Anime:
- Bandai Entertainment has announced new screenings of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in NYC again (dubbed), San Francisco (subbed), Durham (subbed), and Philadelphia (subbed).

- Sankaku Complex has word that obnoxious otaku have bullied seiyuu Erino Hazuki (Aria’s Akari, Princess Tutu’s Malen and Uzura) so badly that she’s actually had to abandon her blog. Don’t you guys know that most women aren’t as thick-skinned as me? Yeesh.

- According to Moon Phase, Waki Yamato’s manga version of The Tale of Genji (sometimes credited as the world’s first novel) is being adapted into an anime. Yamato’s version is titled Asakiyumemishi and ran in Kodansha’s Mimi back in the 1980s, and Kodansha even released some of it as part of their “bilingual manga” back in the very early ’00s (I think I’ve got the timeframe right on that, anyway).

Manga:
- Yen+ subscriptions are win!

Cons:
- New York Anime Fest has their panel schedule up, and Anime Weekend Atlanta has their full guest list online as well! Man, I’m gonna be busy…

I’ve got a few items on the required reading list today, but it was Brigid’s tip over at MangaBlog that made me decide this had to go up today.

Now, my favorite work by Osamu Tezuka is Unico (my first anime ever, prior to my knowing what anime was…or what Japan was, probably). But a close second? Black Jack. And now Vertical has posted a free preview of their Black Jack release (due out at the end of September).

But there’s more to read! And I’m not just talking about my Expo stuff, either:

• Comics212’s Christopher Butcher has a two part, fairly in-depth look at the U.S. manga industry– and make sure you hit up the comments, too.
• For fans of Gundam 00, Gunota Headlines has some details about where the characters are at the beginning of season 2, courtesy of Newtype, Animedia, and/or Animage, no doubt.
• Over at Icarus (NSFW), Simon has links to two excellent pieces: Sporadic Sequential’s 5-point plan for Kodansha’s world takeover (for a chuckle) and Katherine Farmar’s tips for new comics publishers (for food for thought). Also, if there are any VIZ (or other manga publishers) reading this, you should definitely read the comments on Simon’s post for some interesting marketing initiative ideas from Simon and John Jakala.

Keep reading, kids!

Man, this image is gonna come in handy a LOT.

David Welsh has a nice primer up on the recent Kodansha/Del Rey Manga newschunk, and I noticed this little bit:

As for other sources of licenses, ([April]) Flores noted, “[Del Rey has] licensed titles from other companies — one example would be The Phoenix Wright Official Casebook manga coming out in October, which we licensed from Capcom.”

Um, the ([]) was to denote that it was me putting them in; the regular brackets were Welsh. Anyway, is this a hint that Del Rey will look into licensing more titles from other companies, or just a reminder that it’s a possibility? There are, after all, many publishers that aren’t Shueisha, Shogakukan, or Kodansha: Yen Press is shaping up to do very well with a number of titles they acquired from Square Enix, for example.

So! I just got off the phone with Kodansha’s office in Tokyo– specifically with Tomoko Suga, a senior foreign rights manager for the company.

Unfortunately she couldn’t give me very many details on the company’s plans in terms of titles, genre, or dates– basically they’ve set up the company name and that’s about it so far. She DID tell me that there are going to be no immediate or direct changes to Kodansha’s deal with Del Rey Manga. This is slightly different from simply saying that Kodansha wasn’t pulling any licenses, as it means that presumably Del Rey Manga will be able to continue to license Kodansha titles (as most people have been speculating).

Chris Butcher has a little more to note: Dark Horse has lost their Akira license, and Tpop’s Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad license is also in question (though in Tpop’s case it’s hard to know if it was cancelled by Tpop or Kodansha).

Butcher also suggests that Kodansha may hope to rely on Del Rey’s (and parent company Random House’s) lengthy presence in the U.S. market to further their own sales and distribution aims, which is entirely within the realm of possibility.

With any luck there’ll be more to tell by the time I see the Del Rey folks at San Diego Comic Con!

Dallas Middaugh has posted to the Del Rey Manga blog regarding Kodansha’s new manga publisher: to keep it short, Kodansha has not pulled any licenses back, and they have new licenses to announce– so it’ll be business as usual at Del Rey.

I didn’t especially think that Kodansha was going to cancel contracts. But the question that remains, really, is more like: what will this mean in terms of future licenses? Will Del Rey continue to have the pick of the Kodansha litter, or will Kodansha hold some of their bigger titles back to publish themselves?

