Vertical Vednesday may be much less frequent but it is hardly dead and this week was a grand celebration worthy of Dionysus. To promote one of their more high-profile titles Vertical held a wine tasting at the Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit shop in Manhattan. The Drops of God is a moderately famous manga outside of the manga world for its ability to actually influence the international wine market when it talks about a vintage. It single handily created a great demand for wine in several Asian countries that had never been big wine drinkers beforehand. So Vertical decided to go all out with the first volume. They had the first volume on sale along with the new Vertical catalog with a Drops of God cover. Apparently the mixture of wine and manga is a good draw because the shop was quite crowded when I arrived and it only got busier by the time the event started in proper.

I’m not going to lie to you I mostly came for the free food and the conversation and I got both in amble amounts. The night started with a blind tasting of three wines. The challenge was to determine which of them was the Italian wine. I did not sample either of the three nor did I ever find out which was which. I am curious how many people in attendance had enough of a palate  to discern such things. After that Ed Chavez gave a short speech about the manga of honor and the featured wines we could be sampling. Most of the wines we were tasting were from later volumes but they all appeared at one point or another. Since more people attended than expected we were given tickets to try 2 of the selected 6 wines from the manga. As the night went on they dispensed with the need for the tickets at often came around and gave a sample of any of the 6 selections. I mostly stuck to the red wines as I have never liked the taste of white wine. I was also a bit of a barbarian and used the same glass for all the wines I sampled but I can’t say I have ever has the most refined taste for alcohol in the first place.  There was only Swiss cheese to eat but the choice of cracker was quite varied. I had quite a bit of fun seeing how the various crackers went with the various wines.

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening. Bottlerocket was a very accommodating store and the staff was amazingly friendly. I chatted with various people at the event effortlessly for two hours. I do feel a bit guilty we hardly discussed the manga that was the star of the night but much manga discussion was had in general. I hope that the Drops of God does well for Vertical. Like Chi’s Sweet Home it is a manga that has the potential to attract readers outside of the normal manga reading demographics.  I am glad that they decided to do a theme night for the Drops of God. A MW themed party might have also been able to have a have touch of Dionysus but not in such a pleasant way.

The presence of industry at events such as Otakon has been evolving and changing over the last couple of years. Instead of focusing on what is coming out now, which is still done, there is a shift to talking about streaming or the next big thing. This was driven home by Sunrise running their own panel this year. While there were no huge announcements from Otakon (which we’ve come to expect with Anime Expo and San Diego Comic Con in the same month), there was still much to talk about.

I have mostly decided to follows Patz’s philosophy and avoid going to industry panels unless I have a burning question that needs to be asked. With so many bloggers and news sources reporting and commentating on industry panels as they happen there is little need for me to show up. The nitty-gritty will be available for everyone to see as soon as it is announced. This lets me sit back and pick what I want to comment on. I like that approach.

Vertical, Inc. is really good about making the rounds at conventions. That being said, you should always attend a panel with Ed Chavez because it is impossible to not learn something. The panel started with the usual presentation of current and upcoming titles. There were big cheers from the crowd for the beautiful job on Princess Knight. When GTO: Shonan 14 Days and The Early Years came up, Ed mentioned that TokyoPop was still around when they made this deal so the first 10 books of The Early Years weren’t an option. Ed also showed the first cover design for Drops of God which was wine labels but the creator wanted more character art. As a designer I actually like the new covers better. The series is available for preview on the New York Times website of all places (this was way too hard to find). I wasn’t excited at first, but now I’m really looking forward to the release. The floor opened up to questions, biggest on minds was digital releases of manga which Ed said they are negotiating, but it is hard and things like Tezuka aren’t an option for them since Tezuka’s estate is doing that on their own. I was curious about flipping/not flipping in their upcoming titles; No Longer Human was actually made in left-to-right format; GTO will remain unflipped; and Drops of God while they hope to be an international success was too difficult to flip due to the wine labels, etc. You could also catch Vertical, Inc. in the dealer’s room where they did very good business over the weekend.

With all that said, I still went to the VIZ panel on Sunday mostly because it was a bit of an unusual event. For the last few years VIZ had not come out to the East Coast so I was curious to see the new and improved VIZ. Thanks to a recent ANNCast with Jim Vowles we learned that VIZ is trying to get back in touch with its core audience and this is part of that plan. Of course they had Naruto news. They mentioned a contest with the new movie and a possible speed-up with the digital manga. Even if there is more fan backlash against the manga it is still the title to beat in many respects. They talked a bit about their digital initiatives and their plans for the future. I think it is proof that while no one is fully taking the plunge, manga publishers still know they have to do something about the digital frontier before it is too late. They also mentioned some new titles in the Haikasoru line which I am pleasantly surprised is still alive. VIZ is releasing some new art books including the second Color Walk and also more omnibus lines. When it came to Q&A the rep only gave a half answer to why Rin-ne is no longer being translated. The earthquake was brought up but that does not seem to be the whole answer in my opinion. Overall, I am glad to see VIZ back in the game giving out prizes and opening communication a bit more with fans all over the country.

The most surprising industry guest this year was, as I mentioned previous, Sunrise hosted by Executive Producer Masayuki Ozaki. Some familiar faces from Bandai’s U.S. branch could be seen on the panel too as they traditional distribute Sunrise works for the states. This panel was part celebration and part special preview. Mr. Ozaki started the panel by asking the crowd, which was fairly sizable, to shout out their favorite works from Sunrise; I, of course, yelled Gundam. As if on cue we were then shown a short film entitled World of Gundam which introduces the franchise. Rounds of applause burst from the fans throughout which gave the impression that G Gundam is the most popular series in the history, that probably threw Mr. Ozaki! There was also a spoiler-filled Tiger and Bunny promo video which I closed my eyes and ears for and a trailer for Gundam AGE that looked promising. I was surprised to then see previews for totally new shows, ones I’d never heard of, including a shonen series Phi Brain Puzzle of God and a booby-laden, warring states title Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere. It hit me then that this is what Japanese companies should be doing: showing us the new product in a big way! Simulcasting is full under way, we are a known market now. That can be said less for the European market which Eeeper asked about during the Q&A session and which Mr. Ozaki seemed to be stumped over. You really got the feeling that Mr. Ozaki wanted to gauge fans and hopefully he took plenty of notes back with him.

Directly after Sunrise was Bandai’s After Dark panel where they let down their hair a little and all manner of guests showed up for a few minutes here and there. This is also a popular panel because they tend to give away a lot of goodies. There was a lot of music going on this night with an impromptu jam session with Johnny Young Bosch. This was followed by the very talented Hiro Yura talking about his work on the The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzimiya film which he finished up by playing the ending song on violin. I wasn’t familiar with the movie, but his string solo was very moving and received quite an ovation from the audience. Then came a sing-a-long with some of the dub cast for K-ON! I wasn’t overly impressed, but then it is me. However, when one brave audience member got up to sing I had to laugh and applaud. Nearing the end of the panel we got a few announcements like Star Driver streaming in August (too little, too late?) but no news about the DVD release format which interests me most. Bandai has also decided Nichijou and Gosick (yay!) are worth releasing on DVD as well.

Hey people, why has no one picked up Mawaru Penguindrum? I so want to watch that legally but it is the only show I crave that is still not been given a legitimate streaming option. I better hear some good news at NYAF. Survival Strategy!

This year’s industry panels held little gems that made seeing them worthwhile. A lot of companies are shying away from a very corporate/marketing presentation and instead going toe to toe with fans. Free stuff also helps pack those seats!

My first Genericon was also my first college convention and by far the smallest con I have ever attended with a head count of 1351. We were also doing two new panels as well as being touted as featured panelists. And to top it all off many familiar faces were in attendance. All of these factors, plus some great people involved, ended up making it a worthwhile and memorable weekend.

Now that I was a featured panelist and have made it to the big times I will try to remember all the little people who helped me get here because that makes it easier for me to make sure they cannot call me. But it all seriousness I was greatly honored to be invited as a featured panelist at Genericon this year. I think along with our fellows guests we were able to bring some amazing presentations to an already traditionally well run college convention. We got to see the Most Dangerous AWO Crew, the stealthy The Ninja Consultants, the professional animators from For Tax Reasons, the harried Evan Minto, and the luminary Ed Chavez. It was a great opportunity to reunite with some old friends from the anime community, sit down at some wonderful panels, eat some great meals, meet some new people, meet the young chap who won the Dirty Pair Box set, and have a great time.

I’m sure for students at RPI the layout was old hat but I had to orient myself fairly quickly as we had one of the first panels on Friday evening. It basically consisted of two halls in two buildings a mere 20 feet apart from each other. Artist alley occupied the floor below one hall while the video game room resided above the other. The giant lecture halls startled me for sure; it seems obvious since it was a college but they were very intimidating anyway. Sounds fairly simple, but the 3D map made it seem more complicated, and what caused confusion was not having the rooms clearly marked as anything besides a classroom (this also caused problems when trying to tell a volunteer just what room you needed help in). There was way more space and rooms than were allowed for use by Genericon so sometimes it was trial and error figuring out which held what. That being said, since it was small it was easy to remember after being through a couple of times.

The convention itself was very cozy but at the same time efficiently laid out which is great when it comes to a smaller convention that takes place on a larger facility. Everything was in two connected buildings and it was simple to walk from one end of the con to the other in a few minutes. I have been to too many cons that were spread out over multiple buildings or are laid out inefficiently so that you have to sprint to get from one event to another. I would have liked if the three panel rooms had all been in the same building but the distance between the three was never enough that I missed anything because of it. I did find it amusing that the tables in artist alley and the dealer’s room were in small classrooms. It made it seem like they were shops in a RPG or a strip mall. There was also a huge table of board games to choose borrow and play. While this was super awesome for people wanting to explore the world of board games it also seems like an invitation for missing pieces.

