News

From ManagCast comes another installment of its "Morning Report," an feature that looks at Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Morning, as well as works and manga artists related to the magazine.

From Yaoi Suki comes the annual Yaoi Awards. In '06-'07 Yaoi Awards: Part II, the winners are:

  • Fumi Yoshinaga's Shit-Ton of Titles Award: Hyouta Fujiyama
  • Best Mangaka Whose Best Work is Still Unlicensed: Mika Sadahiro, Under Grand Hotel
  • Best Unlicensed Mangaka: Taishi Zaou
  • Thank God It's Over: La Esperanca

ICv2 has released the September 2007 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 September based on the graphic novel sales chart.

Manga publisher Viz Media has launched its official blog, VIZBlog:

There are a lot of itchy fingers around the VIZ Media offices. Wait, that didn't sound right. There are a lot of people around here just itching to write some blog posts. Yeah, that's what I meant. We'll be telling you about manga we are reading – both professionally as well as personally, anime we are watching – again, for money or for fun, games we are playing, our co-workers and their habits, what we ate for breakfast, the contents of our handbags, hell, all kinds of really, er, interesting stuff. We hope you enjoy it!

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Nagoya Zokei University of Art & Design announced that Naoki Urasawa, mangaka of Monster, 20th Century Boys and Pluto, will be a guest professor for its new manga course.

According to the university, Urasawa accepted the university's request be a guest professor, and will be teaching with his ex-assistant for a year.

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Fujima Blog reports that Negima!? neo by Takuya Fujima, an alternate retelling of Ken Akamatsu's Mahou Sensei Negima!, will stop serialization after the suspension of Comic Bom Bom (a few months ago, Kodansha announced the suspension of Comic Bom Bom). However, the report also mentions that the manga may be moved to a new magazine. Official announcement regarding the manga's future will appear in the last issue of Comic Bom Bom (11/15).

Asahi Shimbun reports that the Tokyo District Court has approved horror mangaka Kazuo Umezu's construction of a new red-and-white striped house in Musashino city, Tokyo. According to the report, two of Kazou's neighbors complained to the court that "the 'unpleasant' exterior would 'destroy the landscape.'"

From Newsarama comes an article titled "Yûjô! Doryoku! Shôri! The fiery spirit of battle manga" (guest commentary by Jason Thompson), which looks at the similarities between shonen manga and superhero comics:

In both American and Japanese comics, there is one question that never gets old: "Do you think character X could beat character Y?" Despite the relative popularity of Japanese girls' comics and increasingly fluid gender demographics, shonen manga is still the #1 demographic category, and within shonen manga the #1 genre is "battle manga."

ANN reports that Slam Dunk and Vagabond creator Takehiko Inoue is coming to NYC this November:

Viz Media is planning to host Takehiko Inoue, the world-renowned manga creator of Slam Dunk, Vagabond, and REAL, as a special guest at the new Kinokuniya flagship bookstore in New York City on November 19. Inoue will create an exclusive drawing on a wall that has been reserved for him on the store's second floor.

In its latest issue of Manga a la Carte, "Pros are Fans Too," MangaCast dives into the world of doujinshi, where even professional manga artists can't resist expressing their fandom through various kinds of doujin works.