Happy Saturday, dear readers! Can you believe we’re already in mid-February? Where is 2016 going? On the other hand, spring is only a month away now. I know I’m glad the sun is no longer setting before 5PM.
If you’ve been in the manga and anime fandoms for long enough, chances are you’ve encountered a fujoshi or heard some opinions about fujoshi. Maybe you’re a fujoshi yourself! Unfortunately, some of those opinions can be pretty harsh and negative. I’m not a fujoshi, but I definitely get my hackles up whenever someone talks about those yucky fangirls getting their icky cooties all over sports manga and anime. Excuse me? Without us female fans, you wouldn’t be enjoying this sports series renaissance right now. (There’s stuff to be said about slash fangirl baiting and the like, but that’s a different discussion.) Thankfully, I’m not alone in feeling this way. The wife of manga author, Kazuo Koike (Crying Freeman), rose to the occasion with some biting words for the fujoshi haters out there.
Katsucon was last weekend, and we got a few licensing announcements out of it. Seven Seas has acquired the yuri series, Bloom into You by Nio Nakatani. Vertical will be releasing a few new titles, including Junji Ito’s Dissolving Classroom, and Tsutomu Nihei’s BLAME!, which was previously put out by TOKYOPOP. In less cool news, there’s been some complaints about attendee bad behavior. People, destruction of public property is not cute.
Speaking of conventions, Otaku USA Magazine is launching a new anime convention this May. Anime Fan Fest, as the event will be called, will be held in New Jersey. Can’t wait to see what they come up with!
With all this talk about the manga market expanding again in the U.S., I always keep an eye on the bestseller lists because I think that’s a fair indicator of how things are really going. Well, the January Bookscan list was topped by Naruto and One Punch Man. Tokyo Ghoul also made a good showing, meaning that almost half of the top titles were manga. Not bad.
It looks like we have to get ready to say goodbye to our favorite tentacle monster: Assassination Classroom is ending in 5 chapters. Since it’s a Weekly Shonen Jump title, that means the series will be over in about a month. I’ve only read the first 2 volumes of the manga and now it’s ending? Yikes, I have a lot of catching up to do.
But while some series are ending, others might get a boost because they’re getting anime adaptations. Ichigo Takano’s Orange is getting an anime this summer, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been meaning to get into the series for a while now, since it seems to be a Tumblr favorite. But the news I’m most excited about is that we’ve finally received details about the forthcoming Black Butler anime film. The production studio launched the film’s website and guess what? It’s the Ship Voyage arc!
This is one of my favorite Black Butler story arcs. We get a murder boat, a badass Lizzie, and the origin of the demonic pact between Ciel and Sebastian. Excellent.
And, finally, Japanese twitter offers us this neat, little gem: the regional differences between schoolgirl uniforms. I admit I have a soft spot for the Kobe-style uniform, but I’m not sure the Hokkaido one is actually a uniform so much as it is a poor girl bundling up against the cold! (I feel you, Hokkaido schoolgirl, I feel you.)
That’s it for this week. See you next time!