I must applaud Genericon for their placement of the VIP lounge along with con-ops and staff area which was quiet and remote enough that random con-goers weren’t constantly happening by. We were even able to record a podcast in the lounge which was a necessity as going to and from the hotel was a bit of an undertaking. Things like the dealer’s room(s) and artist alley were a bit forgotten by me actually as the programming was engaging most hours of the day. In any case, I made a special trip to both. There were two small classrooms of dealers, one of which had a decent selection of imported merchandise though it was a tad pricey. Most popular of the vendors seemed to be the one selling Japanese snack foods and drinks. Artist alley was surprisingly bigger than the dealer’s area and consisted of more crafts like knitting than of glossy prints of fan-art. Though the space they occupied was a bit far off from the rest of things.   

This was a convention filled with people who seasoned veterans when it came to panels so I spent most of the convention go from one cool panel to another. There was one group that did bad video game and anime panels. For some reason these bad anime/video game panels are always insanely popular and filled to capacity but are always thrown in super small rooms. It is such a bizarre phenomenon. Both panels were well done even if they decided to target my beloved Fate/Stay Night. On the other hand I could feel the palpable Schadenfreude radiating off Narutaki when they decided to send up the work of my buddy Kinoko Nasu. But the group knew how to take select scenes from the given anime or game and throw on a good comical spin. The same group did a panel on underappreciated gems. King of Bandit Jing in Seventh Heaven stood out the most in all of their selections as something that was better than you might have assumed.

As I mentioned, programming reigned supreme from what I saw and it was very robust. Amazingly, there were very few schedule changes throughout the weekend. For Tax Reasons’ first panel was opposite one of ours but I made it to their second. It was about the animation process and how to get started, sort of anyway, as jokes about it being the worst motivational speech ever were exchanged but everyone learned a little and laughed a lot. Continuing on the animation track was Hetalia History with Walter Amos which is as it sounds. I only caught half of it but just to know a series like that creates history buffs in 14-year-old-girls is both hilarious and heartening. Manga based panels like Ed Chavez’s seinen history was of course fascinating plus you never walk away from a talk with Ed without learning about 15 new things; and Ninja Consultant’s panel featuring as much unusual manga you could cram in an hour was very amusing though I would have liked it to either be slotted for longer or have just a few less titles as they talked a mile-a-minute. Rounding things out was me finally getting to a Touhou panel in an attempt to figure out the phenomenon. I didn’t, as it seemed more structured for actual fans and hearing them go on about the world the only thing I walked away with was that it seemed excessively complicated. But I did come to the realization that all Touhou cosplayers are guys and all Hetalia cosplayers are girls.

Anime 101 started out as Daryl’s propaganda lecture on what is anime and manga and what is not. It was fairly preachy but Daryl did make some excellent points if a bit heavy-handed. The second half was a quick overview of the history of anime. As he stated it is impossible to do anything close to comprehensive overview of anime history in one lecture but it did open your eyes to where to start exploring the history of anime which might be greater than new fans would realize. AWO’s Final Fantasy Debate was a bit more Final Fantasy history than debate. They went through all the numbered Final Fantasy games and what new features each game brought to the franchise. They then did some polling of the audience with questions like what was everyone first, favorite, and most hated games in the series. I think they hoped that asking questions like, “What did you not like about 8?” or, “Why did you like 13?” might cause some arguments but everyone stayed polite and reasonable. For better or for worse the audience realized that how you act on the Internet and real life are very different. It did reinforce Narutaki’s perception that Final Fantasy 9 is the unfairly neglected child of the series. The final AWO panel I saw about state of Podcasting. Daryl was called away for an interview for 2/3 of the panel but Clarissa and Gerald did an excellent job hosting the panel. They talked about how it seemed like podcasting was the way of the future when it really took off. It seemed like blogging or webcomics it would be a way for people to make a living. But as time goes on it seems that with only a handful of exceptions the only people who make money podcasting are people who were already famous. The panel was mostly a conversation with the audience about why they thought this was the case and if anyone had strategies on how to successfully market a podcast. Then general consensus was that if you want to have fun and speak your mind than podcasting is great but if you want to make money you should try something else. I think that the highlight of the panel was Noah’s suggestion that podcasters adapt the stripper model of payment were the podcasters ask for gifts that would benefit the podcasters and the listeners more than straight monetary donations. It was both an intriguing idea and an amusing analogy. Plus it gave us the image of Gerald shaking his money-maker for presents.

This was our first time as featured panelists, though I know some cons don’t really have such a thing, so I hope we were able to live up to such a status. As I have hoped for a while now to do a detective related panel, Genericon seemed like a great place to test it out. I was overall happy with our presentation but am taking the suggestion of adding some video clips. There was extra time at the end and perhaps we’d cut a title or two to accommodate it, but I think it will liven it up. One Piece was run on pure adrenaline since the projector decided to reject my laptop. It was a do or die moment that proved when the chips are down I guess we can deliver! I had fun, the audience had fun, and talking about One piece always puts a smile on everyone’s face. Both new panels need tweaking design-wise but that is something that can certainly be cleaned up before the summer time. Our old standard Anime Recruitment had a nice enthusiastic audience especially for a Sunday. This version of the panel had a bunch of updates that helped a lot so I hope to be using this at cons later this year as well.

As for our panels they went rather well despite the fact that we got the normal curse of the panelist that says that at least one of your panels will always have major technical difficulties no matter how well prepared everything is. Our first panel was about detective manga which ran completely smoothly. The panel was a bit empty but that was mainly because it was the first panel of the con and people were still getting badges for most of the panel. We realized that the panel ran a bit short so we will throw in some more shows or some video clips next time. The One Piece panel had crazy technical difficulties so we had to do the whole panel without the slides but oddly enough it still went over really well. The audience seemed really enthusiastic and engaged despite the lack of visuals. It was mostly made up of fans so I hope we got them to think a bit more critically about the show. The last panel we did was an old classic, anime recruitment. We had updated the panel a bit and added a new category but the fundamentals we still the same. The only major difference was the reaction of the crowd was very different. Usually at anime recruitment we have people who are already hardcore fans who want to know how to get other people into their hobby. This crowd seemed distinctly knowledgeable about anime but seemed more like casual fans. So they seemed enticed to watched some of the shows we mentioned more than were looking to entice someone else. But most of the audience seemed to find at least one show that seemed to pique their interest so it was a success just not in the way it usually is.

I had no idea what to expect from Genericon, but I don’t think it could have disappointed me even if I did. The staff was friendly and helpful, the con-goers were not insane, heck there was no rave! This was my first college run convention and I’m here to say if they were all run like Genericon I’d be stopping at as many as possible. That isn’t flattery, I was genuinely impressed. Amazing job guys!

More than anything I would like to thank Evan Minto and the rest of the convention staff for being wonderful to work with. They were always prompt, courteous, and most importantly organized communicators. The staff made everything run smoothly and made the convention extra enjoyable. Next year I would go back even if I did not have benefit of being a featured panelist. The con was tons of fun and had a wonderful feeling of community and energy. That spirit is the key to success with a college con and Genericon had it in spades.

Sorry, this post is a long time coming. And my title is a bit misleading as I spent almost all of my time in Holland and one day visiting Brussels. Despite that, it was an introduction to many things including the world of geek sub-culture across the Atlantic. And it is a piece of my education I hope to expand in the coming years.

This was my first time abroad, ever, and the first time I ever found myself feeling like a foreigner. I realized though that just because you are on vacation you don’t stop being the geek you are. At least I don’t. So my research had led me to find some comic shops in Amsterdam and virtually every other town I visited in Holland. As for Brussels, I didn’t have to plot out where the shops were as me and my companion were practically tripping over them at every turn.

My journey really began in Leiden where I found Stripwinkel Dumpie a shop that caught my eye for their Alice in Wonderland tea set in the window along with various other figures and merchandise. I exclaimed with joy and promptly entered. Dutch comics (and what I would later learn were Franco-Belgian comics translated into Dutch) lined the shelves. I was struck by what a large format they were. And not only that but the binding was solid paperback quality with a glossy cover, like a very thin book. I apologize if this sounds utterly ignorant, but I had no idea Dutch comics were published in this manner.

My awe subsided as I traveled about, but my interest only increased. Things I found from looking through was how many of the series adhere to the box format with 9 panels per page, sometimes boxes will be taller but rarely did things seem to break out. Also it was amazing how many of the series have been running for decades, but only have between 10-20 books released at around 50-pages a book. Think of that wait time compared to American comics or manga, European comics fans sure are dedicated! I picked up a few things along the way the most authentic of which was the Dutch sexy action-girl series Franka. I also grabbed some old Mickey Mouse comic digests in Dutch and a copy of Donald magazine for my ever-growing collection of Disney memorabilia. Donald Duck is ridiculously popular as should be attested to by him having an entire magazine, much more so than Mickey or any other Disney icon. The best shop by far was Lambiek in Amsterdam with literally mounds of books lying around and a friendly, knowledgeable staff. Be sure to ask for their business card if you drop by, it is a miniature comic book.

