Shinbunka reports that Touen Shobo (Toen Shobo) has closed its business on August 31st. According to the report, Touen Shobo notified their lenders regarding an adjustment of their debts on August 24th.

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• According a post on J.A.C. Bulletin, Lynn Okamoto, mangaka of Elfen Lied, will start a new manga in Young Jump this October centered around ski jumping.

• A new manga titled Assistant Romance Keika (アシスタント伝奇ケイカ) by Rosuke Nishikawa will begin in Young Animal No.11 (10/5).

• A new series titled Inanna (イナンナ) from Reiko Okano, mangaka of Onmyoji, will start in issue 41 of Morning, on sale 9/13.

• A manga version of Sushi Oji! (Prince Sushi!) (スシ王子！) will begin in issue 41 of Young Sunday, on sale 9/13.

• According to AoD, Kodansha Box will launch a new magazine called Pandora, which will be published twice a year.

Source: Ultimatum Tidbits

Japanese entertainment news site Tokyograph has launched a Digg-like social news site called TokyoGraph Link.

Tokyograph recently launched a Japan-related social news/bookmarking site, currently named TokyoGraph Link. The site is still in infancy, but improvements will be added over time.

The Sunday Times interviews Elmer Damaso and Jhomar Soriano, two Filipino manga artists who made it to the finals of the First International Manga Award Competition:

Because of their accomplishment, Damaso and Soriano were presented an award certificate by Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki during the celebration of the Japan Week last month.

The two artists talk about their lives, their professional manga career and the reason they became manga artists.

According to the latest entry in Icarus Publishing's blog, the adult publisher has acquired Tohru Nishimaki's Scarlet Desire (NSFW).

According to Shinbunka, Yoshimoto Kogyo's new seinen comedy manga magazine Comic Yoshimoto will cease publication after issue 7, on sale 9/18. According to the report, when the magazine was launched in June, sales did not meet the expected 250,000 copies.

Source: Ultimatum Tidbits

From ICv2 comes a 3 Part (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) interview with Tokyopop's Mike Kiley, who talks about the manga market as well as what's next for Tokyopop.

The Associated Press has published an article looking at how publishers are beginning to experiment with releasing comics on mobile phones. The article takes a close look at uClick's GoComics service, as well Tokyopop, which provides most of GoComics' manga titles, and is planning to include animations, games, ring tones, wallpaper and other content to their mobile manga offering:

Stu Levy, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based TokyoPop, one of the leading U.S. publishers of manga, said the domestic market is still way behind Japan. But he said he could see comics being released in the U.S. on mobile phones before coming out in print regularly in the next few years.

Hobby Japan is launching a new TRPG light novel label in October called HJ Bunko G (HJ文庫G). The following light novels will be published under the new label:

• Warhammer Novel Drakkhen Fells
• Warhammer Novel Kyuuketsuki Geneviève
• Warhammer Novel Velvet Beast
• D&D Replay Waka Shishi no Uta

Source: LightNovel.org

The following manga appeared on the USA Today Booklist Top 150 (PDF) for the week ending September 2nd:

• #62 - Naruto, Volume 18 - Viz - (Last week: #116)
• #93 - Naruto, Volume 17 - Viz - (Last week: #123)
• #102 - Naruto, Volume 16 - Viz - (Last week: #131)
• #132 - Negima!, Volume 15 - Del Rey - (Last week: #0)