Con Prep: San Diego Comic Con
One thing that I got a press release about but for some reason never posted (…was I high?) is that VIZ has announced that they’ll be doing portfolio reviews at San Diego Comic Con. They’ll only be doing them on Sunday from 2-4:30pm, and the reviewers will be Marc Weidenbaum (Shonen Jump chief editor as well as VP of Original Publishing) and Eric Searleman, a VIZ senior editor.
That said: the full programming schedule for the con is up, as is the exhibitor list, and here are the people I’ll be stalking to try and get answers to your questions:
- Dark Horse (not sure if they’ll have any reps who can talk about manga really; they’re not having a manga-specific panel)
- Bandai Entertainment
- Del Rey Manga
- FUNimation
- Aurora Publishing
- Drawn & Quarterly
- Digital Manga Publishing
- Media Blasters
- VIZ
- Broccoli
- Fanfare/Potent Mon
- Tite Kubo
- Hiro Mashima
- Yen Press
- NETCOMICS
- CMX
- Seven Seas (!)
- Udon Entertainment
Special guests Tite Kubo (Bleach) and Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail will be at the convention. I’m definitely going to their panel events; I’m also going to attempt to get interviews with them (but no promises).
I also know that Deb Aoki of manga.about.com is exhibiting her own comics, and Jason Thompson of Manga: The Complete Guide is hosting a couple of panels as well (though at least one of them is at the same time as Del Rey, so I can’t attend).
So, as always…leave me your questions for any and all of the above, and I’ll try to get ‘em answered!
July 14th, 2008 at 8:35 am
For Mashima Sensei- Not that i’m against it, but why did you decide to put plue in fairy tail, from a creator’s perspective.
For Funimation- My babies, have them please
For yen- Haruhi release dates, if they don’t say it
Seven Seas- Moar Boogiepop, if they don’t talk about that either.
Del Rey- Tell Ali i love him
July 14th, 2008 at 8:46 am
@Kuro: Re Haruhi– you should know better than to ask me to ask something I can find the answer to in two seconds on Amazon.com. The first Haruhi novel is due October 28 ‘08. Next time look it up yourself. =P
July 14th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Question for Viz: Any plans for more anime episodes of “Prince of Tennis” and “Hikaru no Go?” While I can understand Viz not finishing releasing DVDs of other series at the time due to lack of popularity/sales, it’s also a bit irresponsible/rude to not finish what you started as well. I had always thought Hikaru no Go was decent enough (and Viz wasn’t that far away from finishing releasing all of the anime episodes if they tried). I mean with volume 11-they bumped up the episodes count from 4 to 5, and would have done the same with volume 12 but they cancel it mere weeks before the DVD would have gotten released. It’s some actions (canceling a series, and not saying anything for a really long time) like that gets affects people’s opinions of a company (I’m sure some people dislike Viz for other reasons), and SOMETIMES this leads to people having to resort to watching various/certain animes by other ’shady’ means-which hurts the anime industry in the long run.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Actually, I’ll be running around probably covering some of the same panels, so I’m opting to let my animator / comic artist friends show off their stuff and just have a token mini-comic to show at my table. Maybe I’ll do more at APE in November.
And don’t forget Fanfare Ponent Mon! They’ll be at the show as well, i think at C-04?
July 14th, 2008 at 9:51 am
@Deb: Thanks for the heads up. That exhibitor list is SO! LONG! @_@
July 14th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Viz: About the Hikaru no Go manga, why they release this so slowly? And about Shakugan no Shana novels, was cancelled?? :sad
Broccoli: (Boysenberry) Will see more Nase Yamato manga in the furure? What about CJ Michalski? And Naono Bohra?
Thanks in advance :smile:
July 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
@Eri: You bet. For what it’s worth though, I wouldn’t bank on seeing much more CJ Michalski get released officially in the US– the vast majority of her works are very much along the shota line, which companies are generally wary of crossing.
As for Bohra…most of her stuff is hardcore, right? Broccoli hasn’t done any hardcore and I wouldn’t expect them to in the future since they generally lean towards the cute side of things. But it’s always possible. I’ll see what I can find out! :)
July 15th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I would like to find out what’s up with Udon Entertainment’s long delays. The release dates on the website are all inaccurate. Manhwa titles that were supposed to be released months ago are still not available anywhere. When can we actually buy the books?