When hitting Brussels, a place I wanted to visit almost solely based on their love of comics, it became abundantly clear what an institution Franco-Belgian series are. Quite literally scattered throughout the city are statues of characters as well as art painted on the side of buildings. The city also houses a comics museum, which was our first stop on the trip. Within these walls were probably a hundred or more original pages from many different creators. The museum starts with an unimpressive guide to the process of comic making, but things get better as you go along into the hall with the originals and then further into a massive and informative timeline and outline of creators. As we toured the city a mountain of comic stores rose up before us, counting 15 from within a 2-mile radius and I’m sure there were gobs more. Upon entering the first store of the day, I learned that Franco-Belgian comics are hard-backed books which blew my mind all over again! The fact that their comics industry can sustain that really amazed me. Not only that but these stores were huge and packed full of customers, it was rather uplifting. Most impressive was BRÜSEL with its huge selection and even original art on its upper-landing. I plain refused to leave without a book from the delightful Yoko Tsuno series (which simultaneously reminds me of Nancy Drew and Johnny Quest) in French so that was my treasure from my day trip to Belgium.

Throughout all of this I was on the lookout for anime and manga related things, too. Most comic shops stocked a good amount of manga in Dutch or French, some in English, and a good variety of series at that. Plenty of Jiro Taniguchi and Naoki Urasawa to go around in any language. But it was easy to tell, especially in Brussels how many titles French publishers pick up. Vertical Inc. was the most recognizable publisher to frequently show up when browsing the English titles. I was also fascinated to see one store called Henk’s that seemed like an American comic shop transplanted into Amsterdam complete with mostly English superhero comics, English manga, and merchandise. We also ran into a couple of stores that had tons of figures, toys, etc., A Space Oddity in particular housed almost exclusively Japanese merchandise old and new, with a healthy sprinkling of American classics like Transformers and Star Wars, crowded into display cases and filling the store from floor to ceiling. There was plenty of oohing and ahhing over the robots there. I didn’t see any Japanese-language book stores in the big cities, but perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.

I got my first real taste of said native comics to the region and I even got briefed about where manga stands in relation to Franco-Belgian and Dutch comics. My trip gave me a lot of amazing memories. Not the least of which was a new-found budding interest for European comics for me and my travel partner! I hope to explore more of Europe in the coming years to learn about their comics and manga fandom (even thinking about attending Japan Expo in France at some point). As I start to read translated European comics expect to see some of that showing up on the blog!

The bigger the convention the bigger the guests and the announcements. But even the smallest of cons can have some exciting guests and surprising announcements. Also while the guests may not be the biggest they are also infinitely more accessible. MangaNEXT did give everyone a solid service by having the schedule include a chart of all the panels the guests were giving which was great if you wanted to know which panels were being run by which guests. It is certainly an idea that could be used at more conventions.

Akino Kandoh is not your typical manga-ka, she is much more a contemporary artist who uses manga and animation as her media for expression. I only recently came to know her work as she has a piece and is featured on the cover of recently released in English AX Volume 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga. Her panel on Saturday while grossly underattended was nice and intimate. She started off with some slides of her work and then continued by playing her animated shorts for us. This was a real treat as the simplicity and imagery were evocative. When she mentioned she was working on her next animation Kiya Kiya, I asked if she could talk about it a bit during the Q&A portion. She did better than that by showing us some stills. Ms. Kandoh went on to ponder why she always uses this similar looking girl character, concluding that she didn’t know but she is always compelled to draw her. She said most of her inspiration comes from the memories of childhood and the idea of deja vu and how that can play with memory as well. Ms. Kandoh will be part of a group exhibition in January in Chelsea and also have a solo show in Japan later in 2011. She was a different and fascinating guest that really elevated the convention.

I was slightly saddened by the fact that the MangaCast panel was in fact a Vertical panel. While I was glad to see what was coming out in the future for Vertical my hopes a little were dashed for a MangaCast panel that was Ed Chavez’s incredible insight into the world of manga. If you wanted that you had to attend Ed’s panel on Japanese Manga Publishers on Sunday. While there were no big announcements we did get to see the new covers of the upcoming Vertical novels and manga. Ed mentioned that they had been working on releasing Kimba the White Lion but Tezuka Productions had decided to pull back that title for a later release in the US.  As a side note it seems that Tezuka Productions is aiming to release as many of Tezuka’s manga online as they can independent of Vertical and that their progresses in France is far further along. Ed also mentioned that Chi was doing very well but Black Jack sales had definitely lost their momentum in anything but the newest books and that Twin Spica could always be doing better. That means everyone should go out and give Black Jack and Twin Spica as gifts to their friends because I really want to be able to finish reading Twin Spica.

I was happy with the guest of MangaNEXT and pleased by how intellectual much of it was. This was a convention where I was really able to experience something new and gain a better appreciation for the different ways manga can function for an artist. As always there never seems to be a way to see every event, but being able to say that at little ole MangaNEXT is a testament to the things being presented.

I do regret not be able to attend more of the events with featured guests. Nina Paley seemed very interesting and I heard that her Copyright panel had some very spirited debate within. I also regret not being able to check out the Uzuhi concert but we had our own panel to run at that time. Hopefully I will be able to attend events with them at a later date. I do look forward to seeing what guests they have next year at MangaNEXT.

More MangaNEXT 2010 coverage:

MangaNEXT 2010: General Impressions
MangaNEXT 2010: Panels

Right off the bat the most interesting announcements for me came from Bandai Entertainment. Bandai is finally releasing the original Mobile Suit Gundam with Japanese audio. Amazing that the Japanese audio tracks are no longer impossible to get now. I guess that Bandai has sold enough original Gundam DVDs in Japan that they are  no longer worried about reverse importation cutting into their profits. Still I will be happy to get rid of my dub only DVDs and get the dual audio DVDs I always wanted. Bandai also picked up the Gundam 00 movie and announced the U.S. DVD release of Gundam Unicorn. Some asked if they would be dubbing Turn A or giving a new dub the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Someone else asked if they were going to pick up old robot shows. They said they had no plans to do so which proves that while Bandai might be crazy they are not UTTERLY suicidal. Still overall it was a good day for American Gundam fans. Aniplex and Funimation did not have a new licenses and mostly gave more details on titles they already had. Still no Kara no Kyoukai announcement but I assume we will not hear anything until they sell their insanely expensive DVD and Blu-Ray sets in Japan for a while. Summer Wars is getting a theatrical release from Funimation so if you have not had a chance to watch that I really suggest you check that out. The Crunchyroll panel had to be the most boring event I went to all weekend. While questions were asked and answered I feel not a lot was really said. People asked about things like the manga program and streaming outside of the US but they mostly got variations on “We will see what the future holds.” If I had been more awake I might have been able to ask some good questions but the weekend started catching up with me at that panel. I assume that ANN would have had announcements and future plans for the streaming initiatives at their panel but the whole Oreimo leak debacle scuttled anything and utterly transformed the panel they had.

On the manga Manga front Vertical unveiled two titles. The Book of Human Insects is distinctly one of Tezuka’s gekiga influenced manga just by the cover. Usamaru Furuya’s manga of the Japanese classic No Longer Human which inspired Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei and was featured in the Blue Literature series. Dark Horse picked up two obvious but surely anticipated titles from Yasuhiro Nightow of Trigun fame and Kouta Hirano of Hellsing. I was a little surprised I had not heard of Kekkai Sensen or Drifters but they seem like great choices to pick up considering how well both author’s previous works have done. Yen Press mostly talked about manga adaptions of English books and their new iPad application. I am very curious how their attempt to enter the digital distribution game will work out for them. There has been talk that the Kodansha panel was never canceled but in fact never scheduled in the first place. I think that Kodansha just did not want to spend an hour not answering questions about the death of Del Rey manga but I would have liked them to just come and say that if that were the case.

If this had taken place a few years ago there would have been half a dozen of titles from everyone involved. Even the once seemingly invincible manga companies had less to say then they would have two years ago. But in these troubled times I understand and appreciate the need to buckle down and be conservative. At the same time companies are finding ways to innovate and adapt and hopefully we will see all these companies next year with slightly better news to report as well.

More NY Anime Festival and Comic Con 2010 posts:

NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: Tweets
NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: General Impressions
NY Anime Festival 2010: Artist Alley – Making it Big! (guest post)
NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: Exhibitors Hall
NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: Premieres
NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: Panels
NY Anime Festival & Comic Con 2010: Minori Chihara

Despite the overall less than healthy state of the anime industry Funimation still had a good amount of news including Summer Wars and Evangelion 2.0 while hardly surprising still wonderful to hear. They picked up Strike Witches 2 which seems like a no brainer if the original Strike Witches is doing well. Okami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi seems like a title that will hardly set the world on fire but will make its money back. I’m not sure why they picked up Blessing of the Campanella but that might be my prejudice against the series talking. On the same vein I was surprised that Bandai announced two titles. I just wished that the first title was not Sora Kake Girl. I’m not confident about their health and they picked up another title I am almost sure to lose them money no matter how cheaply they picked it up for. They also picked up My-Otome 0~S.ifr~ which seems like a solid if minor announcement that will hopefully make My-Hime fans happy. Aniplex laid low and their only big announcement was their release of Read or Die TV and OVA in one Blu-Ray boxset. It once again reinforces my idea that Funimation will be doing fine next year, Bandai might be gone by next year, and I have no idea what to think about Aniplex.

Almost no manga companies at the convention; only Vertical showed up and made anything close to an announcement. They teased at some titles they were negotiating but they did not name any names. Other than that I did not see any presence of the other major players. In years past if they did not set up a booth they at least sent someone to do a panel. Maybe all the east coast companies are saving their pennies for the NYCC/NYAF combination convention. I want to believe that manga companies are just laying low to conserve their strength but I am worried this is a very troubling sign.

I have noticed that as a rule I no longer regularly go to industry panels. With news sites like ANN and independent bloggers on Twitter putting any announcements up on Internet instantly I no longer feel this pressing urge to go like I used to. When there is an excellent fan panel in the same time slot I will go to that instead. I will still go if I have a question or if they have a guest. That being said I always check to see what was discussed at any industry panel as soon as the information pops up. I may not go to the panels in person but I eat up the information like it was delicious candy.

