The somewhat troubled Borders chain of bookstores has been looking for new methods to sell its wares, and one of their latest experiments has just opened up in Tukwila, WA (that’s a little ways outside of Seattle, for those of you less familiar with the Pacific Northwest; about 2.5 hours north of Portland…um. Okay, look, it’s pretty far north, okay? A few hours south of the Canadian border. That better?)

Anyway! The new store features the concept of “Destinations,” where certain sections are presented as sort of mini stores-within-a-store. Aaaand one such section is graphic novels.

In fact, the store is having a number of events in its “destinations” as part of its grand opening, including a “Manga Madness!” deal with games, trivia, and face-painting today at 5:30pm. Yeah, it’s probably a bit more on the kiddy side for most of y’all, but it’s at the same time as “Satisfy your sweet tooth with free chocolate and confection samples,” plus you can enter to win a variety of prizes. So you might consider checking it out if you have time.

Unfotunately I’m in Texas so I can’t hit up the grand opening, but I’ll be checking it out when I get back to Portland most likely. Sometime after Otakon. ohgodi’mtired.

Posted by gia in Manga, News, Western News • Comments (7)

Okay, I’ve got a lot of items here, so let’s get started, shall we?

Anime:

- ICv2 took part in a conference call between Navarre and industry analysts. Navarre has made most of its money via FUNimation, while other subsidiaries are falling behind in sales, CEO Cary Deacon says. FUNi has acquired an even bigger chunk of the market share thanks to the demise of Geneon and the slowing of ADV, of course. Deacon also offered that there are possibilities for further acquisitions within the US anime industry, but that they have no plans currently.

- Gainax has officially announced that they’ll be adapting Shikabane Hime, but we already knew that, didn’t we?

- On the digital distro front, GyaO is going to run Tower of Druaga in its entirety online for free (Japan-only) starting June 14, while Bandai Networks is running the first episode of the original Gundam for free on DoCoMo’s FOMA mobile service.

Manga:

- On the Borders front, they’ve sold off their storefronts in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, says ICv2, and MangaBlog’s Brigid checks out a local Borders and learns that they’re doing pretty well selling manga.

- Speaking of Brigid, she’s posted a press release from DrMaster announcing their acquisition of the man hua Divine Melody, by Real/Fake Princess creator I-Huan.

- Tiamat talks about Seven Seas Entertainment, and she doesn’t think the outlook is good for the young publisher, which has been pretty quiet since their enthusiastic announcements back at Anime Expo ‘07.

- More TOKYOPOP news: they’ve set up shop with Big Tent, which will handle the worldwide licenses for I Luv Halloween, Princess Ai, Bizenghast, Dramacon, and Van Von Hunter. Of course, it’s not the news we want– an announcement of what manga Tpop will (and won’t) continue publishing.

- Comics distributor Diamond is in the dog house with Chris Butcher, who notes that even though Diamond lists the first four volumes of Vagabond as “out of stock, no backorders,” they’re completely available to retailers– through Simon and Schuster.

Music:
- Singer/songwriter Masaaki Endou has released an anime cover album, which will feature, among others, the OP from GaoGaiGar, the Power Rangers theme (not an anime, but I suppose we can allow it), the Stellvia theme, and a slew of others.

- When do I get to report on a Cyndi Lauper tribute album on an anime blog? When Jpoppers Puffy, Chara, Tommy february6, Sowelu, Nana Kitade, and others are involved in the project. Yeeeeah.

- Singer Ayaka (she sung “Okaeri,” the theme for the currently-running Absolute Boyfriend drama) will be singing the theme for Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers– or rather, she already has: it’s “Konya mo Hoshi ni Dakarete,” from her album coming out later this month. It was originally going to be an image song, but Oshii decided it meshed so well with his work that he’d make it the official theme.

Games:
- We now have a date for the Haruhi Wii game (which comes with that figure I posted about yesterday): it’ll hit stores November 27th.

Posted by gia in Features, Roundups • Comments (1)

So. Borders isn’t doing so hot and Barnes & Noble is thinking of buying up their store fronts. This is bad for manga, because B&N doesn’t like manga. This is extra-bad for fans of mature titles and BL, because B&N REALLY doesn’t like them. In fact, I’d suggest that they only reason that they carry the limited selection of them that they do is to keep them competitive with Borders, so if they buy Borders…*cough* Yeah.

But wait! An idea appears! From none other than Yamila Abraham, who suggests that Borders find a way to turn itself into, primarily, a seller of graphic novels.

At first it sounds like just a happy manga fan pipe dream, but she makes the very valid point that bookstores have too much other product to really cover the fans, and so do most comic book shops.

Now, I think most Borders locations would probably be a bit oversized for just graphic novels, and I presume that they rent their space (i.e. can’t physically divide it into multiple stores and lease off the other spots), so perhaps they’d have to share it– perhaps with comic book shops, game stores, and other geek industry?

Or just regular stuff? Who knows. It’s a cool idea, but if Borders has money trouble I don’t see how they could do it unless someone invested a bunch of money for them to do so. But hey, I can dream.

Posted by gia in Commentary, General • Comments (6)