Kai-Ming Cha interviews Hikaru Sasahara, president and publisher of Digital Manga Publishing, in the latest issue of PW Comics Week.

Also available is an interview with Dramacon artist Svetlana Chmakova by Johanna Draper Carlson.

PWCW talks about Dark Horse's past and future in "Dark Horse Celebrates 20 Years."

Last Gasp Publishing and Japanese volunteer group Project Gen together donated copies of Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen to three thousand libraries in the United States.

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ANN reports that a maid cafe has opened in Scarborough Ontario by a 24-year old student named Aaron Wang. The new cafe, iMaid Cafe, puts a Chinese twist on the traditional Japanese-style maid cafe.

Source: ANN

Update: Ed points out that the maid cafe has already been around for almost a year.

Volume 12 of VIZ Media's Naruto ranked #147 on this week's USA Today Booklist Top 150 (PDF) for the week ending December 3rd.

In November, the Golden Dragon Award's organization committee awarded the "Chinese Anime and Manga Life Achievement Award" to the late Chinese comic artist Liao Bing Xiong, who passed away on September 22nd, 2006 at the age of 91. Liao Bing Xiong was famous for his political satires, his works were centered around politics and human rights issues.

The Golden Dragon Award is known in China as the "Anime Oscar," and over 60 works and 30 artists participated in this year's award event. Many foreign works also appeared in this year's award, including Ice Age 2 and Death Note the movie.

Source: Star Daily

ANS reports that according to Tohan, Gin Tamashii 3 Nen Z Gumi Gin Hachi Sensei was the best-selling novel in Japan between December 2005 and November 2006:

Japanese publishing industry watcher Tohan has declared the best-selling new novel in Japan for the period between December, 2005 and November, 2006) as "Gin Tamashii 3 Nen Z Gumi Gin Hachi Sensei". Transcribed by Oosaki Tomohito, the novel is an adaptation of the popular Sorachi Eiaki / Shueisha manga. In third place is the Katsura Hoshino manga based D Greyman: Reverse (2) novel written by Kizaki Kaya.

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Deutsche Mangaka has compiled a list of new Global Manga that has been licensed in Germany:

Tokyopop
- "@Large"
- "Dramacon"
- "I Luv Halloween"
- "Peach Fuzz"

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MangaCast translates the weekly Doujinshi ranking in Japan (12/02) according to Toranoana Akihabara, compiled by Akiba Blog (NSFW).

Manga blog Precocious Curmudgeon is now powered by WordPress.

Anime News Network has a new layout:

Yes, it's true. After 3+ years of our current layout, we've decided that it was time for something new. The new layout incorporates a lot of features that we hope will make the site more intuitive and easier to browse. There are several additional features to go with the new layout that will be introduced to the site over the coming month, we're very excited about some of them, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we think you will. In addition to the new layout, we've also ported much of the site from PHP to Ruby on Rails, this has caused a few glitches, which are currently causing the site to run slow at times. These will hopefully be sorted out very soon. All in all, within a week to ten days, the site should not only be as fast as it used to be, but faster. In the meantime, we would like to thank you for your patience. Let us know what you think of the new layout in the forum or be quick about it and let us know in this poll.

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Newsarama interviews Pop Mhan, creator of Tokyopop's new global manga BLANK.

Source: MangaBlog