More Otakon 2010 posts:

Otakon 2010: General Impressions
Otakon 2010: Guests
Otakon 2010: Events
Anime3000 Podcast: Bonus Round – 8/5/10 – Otakon: It’s Fantastic!
Otakon 2010: Fan Panels

Wildstorm sent us a copy of the Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles prelude book. It is a graphic novel that helps link the Robotech TV series and the Shadow Chronicles movie. Rouge officer T.R. Edwards has allied himself with the Invid. Rick Hunter must catch this traitor before he can use his newly stolen technology to strike back at the Earth Forces. The first thing I noticed is that the book has a really American comic feel to it; being a DC Comics imprint and made for American Robotech fans this is unsurprising. Overall the story was nothing objectionable but also immediately forgettable. It seemed mostly for Robotech fans so I felt like an outsider listening to a conversation between old friends to which I was unaware of many points of the undiscussed history. I clicked a good deal more with the characters from the first part of the Robotech saga partially because those are the strongest characters and partially because that is the part of Robotech I remember the most. T.R. Edwards came off as a mustache twirling villain despite the fact that they did make an honest effort to give him some depth. I enjoyed the mechanical designs more than the human and monster designs which seemed bland to me. It was nice to see them dedicating the book to the memory of Carl Macek pretty prominently on the credits page though.

We went to Vertical Vednesday this week which featured the up and coming (and sure to be great seller) Chi’s Sweet Home as well as a look at pet manga in general. Ed even brought along copies of the book for us to peruse which is in full-color if you aren’t familiar with Chi. There is pet manga that stretches back to Tezuka, I urged him to license his dog manga, but Ed felt it really started to get a foothold in the 80′s along side the beginning of josei. And most pet manga today runs along the josei and seinen lines. It was a quick introduction to a small but popular genre, and you’ll be unsurprised to learn cats are the most popular animal. Near the end we also got to take a look at the second book of Twin Spica which I was infinitely more excited about! Vertical Vednesday’s are a relaxed night with the industry making it well worth a short trip.

In honor of Carl Macek I decided to watch the streamline dub of the Dirty Pair: Project Eden as well. Overall Project Eden is a big-budget 80-minute Dirty Pair episode. Kei and Yuri are called in to investigate a rash of attacks on a mining colony that threaten to spark an intergalactic conflict between two rival governments. They soon discover that the mad scientist Doctor Wattsman is behind it all as part of his latest insane experiments. Along the way they are aided by the handsome thief Carlson D. Carlson who quickly develops a bit of sexual tension with Kei. It’s a fun little story although two things stuck me as unusual. The story felt much more like the novels than the TV series in that Yuri felt much more like Kei’s sidekick than her partner. The other was that Carlson D. Carlson seemed much more capable than the Dirty Pair which is a shame. One of their key selling points is they are always the most able people in the room. Still I had fun and that is what is most important. The old streamline dub was fairly competent. I can’t say I liked Kei and Yuri’s voice anywhere nearly as much as I did in Japanese but after 36 episodes with the Japanese actresses that is sort of the natural reaction. Despite some liberties taken with the dialog the spirit and flow of the Dirty Pair was intact which is the most important thing.

I watched the short, independent anime Meguriau Sekai by studio New Adventure. It is a quiet piece about a girl reflecting on her first love in middle school. It goes on to show how it has shaped her in the future. There is not a lot of talking instead using angles and movement to show the emotions and thoughts. It has a slow, languid feel despite the short 15-minute running time. In this way it reminded me a bit of Makoto Shinkai’s work.

On the advice of the famous/infamous Tim Maughan I decided to check out the OVA series the Mighty Space Miners. Nanbu Ushiwaka is a 12-year-old boy and the first child that was born in space who has survived. He lives on a mining asteroid and is currently trying to get his astronaut’s license. During his exam a military satellite malfunctions setting off a series of disasters around the asteroid. The survivors must find a way to get to safety when the government seems content to leave them to fend for themselves while they clean up their own messes. The cast is pretty enjoyable although we spend the lion’s share of the time with Nanbu. It a fun space adventure with some good action scenes broken up with a little political tension in the second episode. I will warn anyone who is interested in watching this that this series was never finished. Episode two unfortunately ends on a cliff hanger that is never resolved. This OVA has some great animation which I suspect is partially the reason we never got a conclusion. It’s really a shame we never get to see how everything turned out.

I read through Gakuen Alice 4 where the school festival at the academy begins, always a popular and fun part to many a school set series. This book is a little more fluff after the dark and serious happenings in vol. 3 so its a fun break. Though we still learn a few things about Hotaru’s past, much appreciated too, and Sakura is slowing becoming more aware of just who Natsume is. We also finally meet the teacher of the special class. The school festival continues into the next volume so it’ll be interesting to see if anything major happens to Sakura as the finale.

It does not matter if you called her Misa Hayase or Lisa Hayes. What matters is she was an amazing character that stuck with many fans years after they saw her.

There may be a million and one reasons to interview Ed Chavez. We’d go as far as to say he’s one of the leading experts in all aspects of manga in America. He has been a freelance translator for a variety of American manga companies. He does a decent amount of blogging and podcasting at The Mangacast. He has had the extremely enviable but demanding job as an assistant editor for Kodansha in Japan. He has probably met and talked with more manga-ka than normal manga fans could even name. He has nearly an encyclopedia of knowledge about the world of manga and the intricacies of manga theory as well. And finally, he is currently the head of marketing at Vertical Inc. As Vertical has recently announced that they were unveiling a whole new line of manga we thought it a perfect time to talk with Ed. Although Vertical has done several extremely well regarded Tezuka manga and other classics, they recently decided to expand their focus with their latest acquisitions. What emerged was an extremely diverse new selection of titles. We asked Ed about how he is settling into his job, his views on manga, the new titles, and Vertical’s plans for the future.

Reverse Thieves: Just tell us a bit about how you came to Vertical first.

Ed Chavez: Let’s see how long has it been? I officially started on May 1st so that’s 6, a little more than 6, months. But I was in the office as of April 20th of this year [2009]. Vertical as a company did not have a marketing department at the time. There was around a 4 to 6 week period where there was just nobody. Our sales director had also gone back to Japan around the same time. The company as a whole had started to shrink so much that they needed to hire more staff. According to my boss Yani [Mentzas], he was considering me for a little while. We did like an informal interview/dinner at this year’s [2009] New York Comic Con. He kind of scouted me out and tested my proficiency on a number of levels, personality-wise and language and things like that. Some of the things he was already familiar with because of my previous writing, and he knew I had done work at CMX and for other publishers, as well as my work for Kodansha. And so I filled a hole that we had with staff and it also allowed the company an opportunity to fulfill a promise they had been teasing with for a while and thats the expansion of their manga line. They have been discussing it, at least publicly for a year and half, two years, before I joined.

RT: So expanding the manga line wasn’t spontaneous.

EC: Oh, no, not at all. I think they would have done so sooner had they found a licensing partner. Which we still don’t have. And if the economy was a little better. In general we don’t release a lot of long series, Black Jack is an exception, but once you get towards the really popular titles, they tend to be a little longer. So licenses can cost a pretty penny and for a small publisher like us, it’s a little hard if we don’t have the money. And with the economy being what it was last year [2008] and the beginning of this year [2009], it kind of derailed things.

RT: With such a small staff, you seem to be a man of many hats at the company.

EC: This is actually my first marketing position. Right now, I take care of all sorts of things not just of marketing. Like the sales data kind of thing. Random House does our actual sales, they’re our distributor. I have a part in licensing, research and development, office management, publicity, advertising, that social networking thing that has to be done by somebody. I have to find an intern who wants to do that! [laughs] Not interns that know it exists, and do it on their own, but who want to do that for us. They can hang out on the computer all they want! Then I could focus on something else.

EC: I guess I should also say, I do a little bit of editing. I won’t give myself that hat right now. But I do go over everything we release except the cookbooks, oh and the craftbooks which are generally straightforward enough. But I do look over every translation and edit that my editorial staff does. You know, I’m there with a medical dictionary looking up training terms for Black Jack and stuff like that and other little details. I do this with the prose books we release as well. It’s just some additional quality control I guess. I do a little translation work also. That’s about it. Oh, there’s always events and the wrangling of authors when they come to town. It keeps me relatively busy.

RT: Since you’re coming into marketing without any formal background in it, how have you found the position? What kind of expectations did you have?

EC: It’s hard to answer early on. If I had a budget, I think my expectations would be different. I would be doing ads, we wouldn’t just have promotional material concepts, we’d have actual promotional material. [laughs] It’s not that we won’t next year, but the closer we get to the release dates of some of our titles, the more reluctant I am to actually spend that money. My concern is to build-up something ahead of time and then try to get some word of mouth. Now obviously we do send out review copies of our backlist so people can be aware that we are releasing other books. And I make mention of those reviews just so people can know that A Rabbit’s Eyes is cool and that somebody just reviewed The Cage. And everytime someone mentions Buddha, even though it’s sold more than 100,000 units combined, it’s always good to keep the flame going. But it would be nice to see what actual promotion does to a book. In comparison to publicity. And what I mean by that is outside of reviews and word of mouth; not what the public says, but what we would like to have heard. For me, it is a little frustrating because I know we have done that in the past and I haven’t really been asking what the budget was back then, but literally having a zero dollar budget makes things very complicated.

EC: When I go to events and I see that people respond well to what I say, or what the company presents to the public, that’s actually surprised me quite a bit. I don’t think we do anything better, or do anything fancier, or put in any more money or resources than our competitors do, but I like to think that we do more with less in those situations. And in the time I’ve been around, and meeting with public, the response has been really positive but I haven’t necessarily seen that correlate to sales outside of events. At events I can sell out of almost everything we’ve got. And that is good, especially looking at our numbers from past events. But in actual bookstore numbers, or when looking at Amazon or Diamond, who knows. It has improved the situation with our distributor and vendors. We can direct them to the excitement, and we get more requests for books but we are still selling about the same number of books. At least things aren’t going down! Our limitations are pretty heavy.

