Anime:
- FUNimation just shipped out a press release announcing that Jyu-Oh-Sei is now available in its entirety– sub-only –on FUNi’s VOD website. Each episode is $1.99, or you can buy the full series (11 episodes) for $16.99– about $5 off. Not bad, eh?

Manga:
- Iris Print has finally officially closed shop, effective July 31st, ‘08. To clear out the inventory, owner Kellie Lynch is offering a 50% off coupon for all the books currently out.

- Much as I hate to continue the melancholy mood of the BL fandom, Libre has issued its official statement on the Youka Nitta plagiarism issue on the official B-Boy website. The gist: a reminder of Nitta’s self-imposed suspension. They actually used the term “jishuku,” which is a Japanese apologetic tradition where one secludes oneself after being caught doing something, as an apology.

- Shoujo mangaka Mayu Shinjou, best known in North America for Sensual Phrase, has announced a genre-hop: she’s going to draw a one-shot in the shounen mangabon Jump Sq..

Games:
- This has been on my to-do for quite some time, and I’m kind of surprised I haven’t heard of it elsewhere– Princess Maker 5 (the well-known princess-raising game by Gainax) is being ported to PSP– which means that North American PSP owners can import their own copies. The games don’t seem to have particularly caught on in the US, but I know a handful of fans will be happy to hear about it.

Toys/Swag:
- Are you at all familiar with the concept of “decotora” (decoration truck), those extravagantly-decorated trucks often used to garner attention at special events and whatnot? Well, doesn’t matter– there’s one you still may be interested in. Yes, there is now a PlaModel of a Lucky Star decotora. Terrifying? Yeah, maybe.

Movies:
- VIZ is really pushing the PR machine for the new VIZ Productions stuff– at least, as much as they can without an actual specific film project to announce. Anyway, ICv2 has a three-part interview with Jason Hoffs, formerly of Dreamworks and now of VIZ Pictures. Hoffs talks about what makes manga a strong candidate for movies these days, and he also notes that they may not stick just to live-action movies: animation and TV are both possibilities (though the focus right now is movies).

Posted by gia in Features, Roundups • Comments (3)

Man, keeping tabs on this is getting almost as bad as the latest anime blog drama.

Still, Boys Next Door has the latest on the Iris Print front, in which Kiriko Moth (who is, by the way, an amazing artist), who notes that she was never paid for her work on the cover of the ill-fated BL Twist magazine, nor for her inking work on one of Iris’ comics.

Meanwhile, Kellie Lynch has finally spoken: Iris is actually not making an appearance at Yaoi Jamboree, so people can call off the dogs as far as the con is concerned. Lynch says she simply forgot to tell them that she wasn’t coming, but there are certainly no books being sold there.

And one of the writers, R.W. Day, says she has now been paid by Lynch, via Paypal. That leaves everyone else still paycheck-less, but it’s a start.

Oh, and Lynch finally officially confirmed that Iris is shutting down.

Okay, let’s take a breath and relax for a bit now.

Posted by gia in Gossip, Manga, News, OEL, Western News • Comments (1)

The BL world just can’t catch a break recently– isn’t there any good news to be had for yaoi fans these days?

The latest comes from Boys Next Door, who report that authors R.W. Day, Tina Anderson, and C.B. Potts are now speaking out against not only Iris Print– who, despite their still unacknowledged shut-down, has failed to provide payment, a sales report, or even an e-mail back to said writers –but also against Yaoi Jamboree, the brand new yaoi convention in Arizona happening this coming weekend, which is allowing Iris’ Kellie Lynch to sell copies of the authors’ books in the dealer room.

There’s been no word from Lynch yet, and for all I know she could be planning to give all the proceeds from any sales directly to the authors. But if something like that was the case, it sure would be nice of her to, y’know, tell someone about it. Just sayin’.

(In the image: Tina Anderson and Caroline Monaco’s Only Words, left; Mia Paluzzi and Chris Delk’s Paintings of You.)

Posted by gia in Gossip, Manga, News, OEL, Western News • Comments (2)

Something I didn’t mention in my Yaoi Press report was that Yamila Abraham, when asked about publishing yaoi novels as well as comics, said that it tends not to work very well, and pointed to Iris Print as an example– saying that the company has actually closed up shop.

I’ve fired off an e-mail to Kellie to get her take; while I was googling to make sure I hadn’t missed some kind of announcement I noticed that Boys Next Door’s blog has some statements from Iris writers, while C.B. Potts offers her own response.

So, things aren’t looking too good for Iris, but for the moment we do NOT know anything about Iris’ status officially, so we can file this one in the “rumor” box.

Posted by gia in Con Reports, Features • Comments (4)

Western BL took another hit today: the small-press publisher of BL books, Yaoi House, and its sister site, Yaoi Underground (which sells e-chapters of the owner’s fiction), are reportedly both up in the air after owner Kira Takenouchi announced that Yaoi Underground LLC will be terminated and money returned to investors, while she is surrendering her own shares of Yaoi House LLC and leaving it up to the investors to do what they want with it.

When I came across the post it reminded me to check up on Iris Print, another US-based BL publisher (of both comics and prose) that ran into some trouble a while back. They have managed to get two of their prose books, the novel A Strong and Sudden Thaw and the short story collection Connections up and available on Amazon’s Kindle; regular ebooks are also pending, according to owner Kellie Lynch.

Posted by gia in Misc, News, Novels, Western News • Comments (9)