Interview Part Deux: Yaoi Generation Follow-Up

Categorized Under: Features, Interviews
Dated: 22 Oct 2008
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So as you may remember, I had a few follow-up questions to my interview with Yaoi Generation president Thuy Duong. Here are the answers!

Gia Manry: When you say that you want to focus on finishing breath before tackling other projects, does that mean that we won’t see any other licenses until the fifth volume of breath comes out– i.e. the company will generally focus on one title at a time?

Thuy Duong: The company will generally focus on one title at a time as far as production is concerned. As far as licensing, we’re constantly looking for new, interesting titles to license so that there won’t be a long lag time between one project and the next. However, what you won’t see from us is a long list of licenses which won’t get published until a year or more to come.

GM: You mentioned that you’ll be publishing ebooks as well as print books; will this be through a service (such as NETCOMICS or Lulu), or will it be through Yaoi Generation directly?

TD: For now, if we have any title available as ebooks, it’ll be through us directly.

GM: What sort of production values can we expect to see for the books? Dust jackets, color pages, “omake” materials, etc? And what can we expect in terms of pricing?

TD: For the most part, we will not have dust jackets for our books, but we will have color inserts. Price points will be revealed once our online shop is opened next month.

Speaking of which, to celebrate our grand opening, we’ll be having amazing discounts on pre-orders, so keep an eye out for our opening announcement! We currently have a sign up form for our newsletter on our website at www.yaoigeneration.com. We’ll send out an e-mail everyone who signed up the minute our online store is open.

So I think we’ve covered just about everything that we can for the moment– who’s looking forward to Yaoi Generation’s new releases (besides me)?

Hentai, The Academic Way

Categorized Under: Features, Interviews
Dated: 10 Oct 2008
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Yesterday I got an e-mail alerting me to a young woman named Heidi who is a PhD candidate at CUNY and is researching (dun da dun!) hentai! She is seeking men age 18-25 who view hentai to participate in a survey for her research and also requests suggestions on resources to help her get a view of the popularity of hentai in general. If you’re interested (and especially if you live in New York City), go ahead and e-mail her.

Now, of course, I wanted more information, so I dropped her an e-mail and asked a few questions. Here are the answers:

Gia Manry: How did you come to be interested in this particular topic in an academic setting? Are you interested in Jpop culture outside of academia?

Heidi Baez: I became interested in hentai in the past couple of years. I had known about it a while back, but a friend brought it back to my attention in the past years when we were in Chinatown looking at DVD’s. I do not have an extensive knowledge of anime or jpop culture, but have on occasion gotten into some of the more popular anime series and films and know only a few things about jpop culture from personal exposure and from friends who have traveled to Japan.
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NYAF08: Interview with Rie Tanaka

Categorized Under: Features, Interviews
Dated: 7 Oct 2008
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Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about my interviews! Here’s my brief talk with seiyuu Rie Tanaka (Chobits‘ Chii, Rozen Maiden’s Suigintou)– I wasn’t able to take the full time I was originally allotted but I still got a lot of good questions in. Enjoy!

Gia Manry: You’ve worked with a lot of seiyuu over the years, some of them muany times…are there any that you’re particularly close to or particularly enjoy working with?

Rie Tanaka: There are just so many friends among voice actors…lately Sakura Nogawa [GM note: Azumanga Daioh's Kaorin, Rozen Maiden's Hina-Ichigo], Yui Horie [GM note: Love Hina's Naru Narusegawa, Fruits Basket's Tohru Honda, Vampire Knight's Yuuki Cross].
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