EC: Coming in with no experience . . . Well, when I was at CMX I was doing a little marketing but just some things online outside my editorial duties. But it’s the non-personal stuff, the stuff that is not about interacting, that I had the least amount of experience with but I feel I have a better understanding of that now. And that is figuring out who your readership is, demographics, where people are buying, and then manipulating that. I have figured that much out, but how to best do that is tricky.

RT: When you say manipulating, you mean capitalizing on a group or expanding it, or both?

EC: Manipulating, I chose that word because it is both positive and negative. It is very much capitalizing on things and marketing is always about an endgame. How you get there isn’t always going to be clean.

RT: What is Vertical’s mission statement for the new manga line?

EC: [laughs] I don’t know if there is one to be honest! When we initially, or really Yani and Vertical at the time, were trying to launch it was to move towards more contemporary titles. They were saying they would like to have a line up of titles that had anime properties on the Cartoon Network, when that network was still doing anime. So that can tell you how long they’ve been thinking about this. Television patterns have changed and the anime industry has changed a lot in this country though. But in general it [the new manga line] is about finding some of the best stuff that’s out there right now. One thing that has changed is because of all the partnerships that have been built up like Square Enix and Yen Press, Mag Garden and Tokyopop, Shueisha and Shogakukan and Viz, Kodansha and Del Rey and now Kodansha USA being here, it’s harder and harder to find new publishers to work with. So to work within that structure we have decided to focus not on necessarily mainstream genres and we’ll continue to do that. That is to say not a focus on your standard shonen and shojo categories. In the future, who knows, we might get those opportunities again. We’ve had shojo and shonen titles before but in general the manga industry out here has not gone outside of those two too much. So we feel we have a wide open playing field when it comes to seinen and josei and maybe even some experimental or alternative titles and even some titles people might consider to be adult. There are a number of things we are considering. We aren’t going to be limited to the classical titles, we’ll still be releasing them, but what we are tying to find are good titles, challenging titles, titles that are analogous to what we do with our prose.

RT: What’s your personal philosophy when it comes to manga, and how does it overlap with the company’s?

EC: Uh, whoa! [laughs] For me manga is, outside of film, it’s possibly one of the more challenging and more fulfilling forms of media out there. The only reason I can say that is because with a film you have directors, producers, cinematographers, casting crews, actors, scripts writers– There all these jobs that need to be put in to make a good movie. In a manga it is similar, you may not have the same big production crew, though if you are working on a weekly comic you’ll have assistants, but essentially you and your editor are the director and producer, you’re doing storyboards, you’re inking, and penciling, you’re making characters, writing dialog, there is even cinematography and all that to manga in many ways. The only thing there isn’t is a music score or something like that. As far as entertainment is concerned in many ways for me it is superior because it is portable, too. Just pick up a title and you have entertainment for the next 15 minutes to an hour and you do it almost anywhere as long as you have light. It’s generally affordable and no matter what the snobs out there say, it is disposable. If it offends you, you can throw it away. That’s not something you can do with TV or in a movie theater, yeah you can walk out, but you can actually throw it [manga] away. You can express your distaste that way. That functionality is really cool.

EC: And there is also the sub-culture element to it, it covers so many genres; anything can be a manga. There are guides to physics now and looking at certain blogs you will run into guides to anal masturbation! Or you know you can go to doujinshi, which I love, independent self-published comics that has its own world. The freedom of expression makes me feel there is a reason to live in a first world country I guess. And in manga these are generally stories about individuals, characters, and I think it psychologically makes people have hope. There are a lot of times in media where people are removed from the storytelling quite a bit, you are just looking at things from an omnipresent perspective and you aren’t necessarily supposed to affiliate yourself with certain characters. But in manga that’s not the case because narrative isn’t as important as character development. So there’s always that interesting dynamic between cast and reader. I think it’s expressed even more intimately in doujinshi. But I think this is also what separates manga from other comics as well because in Western comics you’re totally just an observer. In manga you’re a part of the universe Lum could easily destroy if she wanted to. You could be part of the human race that is struggling to take back the earth. Or you could just be one of those random kids that gets hit by a car that Black Jack meets and puts back together! [laughs] Manga does all that.

EC: And I think Vertical understands that when it comes to Japanese media, manga is the pinnacle. There is a reason why you have so many magazines, so many genres, so many stories covering everything in comics. There are people who will only read those stories in that format, only experiences those stories in that format. They see it on TV they won’t appreciate it the same way and they can’t expect to see certain stories at all in movie theaters. While you can have your physics book, it might not be as fun without the moe characters and art. Vertical isn’t covering everything yet and I don’t know if we will end up covering everything in the future but we already cover quite a bit: sex ed, medical drama, post apocalyptic sci-fi, quasi-biography of religious figures…We have pet manga coming soon, and then there is the space academy comic! [laughs] And that all fits in with our catalog; it’s eclectic. We try to give people a little taste of J-pop in a different way.

RT: Do you feel that Vertical being such a strong translator of prose gives a different feel to the manga line?

EC: Yeah, we’re lucky to have good editors and good translators. I mean how often do you have a PhD candidate in comparative literature edits all of your books who is also a Japanese native. He basically knows both languages inside and out. He analyzes English for fun! [laughs] So we look at all our work a little different. When we make mistakes we take it really seriously. With prose it’s a priority so when we transfer that same amount of background to manga which has so much less text, we make sure that everything is right. But on top of that, there is more to the translation process than making sure the Japanese and English are somewhat consistent. There is also making sure dialogue fits in bubbles and using certain fonts. One thing people may not notice too much in our manga but we don’t change font size too much as far as dialogue is concerned. What that means is basically we are having to rewrite translations to fit the bubbles. Where you might see our competitors cram things, yeah it would be great to make sure there are an equal number of words in Japanese and English, but sometimes you can say the same thing with less. And having people in the office who have that grasp of English, their minds are thesauruses, and it works for the most part. That is not to say it always works, I have gone back sometimes and decided we were relying too much on the visuals to tell the story. If that’s the case then we’re cheating and I think other publishers do. I’ve heard others say they rely on “intuition.” Seriously? Hearing a word like that scares me. To me that tells me they don’t trust their translators or their rewriters. If you need intuition for this one section, how can you be confident with the rest of the book? It’s not uncommon for us to rewrite 75% of a translation. That doesn’t mean the translation is wrong, it has to convey the spirit of the piece and read well. We actually try to make paragraphs and rework the structure. To do that with manga, because its like one line and one line, it ends up looking like poetry but we still try to get that type of feel. When someone is saying something, you have to get the right type of response for that scene. You can’t just translate things literally because all of a sudden the motion, flow, and mood can be distorted.

RT: Going along with that, doesn’t the average Japanese manga reader read a chapter in just a couple of minutes?

EC: Yeah, it is actually averaged out by like a train stop so it’s around 4 minutes! [laughs] The visuals take you to the sound effects that take you to the faces that take you to the words and to where the eye needs to be on the next panel. It tells you where to go so there is an active structure to paneling. But that’s going into more manga theory. The better translators of manga understand not to disrupt that flow as a translation needs to maintain that same type of motion. We try very often to retain that pacing.

RT: Why did you pick the titles that you did and what do you think their greatest strengths are?

EC: In the case of Chi’s Sweet Home, this is going to sound like a joke but it was first and foremost to please my girlfriend. That sounds ridiculous but there is a reason why I wanted to do that outside of wanting to have a nice family life. I realized that anybody could appreciate that story. My girlfriend doesn’t read manga, she doesn’t watch anime normally, and I didn’t introduce her to Chi’s Sweet Home or have copies of the book in the house. There were no posters or plushies, nothing. She was entirely introduced to it on her own on the internet and not through a scanlation site, she saw images on some Flickr craft page. And after doing a little research on Google and Wiki all of a sudden I was translating chapters for her and buying each new copy of Morning magazine just to satiate her. And I thought if my girlfriend could have that type of feeling, and the same could be said about all these thousands of other people, when Chi wasn’t translated, the anime wasn’t on Crunchyroll at the time . . . then there has to be some innate broad appeal. When I was working at Morning and on my way out, I spoke with the editor of Chi and I basically told her that in my new job if I have the opportunity to handle the licenses then this would be one of the properties I would want to launch with. And I thought in our case we needed to find a title with an X-factor, something that did not say Tezuka, did not say manga, did not even say Japan. Yeah, Chi is set in Japan, the Yamadas are still going to be called the Yamadas, Kohei is still going to be called Kohei, but Chi could be the next Garfield or Snoopy. My point is I don’t want this to be Japanese. That is not going to sound right to fans but my objective is to try to get as many people to read Chi [as I can]. If you don’t want to share this title with anybody outside the fandom, I feel a little sorry, because media should be shared with people.

EC: Peepo Choo is just a unique title to begin with. How often do you have a western artist working in Japan . . . getting published. It wasn’t my first choice, I would have liked to have done it after our manga catalog was fleshed out. But Yani liked Peepo Choo from the beginning and it is a very, very Vertical title. It’s got violence, sex, comedy, culture clash, real good art, and the other good thing about it is that it’s on the heels of when it’s coming out in Japan. The people who pick it up will love Peepo Choo but a lot of people won’t know what it is. That will be even sadder because all of a sudden you will miss out on a crazy good comic. It’s a little disappointing that it’s only going to be 3 volumes. We just found that out, as it was originally going to be 5. But Felipe is going to move on to a new title for Morning and we hope his new project will be an even bigger success.

