The Asahi Shimbun has a piece on a guy who makes superhero costumes (and, in fact, operates as an unofficial mascot for the Ibaraki Prefecture)– but it’s not a feel-good piece. The man has been slapped with an ¥1 million (about $10,300 USD) for making and selling a costume from the tokusatsu series Gekiranger without the permission of Toei.

Way to stop Christmas, Toei– the poor guy, who along with other volunteers in his community put on performances for the children of the city, has had to cancel all such events for the foreseeable future. Toei says:

“The act is a betrayal to the superhero, and cannot be forgiven under any circumstance,” said an official at Toei, who added: “We are not trying to incriminate cosplay culture. As long as it is done within the limits of personal pleasure, we would certainly encourage it.”

…But I have to point out that he sold one costume to one guy; it doesn’t sound like he was working to mass produce it. So is Toei saying that you have to be your own costume constructor (or start making friends with one) in order to cosplay? More like that you have to buy THEIR mass-produced version of the costume (if they even sell one), I’d wager.

On a somewhat happier note, there has been some activity over at the Drama Queen forums (requires a log-in)! The troubled yaoi publisher has announced that it is back to printing, and that the first book to arrive is The Tyrant Falls In Love. I’m a little confused by the way she puts this…

The first book to arrive in September is Tyrant Falls in Love v01…

Does that mean it’s not coming until September 2009? Or that the book arrived at their offices in September 2008? Or maybe she meant to say a different month? I’m a little confused there, but I’m sure it’ll all be figured out. DQ also has some optimism for their OEL BL anthology RUSH:

As for RUSH - we are working to get RUSH back on schedule - I think by December we can get Issue 2 out.

I hope all the artists and writers are still on board after this long delay, because RUSH was really pretty damn awesome. Crossing my fingers for you, DQ!

Hokay, let’s see. First, the big news of the day: Deb Aoki got DMP to open up more extensively about recent staff losses, which include both layoffs and resignations, and which Kuri also reported on recently. The good news? 801 Media isn’t going anywhere.

Moving right along, how about some of those BL licenses from Yaoi-Con, eh? 801 announced Mio Tennohji’s Don’t Rush Love, Yoshimi Amasaki’s Dog X Cat, Ruri Fujikawa’s On Bended Knee, Kaori Monchi’s Hey Class President!, Yuki Shimizu’s Ze, Rie Honjyo’s Love Skit, and DUO Brand.’s Kiss Your Hair.

DMP scored Toko Kawai’s CUT, Ryouko Tsunoda’s Exotic and Delicious Fate, Momoko Tenzen’s Unsophisticated and Rude, Ciao Ciao Bambino, and La Satanica, You Higuri’s Ludwig, Kaimu Tachibana’s Boys Love, and Makoto Tateno’s How to Capture a Martini. Kuro also reports on Kurashina Sensei’s Passion– these were actually licensed by Juné through Biblos and announced back at Otakon 2006, but when Biblos went under they had to renegotiate the license again with Libre and it’s finally been cleared. Hurray!

Go! Comi has issued a press release announcing its licenses as well: Get the Moon and Bran Doll, both by The Devil Within creator Ryo Takagi.

Yaoi Press unfortunately had to cancel their panel for an emergency, but I’ve been told they’re saving their announcements for another time.

Finally, Deux announced a few new titles as well: Nase Yamato’s Take Me To Heaven, Hinako Takanaga’s Love Round!!, CJ Michalski’s Noodle Shop Affair (Michalski has another US-palatable title?! Sweet!), and Naduki Koujima’s Naughty but Nice.

A few interesting points on those licenses: first, these are all fan favorite creators– Yamato created Pet On Duty (and the utterly un-publishable-in-the-U.S. Chinko no Tsubuyaki); Takanaga is the creator of the renowned Challengers and Tyrant Falls in Love series; Michalski is best known for her wacky, often surreal (and occasionally distressingly shota) titles as well as the more socially acceptable Delivery Cupid; and of course Naduki Koujima is best known for Our Kingdom.

Secondly, all of the titles that I just mentioned (except ChinTsubu) have been published in English by companies other than Deux: Pet on Duty was Broccoli’s Boysenberry line; both Takanaga titles were Drama Queen (and Juné also published Takanaga’s Little Butterfly). Boysenberry published Delivery Cupid, and Juné has published a number of Koujima’s titles (Our Kingdom, Great Place High School, etc).

