So last night I attended a Dark Horse manga presentation hosted by the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University (where I’ve been taking Japanese). The event’s speaker was long-time translator Carl Horn, who mostly talked about the same things he mentioned at another recent Dark Horse event, such as all the recent movie adaptations and Dark Horse’s new “mangettes” project with CLAMP.

But this time he did mention a few things I thought were potentially significant, the first being that Dark Horse wants to expand its manga offerings. This came up in response to a question from Professor Kominz, one of the teachers in PSU’s Japanese program, who wanted to know who to send students who want to translate to. Carl also expressed dismay once again that people tend to write Dark Horse off as only publishing dark, violent, “manly” manga (when, in fact, their longest-running manga series is Ah! My Goddess).

There were a few interesting questions during the Q&A, including several about China– from whether Dark Horse is looking at licensing any Chinese man hua to whether China imports Dark Horse titles illicitly. Carl mentioned that a lot of their stuff is printed in China, but probably couldn’t legally be sold there, which I thought was kind of interesting.

I also enjoyed him answering the question about his favorite manga: he brought up Kohta Hirano’s Hellsing, pointing out that if you’re going to deal in clichés like vampires, Nazis, and the Vatican’s secret organizations, you really ought to “put the petal to the medal.” He notes that everyone in the series is nuts– just like Hirano.

Good times had by all! After the speech and Q&A there was a mini-cosplay competition (by which I mean four cosplayers got up and introduced themselves and got prizes), then food and hang-outs. Some Dark Horse people were also selling books, so I (finally) picked up Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service #2 (but they didn’t bring MPD Psycho, wah!).

Hit the jump for more photos.
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Posted by gia in Gossip, Manga, News, Western News • Comments (8)

A follow-up on upcoming anime dates and stuff: Kyo-Ani’s Clannad series is due out October 4th, to air on TBS around 2am on Thursdays. (ETA: Canned Dogs notes that this means we won’t be seeing any Haruhi season two in ‘07, which is a good point - my guess is spring ‘08.)

Taiho Shichauzo: Full Throttle (a.k.a. You’re Under Arrest’s new season) is also starting on October 4th at around 1:30am on BS-i.

The next season of xxxHOLiC has been announced, and Moon Phase says that there are staff and cast changes, but doesn’t say what they are just yet no changes - my bad, I misread.

Moon Phase also reports that an Ah! My Goddess TV special, Ah! My Goddess - Tatakau Tsubasa (that’s Fighting Wings), is in the works. As near as I can tell, this special bears the same name as a Dreamcast quiz game back in ‘98. The special is meant to celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary. It also sounds like they’re trying to get Hiroaki Gouda, who directed the original 1993 OVA, to direct this, but it’ll be up to him.