EC: Twin Spica is probably the best narrative of the four. I’m shocked it wasn’t licensed before. This is another title I was unsure of at first though. It’s long, it’s seinen but reads more like a shojo title; the character designs aren’t seinen. The main characters are a bunch of girls in high school, and there’s no romance. It’s sci-fi but has very little actual deep, deep sci-fi to it; instead, it’s more slice-of-life with heavy character development and tons of drama. But those characters, you feel for them right from the start. I think people are going to be really surprised by Twin Spica, I just hope they are willing to stick it out for 16 volumes. It’s one long-term story that takes its time building up a narrative and the personalities of its sweet young cast. And it’s so touching it forces you to want to follow these kids. After reading the whole series I knew we couldn’t pass on it.

EC: 7 Billion Needles caught me mainly for its art. Well, I didn’t like the monster designs, but after reading the original novel written in 1948, the monster designs made sense. I was able to accept those details. What was interesting was having this aloof highschool girl always wearing headphones basically shutting herself out from the rest of the world, grow up naturally to become this really unique heroine. She’s one in a billion trying to find the thing that came from outer space. She’s not doing this to save mankind, she’s not doing this just because she’s got super powers now, she would actually rather just listen to her iPod and take long baths, but she is doing this because she has friends and she wants to make sure they’re not hurt by whatever is out there. She doesn’t have many of them but the two or three that she feels she can trust, the ones she is connected to—because she doesn’t have a real family . . . she wants to maintain those connections. There is some type of metaphor there, she has this thing in her so she’s never alone, but there are other reasons for people to fight, right? It’s planned to be 4 volumes. Things are moving so well right now, and it’s really well-paced out, so you get to see so much of her background as the action picks up. Her world doesn’t expand much throughout the series . . . I think there are like a total of 10 characters including the supporting cast, so it’s an intimate sci-fi title. You’re in the character’s brain. You’re trying to solve the mystery, like old classic sci-fi, and when you do get to those action scenes the tension builds up but never to the point that you feel that is the climax, you know there is more. And knowing it is going to be relatively short, I think it’s building up just right where people are going to be really satisfied.

RT: With Chi you are really pushing for a larger audience, are you worried about alienating manga fans?

EC: I don’t care. I’m sure it will. Look, people need to get over certain things. If you’re censoring a book, renaming characters, taking out pages . . . those are problems. What we’re doing here is with the permission of the author, making it more accessible to more people. Some people can’t read right to left, it’s not that they can’t read they just don’t understand it. This is the optimum solution for that. Will that alienate people? Yeah, sure. But I don’t think there will be enough for me to care. And I think that eventually people can focus their angst and frustration on other things. We’ll get to the point where we won’t have to do flipping anymore because people will have a better level of comprehension and appreciation. But right now it is my feeling that the people that complain the most are doing the least for this form of media, actually undermining it.

EC: What makes me feel more at ease with our decisions is that after we gave our treatment to Konami Kanata, she liked it so much that she ended up giving us rights that she didn’t give anybody else. The author wants it to be done this way now.

RT: Chi is in color, what are the challenges in releasing a color manga and will Chi be printing overseas?

EC: It’s a pain in the ass. Paper stock is different, the color is also different. We typically use 3 colors plus black, in Japan there are sometimes 4: red, yellow, blue, and a hyper color . . . that makes colors pop. Paper is different from printer to printer. We’ve already talked with with the Japanese printer for Chi. They do have offices in the U.S., they have access to those same color files so we’re going to see what is going to be financially best for that title. For us it is going to be tricky because all the sound effects are also in color and we have to retouch them . . . so that’s going to take more time than usual. Production for that is going to start much sooner than it does for any of our other manga. If we have time we’d like to print it in Japan. The frustrating thing about that is that it adds about a month to the lead time so we’ll need to have everything done by March. If not it will be printed in the U.S. by the Japanese printer just using American paper stock.

RT: What will the size of the new manga line be and what is going to be the release schedule? And what are the prices?

EC: They will all be to Japanese specs, so paper size B6 which isn’t available normally in the U.S. This is more analogous to our paperback novels which are also printed in Japanese size. Twin Spica comes out in May and a new volume will be available every other month . . . so you’ll get 4 volumes in 2010. Chi starts the first week of June and is on the same pace through the year, so 4 volumes in 2010. Then starting in 2011 there will be a new volume in February and then we catch up with Japan. This series comes out twice a year in Japan so when we get to volume 6, we’ll be spreading it out to one every four months. I want to keep Chi fresh on people’s minds. In the case of Peepo Choo, . . . we’ve changed the schedule so volume 1 comes out on July 13th a week before [San Diego] Comic Con where he [Felipe Smith] will hopefully be doing a signing and have a table there. Volume 2 comes out in September, then volume 3 is tentatively scheduled for December. Also volume 1 is going to be kind of wide because they are adding a few extra chapters to it. 7 Billion Needs comes out every 3 months starting in August. Twin Spica and Seven-Billion Needles are going to be $10.95 . . . Peepo Choo is 18 up and will be $12.95 and in the case of Chi, it’s going to be $13.95 but don’t forget it’s color and it’s 160/170 or so pages. It’s funny when I look at the Japanese price I realized I should be charging more! [laughs]

RT: With two sci-fi titles on your initial lineup are you hoping for a resurgence of the genre? And will there be any attempts to market them to the traditional sci-fi audience?

EC: I don’t think that’s really our hope. To be honest about that, when I had my very first meeting with our sales reps at Random House, and this was jut a one-on-one meeting, they were kind of feeling me out and what I wanted to do with our catalog. They also let me know what they were doing with some of their other clients and also told us what was selling well. They told us to be very careful about our titles . . . they [manga] are doing okay, but they aren’t the hot topic anymore. But they did say that sci-fi, not sci-fi manga, but sci-fi itself was a resurging genre. And I kept that in mind. I like sci-fi, I appreciate it a lot, and knowing that Random House might be a little more responsive . . . it made it a little easier for us to choose these titles. But even with that in mind, it was a little coincidental that we picked these titles, they were just some of our better options at the time.

EC: With 7 Billion Needles, if I have the money, I will be looking to put ads in traditional sci-fi magazines. Twin Spica we actually want to send copies to the aeronautics industry to see if we can get astronauts and people like that to send reviews. I’m not sure what the potential is for that but we’ll definitely push it that way. The Japanese version of NASA, the JAXA, actually endorsed the series and were co-producers of the live action series so there is some type of tie-in that way. Whether that will correlate to the States I’m not sure. At the very least we’ll try to get that angle in there. The promotional material that we’ve done is heavy focus on rocketships, stars, and skies so that’s definitely something we want to make known.

RT: What about future titles, how many do you think you’ll be picking up in the near future?

EC: Hopefully we’ll have one more manga series for 2011 and I can’t discuss it yet. There will be another new manga title in the fall of 2010 too which we’ll be announcing hopefully in a couple months. In 2010, we have these four titles to launch this kind of MANGA 2.0 thing. Before that we’ll see reprints of Ode to Kirihito and MW in new formats. MW is going to come in a paperback and Ode to Kirihito is going to come in two volumes instead of the big omnibus. Hopefully we’ll get another Tezuka title for October 2010. And we might squeeze in a one-shot manga for December 2010. So that’s up to six new titles for 2010. In 2011, Twin Spica’s going to continue and so will Black Jack. Black Jack will end at the end of 2011, but Twin Spica comes to an end in 2012, I think. I don’t know if we’ll be around! [laughs] So for 2011, I should have, if everything goes well, one new manga series for the spring and I should have two new manga for summer, and might have some more classic shojo book for the fall. Hopefully by the end of 2011, we’ll debut a new Tezuka series. Expect for the foreseeable future starting in May two volumes of manga a month. That’s not bad considering right now it’s one volume of manga every other month. It’s not VIZ or Tokyopop and don’t expect us to be either one any time soon or ever.

Bonus -

RT: How are the cookbooks doing?

EC: The cookbooks are actually doing very well. I won’t give you the numbers, but they sell as well as our best-selling manga. [laughs] I’m not sure what that says overall but that makes me very happy! It’s a revenue stream that my bosses thought was intriguing but I don’t think they had this type of expectation for it because our print runs were less than our manga. But in the case of Bento Love, Noodle Comfort, Donburi also, the demand has been very high. With Bento I was interviewed for TV and I think more people overseas have seen it than in the States, actually I think it was on CNN here. We are getting requests for the book everywhere, we’re desperately waiting for new stock to come in as we had to have it go to reprint again. It’s one of highest ranked Japanese cookbook titles on Amazon; it’s in the top 10,000. And that’s when they are waiting for more stock!

EC: The tricky thing about the cookbooks is finding the right market for them, not the right audience, but the right place to sell them. This was actually a mistake on our part because the books are so thin and when you look at them on the shelves with all the hardcovers that are commonplace with cookbooks, you can’t even see them on shelves. That’s not to say they aren’t selling in bookstores, but the places they are selling like crazy are portals on the web like Amazon.

Well done serial adventures like Flash Gordan and the Lone Ranger work best if they are addictive. They should engage the audience in a way that even after giving you some amount of resolution keeps you coming back again and again. Guin Saga is no exception to this rule, the first book tells a complete story but it is a very small piece in the grandiose epic of Guin discovering who he is, what he was meant to do, and being totally awesome while he does it. The next four books keeps up the constant forward momentum of Guin and his companions in the next leg of the journey. When you finish one book you will often be surprised how quickly you find yourself wanting to move on to the next.

