Shinbun Saturday: Farewell to a Beloved Manga Creator

Influential mangaka passes away

Beloved mangaka Shigeru Mizuki passed away earlier this week at the age of 93. His manga GeGeGe no Kitaro is credited with encouraging Japan’s love of yokai. Mizuki kept working and producing new manga until his death. May all comic creators aspire to be as industrious as he was!

Chinese nationals arrested for possessing and sharing illegal One Piece scans

These four people are repeat offenders, having been arrested for the same actions only a month ago. They were paid between 60,000 to 70,000 yen a month to pass scans along to several scanlation websites. Japanese police are currently working to find and dismantle channels providing Mangapanda with illegal scans of manga volumes.

Kodansha provides manga for library readers

North American manga readers will have more opportunities to read their favourite series, as Kodansha partners with Overdrive to provide manga to libraries in the United States and Canada. Ebooks of 50 different series will be available to library card holders, including Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, and Ghost in the Shell.

New North American licenses

Something must be in the water. Three North American manga companies announced new licenses this week! Seven Seas Entertainment leads the way with epic fantasy series Lord Marksman and Vanadis, Love in Hell sequel Death Life, vampire comedy My Pathetic Vampire Life, dark fantasy series Holy Corpse Rising, and gothic fantasy The Seven Princes of the Thousand Year Labyrinth. All of these titles are new to me, but Holy Corpse Rising and The Seven Princes sound interesting.

Seven Seas is a tough act to follow with those acquisitions, but Yen Press made a few announcements that fans might find exciting. They’re continuing their initiative to bring more light novels to North America. The jury’s still out on whether this will take off, but you’ve got to give them points for giving it their all! They’re also adding to their simulpubbing efforts with the manga adaptation of Baccano! and Memoir of Vanitas. Looks like I was right! They licensed the manga adaptation! Yen Press licensed the original Baccano! light novels earlier this year. Vanitas sounds like it’ll appeal to fans of Black Butler. (No hate here. I love Black Butler.)

And finally, VIZ Media has licensed Yoko Kamio’s Crown of Thorns, a short manga about a girl who can see ghosts. Kamio is probably better known for her previous manga, Boys Over Flowers (aka Hana Yori Dango). VIZ has also rescued a CLAMP work, Man of Many Faces, which was previously published by TOKYOPOP. It’s great to see another CLAMP title saved from licensing limbo.

So which one of these titles are you most excited about?

Yona of the Dawn named bestselling digital manga

Mizuho Kusanagi’s shoujo fantasy series, Yona of the Dawn, received the ebook award from its publisher Hakusensha. The award goes to the top-selling Hakusensha manga during the period of July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015. VIZ Media announced that they’d licensed the series for North America earlier this year at NYCC.

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Vernieda Vergara

Vernieda Vergara

Writer. Manga and webtoon aficionado. I hail from Washington D.C. where I consume too much media and cause only a little trouble. Tweet me @incitata.

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