Last summer, when natural disasters struck Southern California, a few of the California-based manga publishers donated a bunch of manga to evacuation shelters to aid the relief efforts. TOKYOPOP is apparently carrying on with the giving spirit, as Cynthia Leitich Smith reports that T-pop is one of twenty publishers donating books to Operation TBD, which organizes donations of books to pediatric hospitals for teenage patients.

Also among the donors is Tor Books, who publish some of Seven Seas’ original and licensed manga, although it’s not stated whether that is what they’re donating.

Keep on keepin’ on with the giving, guys!

Tiamat– who I mistakenly referred to as a “she” earlier; my apologies. I blame it entirely on Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher –has an update on the disappearance of Seven Seas’ website.

Namely, that it’s back! Apparently they suffered a major server crash and it looks like they’ve lost their forum data from it, although the rest of the site is workin’ fine now. Glad it was no big deal!

If you were curious about my post yesterday talking about how Seven Seas’ website seems to have somewhat disappeared off the Internets, Josh offers tech-savvy speculation at his blog, suggesting that Seven Seas may be moving from gomanga.com to the also-registered sevenseasmanga.com, and possibly even moving hosts/servers at the same time, but not as cleanly as one would like. Meanwhile Tiamat notes that the site had been sluggish prior to going down about two days ago. (He also says he’s e-mailed Adam Arnold– which I totally should have thought of.)

Has anyone else noticed that visiting manga/light novel publisher Seven Seas’ website, http://www.gomanga.com, produces nothing but an error? I visited a number of other sites on the host with no problem, so…hopefully it’s just an error on 7S’s account.

I don’t think anything too dire has happened to the publisher, since their most recent releases (March 18, 2008) seem to all be properly in stock on Amazon. Still, it wouldn’t be the first mysterious disappearance, since they pulled the launch title for their yaoi line from the site and refused to comment on their forums or privately about it. Hmm. I wish I had contact information for them, but unfortunately the only way I was ever able to even try and get in touch was via the contact form on their currently non-functioning website. D’oh!

A few announcements from good ol’ 7S (see liveblog thread):

Where “V” stands for “very full.” Today starts off with TOKYOPOP, which I’m going to liveblog right here, right now, followed by Dark Horse (though I honestly don’t expect much from them on the manga front so if you don’t see a DH post, that’s why), then Broccoli, Seven Seas, and Yen Press. (There IS a small break in there, during which I will acquire lunch. Huzzah.)

So keep an eye here and on the forums for all the news that’s fit to blog.

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, folks, but I am now in San Diego for Comic Con. There’ll be panels for TOKYOPOP - whose booth is HUGE, I swear to god they’re housing their staff in that thing - VIZ, FUNimation, ADV, Seven Seas, Broccoli, Del Rey Manga, and Dark Horse (though I expect they’ll be focusing more on their non-manga offerings). Yen Press will also be giving a launch panel, which should be fun even though it overlaps with the Kevin Smith panel slightly.

As of just now when I re-checked the schedule, the only big panel today is VIZ (though a TOKYOPOP rep will be at the GoComics mobile phone comics panel so I may pop in there too).

Tomorrow’s the big day, though: TOKYOPOP, Dark Horse, Broccoli, Seven Seas, and Yen Press and Kevin Smith. Saturday’ll be FUNimation, Del Rey Manga, and ADV, and Sunday is poor l’il CMX, all alone. It *looks* like I’ll be able to make it to all of these panels, so expect full coverage! Depending on how the Internets are at the convention center, I may also live-blog them on the forums.

I’ll get to the news as fast as I can, after a few more thoughts/predictions… Read more…

Many of you have probably already heard that Madeleine Rosca’s OEL manga Hollow Fields, published by Seven Seas, was one of the main runners-up/award winners at Japan’s first International Manga Awards, and the only westerner to make it that far.

Seven Seas is definitely trying to make good use of the award; they’re actually sending Hollow Fields back for a re-print, according to this press release. I have to say that it winning an award makes me more intersted in the series than the description in the release does:

Hollow Fields is a three-volume manga series for all ages that tells the story of little Lucy Snow, who, in a macabre twist of fate, finds herself enrolled at Miss Weaver’s Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered—also known as Hollow Fields. Located on the outskirts of Nullsville and run by the insidious Engineers, the grim boarding school dedicates itself to raising the next generation of mad scientists and evil geniuses.

Worth noting that in spite of being OEL, it’s read right to left.

Current Mood:  Towel

It’s a terrible picture, but there you have it. And I’ll explain it after THE BLOODENATING.

Read more…