Once I got my hands on the rest of the Guin books released from Vertical, it was a short time before I was finished and wanting more. We decided to review the rest of the Marches Episode of Guin together because a lot that is going on is very transitional especially in the second and third installments. This is by no means a complaint or a determent to the series, it is just a fact in a multiple volume story that some books will fall into this section of moving the story along without having any huge incidents. However, Kaoru Kurimoto is able to keep you on your toes the entire time with a rapid pace and varying points of view.

Like an good serial adventure we ended with our heroes in mortal peril (i.e. jumping into the churning waters of the deadly Kes River) after escaping the castle of the Black Count. They obviously survive the fall and soon find themselves with Istavan Spellsword running into the twisted wasteland known as Nospherus. Guin and company soon find themselves between the monstrous denizens of Nospherus and a large contingent of Mongauli soldiers led by the beautiful Lady Amnelis. Guin must find a way to marshal the inhabitants of Nospherus to drive off the army intent on killing them all, taking the twins of Parros, and annexing the wastelands. Guin is outnumbered and outgunned but he’s Guin, fate would not have it any other way.

It becomes quite clear as our band of heroes makes their escape from the Monguali army that Nospherus is a hellish place. However, as they start to understand it, they begin to use it to their distinct advantage with the help of the Sem barbarian tribes. Even though Guin is on the side of the Sem (and really all the inhabitants of Nospherus) it is always an uphill battle that requires cunning, supreme strategy, and a bit of fate’s guidance. The final battle still had a lot of surprises in store and while the overall outcome was what I expected, getting there and what was sacrificed was not. Once again the storytelling of Guin Saga really shines when it can lead you to understand characters but not predict the entire story to follow.

These books clearly confirm that the series is called Guin Saga for a reason: Guin gets the most screen time and the most character development. In the first book we learned that Guin was more than just a simple power brawler, he was a warrior with a brain. In these books we discover that Guin is truly a jack of all trades. We get Guin the survivalist, Guin the strategist, Guin the orator, Guin the diplomat, and Guin the leader. All of these skills seem to come naturally to Guin which often seems to worry him because he is never sure if they are his old memories coming to the surface or memories someone planted in his head for some sinister purpose. Guin grows into his role as a warrior king as the series goes on further showing the series resemblance to Conan.

Oh Guin, how you never fail to cause incredible feats that are nothing short of godly. In these books we don’t get much closer to uncovering who exactly Guin is or what is guiding him along the way. And he is being guided to some great destiny, that much is clear. This is not used to let anything at all happen (though much happens), Guin still has to get there, to overcome, and to think on his feet but along the way he is pushed by a greater force. Guin’s leadership skills start to come through in these books, even if not everyone is happy about it or believes in him. He also starts to get more comfortable in his situation and sometimes let’s it take him into the unknown. I’m not so sure we got a lot more personality development in these books, but Guin continues to impress, it’s almost unbelievable how Kurimoto is able to continually make him an even more compelling figure with each new step taken.

Rinda and Remus don’t do a great deal in these books, they are mostly there for Istavan and Guin to either protect or rescue most of the time. They are clearly going to be more important when they get back to more civilized lands but that is not the current situation. Istavan gets the lion share of the character development in these four books which is helped along by us hardly seeing him in the first installment. Istavan if it was not already clear is a charming and self-centered rouge much like Han Solo. And much like Han Solo he starts off only looking out for number one and gets ready to flee whenever the going gets tough but rather quickly he is attracted to Rinda and also realizes that she might be a key part to his destiny. This leads to some major flirting/fighting between Istavan and Rinda sealing their Han and Leia like relationship. As the books go on Istavan does not become a selfless martyr but he does slowly show he is willing to put himself on the line for his comrades.

Istavan easily becomes the character to watch, after Guin, as this epic continues. Just as Guin, Istavan has some amount of divine destiny guiding his way. When combining this with his cocky personality and his deep belief in fate, he gets himself in to many scrapes and close calls only to be pulled back. So with Istavan and Guin around, there is no telling what might occur which makes for plenty of nail-biting action which keeps the adrenaline rising and the other characters on constant edge. Rinda finds herself often moving between complete unfailing belief in Guin and a desperate need to somehow carve a way out of Nospherus and survive. Thrown in the thick of this is an obvious attraction to Istavan whom she also wishes to believe in. Rinda seems to change little in these books, but that could be because she is much less seen here. Even Remus sees a bit more growth in these books while also back peddling once and again. However, for the most part he is showing his attention to detail and the understanding of battle even if he isn’t in the fray. Once again I find that I am indeed curious the most about where Remus’s future lies because it seems to fraught with possibilities.

The biggest addition to the cast is Lady Amnelis who is the young general of the Elite White Knights of Mongaul. She has a cold and distant beauty that for various reasons draws all of her subordinates to her; some want to protect her while others wish to win her favor. She has several goals in Nospherus including clearing a path in Nospherus, claiming a powerful artifact, and capturing the twins and Guin. As she realizes Guin is the main obstacle between her and her goals, she becomes more and more obsessed with him. In turn her subordinates also become obsessed with defeating Guin with Astrias more than anyone else as he hopes he will win Lady Amnelis favor and maybe even her love. We get a lot of looks into what the armies large number of soldiers are thinking and doing even if they are against our protagonists. We seem them move through confidence when they come into Nospherus to truly doubting their superiors and their mission as Guin and the horrible conditions in Nospherus wear down on them. It gives a little humanity to those who would otherwise be faceless soldiers for Guin and company to mow down.

It’s worth noting that while the opposing side gets plenty of character studies and even sympathy, that isn’t really seen for the Sem. Perhaps it is unnecessary since we will inevitably root for Guin’s side. This is a nice contrast actually since many of the soldiers aren’t inherently bad, which also came across in the first book. This is no truer than when we start to learn about Marus, captain of the Blue Knights. His ultimate fate and who puts him there are some standout moments that make the viewer rethink things as well as some of the characters. In the case of Lady Amnelis I’m not sure what we are supposed to think. We are constantly being told how amazingly beautiful she is and how much respect she is given as a general but she is incredibly ineffectual in these books. This may just be a case of being good when not facing Guin who is stupendous! Amnelis’s retinue garners plenty of heartfelt struggle for the reader, but she herself has less of an effect. New characters are added to this series slowly but consistently and sometimes you don’t even realize what their importance will be.

Book five is a good stopping point but with the words “for now” inserted on to the end of that statement. Sure Guin has defeated the Mongaul soldiers but there are still dozen of plot threads unresolved, numerous new allies as well as many new enemies have joined the fray, and while he is closer to finding out who he is and getting the twins to their relatives, he is also no where near close to accomplishing either. If Guin was doing blockbuster numbers like it does in Japan this would be fine. We would all just eagerly await the next book and the further adventures of our leopard-headed hero but it seems for the time being this is all the Guin we are going to get. And that is a crying shame becuase Guin is one of the best adventure fantasy series on the market, bar none. As LeVar Burton used to say, “But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

What more is there to say about Guin Saga? Every moment is entertaining and it even has politics and moral dilemmas thrown in making it not just any bloody pulp fantasy. If you enjoy fantasy at all, there is no reason not to pick up these novels. These installments in Guin’s ongoing journey are full of boundless adventure, thrilling drama, and intense violence. I weep thinking that Guin Saga has a very low chance of continuing to see an English release.

Top 5 favorite fantasy anime:
5. Claymore
4. Slayers
3. Guin Saga
2. Berserk
1. Record of Lodoss War

At first Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! might seem like a odd title for us to be reviewing but it is on target for several reasons. The first and foremost is the author: Toshio Okada. Okada is one of the co-founders and the former president of Studio Gainax. He also holds the title of OtaKing or King of Otaku. Okada has had such a huge impact on the Japanese anime community as both a person who has contributed to through projects he has worked on and as commentator and scholar of otaku culture. Secondly, it is an interesting piece of Japanese culture and literature outside of its context in the otaku world. Lastly, Sayonara, Mr. Fatty is just very good. It is more than just a diet book; it is a book that shares with you a method of approaching life.

My interest in this book was my many layered curiosity more than anything else. The memoir aspect was easily the most attractive feature of this self-help book. Like our Otaku Diaries project may suggest, we have a interest in the underlying personalities, habits, and thoughts of geeks. And Toshio Okada is considered one of the most famous geeks in Japan! The book sounded like a positive look at losing weight and not changing who you actually are. A person’s personal philosophy and story should make you think or consider things that you might not have otherwise. Also as an ex-overweight geek I was just plain curious what his method was. So with all directions pointed to picking up this book, I sped through it in a mere day.

Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! is one third personal story, one third diet book, and one third philosophy. He starts the book telling the reader who he is, how he slowly became overweight, and what in his life changed to make him commitment to losing weight. He then moves on to explain the general philosophy of his diet method and how is compares to other diets. He also goes into the many benefits of losing weight to help encourage the reader. The next few chapters are the recording diet, as he calls it, itself. He explains how you start by simply writing down what you eat without consciously modifying your diet in the least. However, you slowly but naturally modify what you eat almost unconsciously by recording. All along the way Okada gives stories from his own experience of developing the diet. He gives us the hows and whys of each step of the program with bits or encouragement and advice from his triumphant struggles.

One of the key elements to this book is that Okada is a geek, plain and simple, and he didn’t stop being a geek in order to lose weight. In other words, he didn’t radically change his lifestyle to do this diet. He says quite plainly, he hates physical exercise but he likes to use his brain, so instead of trying (and most likely failing) to fight that impulse he found a way to use it to his advantage. Okada explores his own mindset and in doing so appeals to those who aren’t the athletic type or even the type with a strong will. He often talks about his own lack of willpower as being the most significant factor in keeping him from successfully staying on a diet. So with pen and paper in hand he set out to see just why he weighed so much and thus an unknown destination stretched out before him.