So, there you have it: Yaoi-Con in a relatively lifeless nutshell. It may seem extra quiet since so many other players (Blu, Be Beautiful, Drama Queen) were not in attendance this year. Meanwhile, I had a lot of fun at NYAF, but I wish I could have gone to Yaoi-Con too. ♥

Unfortunately for yaoi fans everywhere, our favorite underdog publisher Drama Queen does not appear to be doing well. Boys Next Door has this report from a former (sort of?) Drama Queen employee, who posted on the DQ boards.

The basic sum-up is this: the company is floundering because investors haven’t come through with the money they need to print the books they’ve licensed. Things look pretty grim, and even pres/CEO Tran Nguyen, who is one of the cheeriest people alive, seems to have doubts now.

Is there hope? Well, Nguyen is considering a suggestion by YaoiSuki editor Jordan Marks of putting together a pledge list of fans who promise to buy the books when they come out– though I’m not entirely sure what that’s supposed to do, unless it’s to inspire confidence in the investors. There’s always the hope that the investors will come through eventually, but it seems unlikely to me that the Japanese license owners are going to be terribly patient– it’s my understanding that most licensing contracts have a time limit during which the materials have to start being released.

I’d like to say on a personal note that I agree with Taisa that Tran is a phenomenally kind and fun woman, and I really hate to see this happen to her. It’s sad, and it’s irritating to see excellent licenses like Tyrant Falls in Love and other promises fly by without hearing a word, but I don’t have it in me to hold it against her.

BL and manhwa publisher Drama Queen has been pretty quiet lately…until just recently! Their website is down and word recently surfaced on the Blu Manga forums (registration required) that they’ve issued cease and desist notices to scanlators of The Tyrant Falls In Love.

I’ve got an email out to DQ to check on their status and see if they have any comments. I’ll let you know what I hear!

BL fans in the US have been extremely patient with Drama Queen, a young yaoi publisher with a number of anticipated licenses that have still not been put out over a year after their announcement (such as Tyrant Falls in Love and Naked Jewels Corporation), and the next issue of their own OEL BL anthology Rush).

Publisher Tran Nguyen, who I will personally vouch for as being one of the cutest people in this business, chatted with Publishers Weekly about the status of the company, who haven’t put out a book in some time (since September 2007, actually). The company has a new financial partner and has a new round of books (including all of those mentioned above) going to the printers. The good news is that during the downtime of not publishing things, the staff have worked on a number of books, so they have a healthy backlog of things to put out now.

I dunno about you, but I’m looking forward to finally seeing Tyrant.

Drama Queen is mainly a yaoi publisher, but they also publish some manhwa and are opening up a line of romance and action (non-BL) manhwa.

So far they’ve just been talking about titles they’ve had for a while, like DVD, Audition, etc., hence the quiet ;) Oh yeah, and Peter Panda, too, which I think is one of the more anticipated of these titles, first of four volumes due out in early ‘08.

Next up: Spam Mail Hunter, about a group that hunts humanoid spam mails. Now THAT’S terrifying.

They do hope to expand this manhwa line to include manga that is not BL, but nothing just yet. They have a deal in the works with “the mothership” (a manga monolith in Japan, apparently), but nothing announceable yet. She mentions VIZ as well– so it’s Shueisha or Shogakukan. Here’s hoping! Yaoi fans would get a kick out of that, because that would open up the possibility of Shueisha/Shogakukan yaoi manga, which VIZ basically has the rights to by default but will never ever publish.

They have more titles licensed than they’re announcing, but they’re waiting until everything is set 100% in stone for when they can get them out. (For those unaware, they’ve had problems in the past getting books out on time with their BL books.)

Oh, and they’re releasing a giant hardcover 5lb artbook for Audition, too. Oof.

Alrighty folks, here’s a manga item I thoroughly missed out on: yaoi publisher Drama Queen, who also publishes some shoujo titles (mostly manhwa), apparently declared at Otakon that they’d be branching out to offer an action line, starting with the manhwa title Spam Mail Hunter.

Now look. I love Drama Queen. I know several of their staffers and they love what they do and they do it really damn well. But it does seem a little odd to branch out at a time when they’ve had trouble getting books out on-schedule. Though they’ve always been worth the wait, which I guess is really the more important part.