The folks over at Rumic World have been doing some extensive on-location coverage of Rumiko Takahashi's gallery show over the past week. Check out the feature in "It's a Rumic World" Event Coverage.

Comic Market, or Comiket, is the world's largest comic convention. Currently Comiket is held twice a year, first in mid-August then late December, at the Tokyo Big Sight. Comiket 72 took place from August 17th - 19th. According to Mantan Web, over 170,000 fans attended Comiket 72 on day 1, 40,000 more than during Comiket 71 last December. The next Comiket, C74, will take place from August 15th to 17th.

Comiket is a place where doujin artists and groups gather and sell their works. While many groups hardly make any profit, Comiket is the place where they would try and make a name for themselves. Many of today's popular artists and groups began their career at Comiket. From Saimon Fumi to Rumoki Takahashi, or the mega-popular CLAMP, they all attended Comiket in the early days of their career. Some doujin groups, like Type-Moon, became so popular and made enough money to go professional.

Comiket began in 1975, and gradually grew into the world's biggest comic convention. In the last few years, each day of the convention saw an overall attendance of over 100,000, and C66 saw a total attendance of 510,000.

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Companies to collaborate on a wide variety of publishing and trans-media projects

San Diego, CA, July 24th, 2008 – Global manga giants TOKYOPOP and GENTOSHA COMICS have entered into a worldwide partnership to advance the cause of the manga revolution. Under the terms of the alliance, TOKYOPOP will provide sublicensing agency services (outside of Asia, France, and Italy) for GENTOSHA COMICS’s world-class library of manga hits, including titles like Gravitation, Lament of the Lamb, and Arm of Kannon. The companies will also pursue a wealth of co-development opportunities in the digital, film, and merchandising spaces.

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The Japan Foundation reports that the 11th and final Asian Cartoon Exhibition will take place this year from July 31 to August 25 in Bangkok:

The 11th Asian Cartoon Exhibition this year will be marked as the final Asian Cartoon Exhibition, which has been held continually every year for 11 years as a contribution to the greater understanding of Asian societies, cultures and people.

Also, CoFesta is taking place from September 30 to October 28:

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Tokyo—AlphaCreatio Inc., operator of Manganovel (http://manganovel.com), today announced that it will expand its on-line download services to include delivery of flash animations in multiple languages. The new service will start this month, and will offer animations in eleven languages.
Manganovel is the innovative on-line service that takes manga out of Japan and introduces them to a global audience. Manganovel allows readers to download and read manga in Japanese, and then takes user-interactivity to a new level by allowing readers to post and offer for sale their own translations of downloaded manga content in a wide range of languages.

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From TMCnet comes an article that talks about how top creators in Japan are calling for the creation of museums to save Japan's "modern heritage":

What do industrial design, architecture, manga, anime, video games and traditional craft techniques have in common? Well, apart from each having spawned some of Japan's most popular cultural exports, the similarity is this: Japan has no national museums dedicated to their preservation, display and study, writes Edan Corkill.

From Yumiuri Shimbun comes an article titled "First and last manga exhibition answers important question," which looks like the "Inoue Takehiko: The Last Manga Exhibition" that will end this Sunday at the Ueno Royal Museum in Ueno, Tokyo:

I was astonished by the idea that a newly created manga--which normally would be mass produced--could give visitors the experience of reading it for the first time.

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Japanese fansite Takahiro no Kenkyuukan recently published a report that inspects the readership data released by Ichijinsha of their magazine for potential advertisers.

The graphs show the ratio of gender and the age group of readers, as well as the difference of readers for each magazine. The data is interesting because such data isn't usually published. After some inspection, some facts were found that were both expected and unexpected.

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VIZ MEDIA PARENT COMPANY SHUEISHA INVESTS IN JAPANESE PUBLISHER SHOGAKUKAN’S LICENSING AND MERCHANDISING SUBSIDIARY TO FORM NEW PARTNERSHIP – SHOGAKUKAN-SHUEISHA PRODUCTIONS CO., LTD.

New Entity Will Help Streamline Operations And Increase Flexibility To License Titles For Global Manga And Anime Markets

San Francisco, CA, June 19, 2008 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced that one of its parent companies, Japanese publisher Shueisha, Inc., has made an investment in Shogakukan Production Company Ltd., the licensing and merchandising subsidiary of Japanese publisher Shogakukan, Inc., another of VIZ Media’s parent companies. ShoPro will be renamed Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd.

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Kara no Kyoukai (Kara no Kyoukai) is a long adventure novel authored by Kinoko Nasu, the scenario writer for Type-Moon, which became famous through its games Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. In 2008, Type-Moon announced that the novel would be adapted into a 7-part featured film.

Below is the final part of a review of the novel from the website Libra: Constellation of Aleksey, translated by Sarah Neufeld:

A Review of Kara no Kyoukai Part II

Kasai Kiyoshi's basis for boosting a new author this far is, in the end, nothing more than "numbers". No matter how you reason it out, insomuch as Nasu Kinoko has "sold" far better than Kasai Kiyoshi's works, he ranks above Kasai Kiyoshi, and "Kara no Kyoukai" outranks "The Philosopher's Sealed Room". In the end, this sort of bald-faced "push" is possible simply because Kasai has been captured by what I must call "the worship of numbers".

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