On the other hand, Kodansha could take a more focused approach and publish mostly within a particular genre, which might not interfere with Del Rey Manga at all– it’s hard to say until we know more about Kodansha’s plans.

As soon as I know more, I’ll of course let you know!

Remember those pesky rumors that Kodansha had a new US manga publisher in the works– leading to the panic of fans of Del Rey Manga, whose deal with Kodansha gets them a significant chunk of their licenses?

Well, they’re back, and this time with more driving force than a mere anonymous comment: ICv2 reports that the Japanese business news outlet Nikkei had reported on a new US manga publisher from Kodansha. I tracked down the article in question, whose headline is (roughly) “Kodansha: Publishing Popular Japanese Manga in the US Starting in September.”

The article mentions that until now, Kodansha had been licensing the rights to a local publisher (Del Rey Manga), but that Kodansha wants to intensify their overseas operations. The article also notes that since selling manga and magazines in Japan is becoming such a tough game, companies are focusing more attention on the foreign market.

I’ve got an e-mail out to Kodansha International (I called them, but they’re all on lunch break atm). If I don’t hear back I’ll call the Tokyo office when it’s late enough in the day (it’s 2am there). I’ll try and track down what’s going to happen to the deal with Del Rey, as well as the plans for the new publisher (demograhpic, output, etc).

There’s also a bit more to read at the Beat.

Japanator’s returnee DickMcVengeance (wb!) has saved me an international call by chatting up Ali Kokmen from Del Rey Manga at the NYAF event yesterday and asking about those pesky Kodansha rumors.

Kokmen apparently told DMV that he had no knowledge of any new publisher in the works from Kodansha, and that Del Rey actually had people in Japan setting up contracts through 2010 at that very moment. Now, theoretically Kodansha could still be working something up without Del Rey’s knowledge, but it does throw off the original report that Kodansha is “aggressively cutting off the[ir] existing contracts,” which kind of makes the whole thing a bit suspect.

But this does leave the question: who is “Cthulhu” and why were they so convinced this is the case? Did we all just get uber-trolled, or is something going on? Tricky tricky…

Yes, just a heads up, my quietness this weekend has been largely because a) I went on an impromptu daytrip to Seattle yesterday, and b) I’ve been working on the summer season preview. Not a ton of shows this season (coming in at 24– and that includes June shows), but I’ve got all the main writeups and images done. Expect to see that later this week. :)

Also, later this evening– when it’s late enough in Japan –I hope to give Kodansha a call and see if I can get any words out of them on this whole US manga publisher thing. I doubt I’ll actually get anything interesting (if I even manage to find an English-speaking rep), but if they think word is getting out they may move up an announcement earlier. If it’s actually happening. I’ll report back!

Now HERE is the most interesting rumor I’ve yet heard come out of the whole TOKYOPOP thing: in the comments of Chris Butcher’s thoughts on the matter a person going by Cthulhu who claims to be an industry insider pronounces that Kodansha is going to start its own manga publisher in the US, bypassing both Del Rey– who has benefitted greatly from their deal with Kodansha, one of the big three in Japan –and all the other US publishers.

Is it true? There’s plenty of snarky arguing between “Cthulhu” and Matt Blind in the comments; Blind clearly doesn’t buy it. Ryan from Same Hat! says he vaguely recalls hearing a similar rumor, while Cthulhu claims it was announced at Book Expo America with no one noticing (…really?). There’s a continuation of Cthulhu and Blind’s debating over at the PW Beat.

As for me, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Kodansha did it– but it seems like odd timing. I mean, Del Rey JUST announced that they’d be releasing Kodansha’s Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei about a month and a half ago (April 19th, to be exact). Now Cthulhu says that they’re “aggressively cutting off the existing contracts” with publishers and that this has been “in the wind” for a couple of weeks. So, did they basically put this company together in a single month? Or did Del Rey just slip that last license in thanks to the contract the two have had since Del Rey’s formation?

“Cthulhu” offered to let Butcher e-mail him to check his credentials, and I hope Chris follows up. In the meantime, I went ahead and placed a call to Kodansha America’s NYC office to see if I might be able to get anything from them– if they mentioned it at BEA I should think they’d be able to confirm it by phone –but no one picked up and I had to leave a message. (There IS a phone number for their foreign rights department in Japan, but for the moment I only have my cell phone, and let’s just say that the per-minute charge for a call to Japan is not one I wanna pick up right now. Besides, it’s like 2am there.)