the American Go Association's E-Journal (Via AoD), the English version of Shonen Jump will replace Hikaru no Go with Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk:

Viz Media has announced the current issue of Shonen Jump will be the last appearance of Hikaru no Go. With a circulation of close to two million children and adults, the strip has helped youth go clubs flourish across the nation. "In a magazine jammed with fist-fueled fighting manga, Hikaru no Go has quietly carved out a place in readers' hearts," the editors at Shonen Jump state in a farewell message to the series. Nonetheless, the strip is being replaced by Slam Dunk, a manga about basket ball.

ICv2 has released the January 2008 top 100 graphic novel sales estimates and the top 300 comics sales estimates based on Diamond Indexes and Publisher Title Data. Also from ICv2 is an analysis of the trends in December based on the graphic novel sales chart.

Also, MangaBlog provides its own look at the data, as well as a list of manga from the Top 100 Graphic Novels chart.

Brazilian Panini announced on it's website the cancellation of two titles: Eden and Peach Girl. According to Panini, the cancellation was mainly a result of slow sales. In both cases, the cancellation was a "re-break," because both titles have already been canceled once.

Many fans were angered by Panini's cancellation, since the publisher promised to release the entire Peach Girl series to its end. So far, the only Brazilian publisher to finish releasing an entire series is JBC.

Source: Papo de Budega

Anime news and review website Active Anime has announced the result of its Active Anime Top 25, a continuation of Animefringe's annual ranking of websites has voted by readers. Below are the rankings:

  1. Anime Planet
  2. Anime News Newtowrk
  3. Right Stuf International
  4. Anime On DVD
  5. AniDB
  6. Read More »