Socrates once said that, “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” In a way the whole goal of the book is to change your mindset into the first type instead of the second type while still enjoying food. You are changing your way of thinking more than changing your way of eating. Okada noticed the more he looked at what ate and then when and why he ate it the more he realized it was his attitude toward food that was making him overweight. Of course the only way to change his habits was to confront them head on. This led him to examine them in detail. After that point it was a matter of slowly changing his attitude when he was aware of what exactly he was doing wrong. He slowly changed his mindset and habits towards only eating when he had to but enjoying those meals to the fullest.

Okada’s anecdotes are amusing in the same way they are encouraging. He often remarks on how popular you will be because everyone will want to know the story of just how you lost all that weight! As Okada delves further and further into the recording diet we see his awareness increase. It becomes especially fascinating to see him theorize about the differing mindsets between people extremely overweight and those who aren’t. According to Okada he would eat anytime he wasn’t completely full and never wait for the body to say, “I’m hungry!” He thinks perhaps others have acted as he did and have stopped listening to their bodies. Of course, he makes it very clear these are only pet theories. The bits of wisdom shared in the book will seem so simple that you must have known it all along but Okada makes you aware of it.

So, how useful is this book to the average person who is going to pick it up as a diet book? Clearly no diet will work for everyone. For one thing, no matter how effective or easy a diet is, it requires an honest desire to change your life. Even a diet as simple as the recording diet will not be effective if you are not willing to put in the commitment necessary. The changes are gradual and minuscule but the willpower must there in the first place. That being said, I see no real reason for anyone interesting in losing weight to not giving it a try. The Recording Diet does not require you to starve yourself, not eat certain types of food, eat only certain types of food, or modify how you live your life in any inconvenient manner. If you follow the procedures correctly you will modify your own eating habits slowly but surely and begin to slim down.

His method goes through many sub-stages before it reaches it full height and after that comes self-awareness. So much of it that you are no longer on a diet you are just living. Okada’s approach is universal and infectious. He never comes off as preachy or better than the reader because he isn’t. Okada shares with us a simple story and how we use it in the rest of our lives is up to us. I can’t say it’s the best diet book I’ve ever read because I’ve never read any others. However, there was never one that sounded like Sayonara, Mr. Fatty!

The classic pulp fantasy adventures involve manly men with rippling muscles fighting their way through hordes of monsters to survive and carve out a place of power in a chaotic and brutal world. The first name you usually think of in the west in this genre is Conan the Barbarian. The first Conan movie is what helped Arnold Schwarzenegger become a movie star. In Japan when people think of sword and sorcery the first name that jumps to mind is Guin. There are currently over 120 books in the series with no sign of stopping. In fact Guin Saga is the longest continuing single-writer’s work in the world. There is also a manga series of side stories and an anime based on the novels. Kaoru Kurimoto is also a well respected mystery novelist in addition to writing about Guin. Even Issac Asimov would be impressed. The Guin series is clearly influenced by writers like Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock and Fritz Leiber but she makes a fantasy world and characters that are her own.

I am always curious about works that have influenced creative minds across the board. This is especially true when I have only recently heard of a work that has been decades in the making and continues on (the 126th book was published just last month!). Though it seems quite suddenly Guin Saga has stepped into my line of vision not only thanks to Vertical’s publication of the first few novels (and some subsequent manga) in the series but as it has just begun an anime TV series run in Japan. Also a great love for both fantasy and adventure runs in my veins. Beyond so many other genres, these types of stories begin in an unfamiliar, mysterious world where the reader must not only discover the secrets of each character on the journey but also explore an unknown setting. So it was with barely restrained curiosity and excitement that I took up the first Guin novel.

After the Mongaul army has taken the capital of the Kingdom of Parros, the remaining twin heirs to the throne, Rinda and Remus, flee for their lives. During their attempt to escape they are accidentally teleported into enemy territory. When they are captured by enemy soldiers a man in a leopard mask named Guin single-handedly saves them. It turns out that Guin has amnesia and cannot remove the leopard mask. The three of them must band together not only to escape the deadly Marches they found themselves in but to escape the grasp of the tainted Black Count Vanon and Stafolos Keep.

Adventures can start many ways. Some may begin in a sleepy village or with an ordinary boy. Guin Saga laughs at that and fast-forwards you to where the action truly beings. This is easily one of the best hooks of the book: our narrator dumps us into the middle of the Marches only moments before Guin takes down an entire band of trained soldiers and then collapses. And this is Guin on an off day as he has only just awoken to his clouded memory and a leopard head quite unwilling to come off of his own head. These moments of intensity and calm come in quick succession like an enjoyable rollercoaster ride. Kurimoto also knows when and where to sprinkle the details of the world giving the viewer just enough to be able to fill in the surroundings with their imaginations. There are many scrapes in the next 200 pages and the body/ghoul/monster/thing count is high and bloody. However, the book is hardly a string of violent incidents. As we get more and more pieces to the puzzle, it becomes increasingly clear that this world is a complicated place.

Guin starts as a blank slate to himself and to the reader. We quickly learn that he is an amazing fighter and that he still has a decent amount of knowledge about various things not related to himself. The only personal memories he has are his name and the word Aurra. But if Aurra is a person, place, or thing is unknown. While amnesia can often be used as a tool to circumvent having character development, I applaud Kaoru Kurimoto for slowly showing us who Guin is as he in turn learns it as well. The most important thing we learn is that Guin is manly, bad-arse dude. We get several descriptions of how amazing Guin’s physique is, but more importantly every fight is clear cut proof that he is head and shoulders above anyone else in terms of ability. But Guin is more than a muscle bound monster, he has a clear grasp of strategy and diplomacy. Guin is not a talkative person but he will be the leader or take orders as the situation demands. We get a good insight into his thought processes to see why he does what he does.

Guin is a hypnotic, stunning character that demands your attention from the prologue to every scene he appears in (of which are many, imagine that). Since he starts with just a little more knowledge about what is going on around him as the reader does, the mysteries of the world are slowly revealed to us. Though this could make for some awkward dialogue of people spouting off long monologues of explanations, it is kept to a minimum. People’s reactions to his appearance are just as important as the descriptions we get. He is constantly being compared to a God. And you get the distinct impression that women are going to be falling in love with him left and right as the series continues. As for his great skill in battle, we learn quickly that it is more on instinct; it’s as if he has done nothing but train to fight his whole life to survive the fiercest foes. Since we know only as much as Guin does, our guess is as good as his about where these abilities come from and what effects the leopard head has on them.

Rinda and Remus are interesting as a pair as well as individually. Both twins have led an extremely sheltered existence. Rinda is obviously the stronger of the two. She is the one who always takes charge and constantly shows the dignity, elegance, and cunning of a proper member of royalty. She steps up to the plate when necessary, shows a good grasp of most situations, and has a great deal of adaptability and resilience. She is scared and shaken when appropriate but she never lets it stop her from doing what she can do. Since Rinda is not only a strong soul but also has the gift of prophecy, Remus seems to have grown dependent on Rinda while being slightly resentful at the same time. Remus starts extremely passive and more of a hindrance than anything. He seems mostly there to complain, get Rinda in trouble, and be rescued. As the book goes on we see several moments were it is clear that Remus has potential to grow and be stronger. When he is forced to step out of his sister’s shadow, he has resolve and strength he has just never had any reason to exercise it before. He does not unrealistically transform from a crybaby to a man but we do see him begin to change slowly but surely.

Rinda and Remus start from opposite corners, one pretending not to be scared and the other showing it like a second skin. They have both been raised as royalty but have gotten different things out of it. Rinda gaining the inflated ego but also the stature appropriate to a woman of her standing and Remus being left with the pampered softness of never having to fend for oneself. Rinda often postures and it is easy to see why Remus has become the submissive twin. This becomes especially clear when you find that the two have never been further than a room’s length away from each other since birth. The eventual, though short, separation of them during the course of the book breaths a bit of life into Remus. I am curious to see how their relationship changes and whether it grows or deteriorates as the journey continues. Their bond with Guin is remarkably quick and is even commented on by Remus. It is sure that something is pulling all three of these fates in the same direction.

The Black Count Vanon is a vile and nasty man in every respect. He is easy to hate while not being comically villainous. Everything from his intimidating and monstrous appearance to his callous and vicious nature make him an excellent first antagonist for Guin. We are also introduced to Istavan Spellsword who will surely cross paths with Guin again. Istavan is a charming and clever mercenary. He seems to be the ultimate survivor and sort of a Han Solo-type charming rouge. His fate is unknown at the end of the book, but given the type of person he is, he is sure to appear again. Rinda also meets a sentient monkey girl named Suni. Although they both cannot speak the others’ language they quickly become friends and help each other throughout the course of the book. She too seems poised to become a reoccurring character. Orro of Torus is another notable member of the cast. Although we hardly see him and we never get a detailed description of him, Kurimoto easily paints a picture of the type of man he is by his actions and words.

Our nefarious villain Count Vanon I’ll agree isn’t comically evil, but he does come off as a pretty typical foil to our heroes. However, everything in Guin Saga has a familiar yet surprising feel to it and Count Vanon is no exception. Some of Kurimoto’s best descriptions come along with him including the way he smells and the way he moves. He is easily and hideously memorable. Also worth mentioning is the soldier Orro of Torus who, in a moment of ardor, aids Guin at a critical point. He plays a small part in this book, but he brings a greater point to light: the Mongauli are not just a race of evil-doers. People have motivations and things they wish to protect on all sides of the conflicts that are erupting. There is more at work here which establishes the splashes of grey in this world Kurimoto has created. While the side cast has certain aspects that make them sure to appear again, there is no telling when it will be. I can imagine people we see now showing up again dozens of books later just as easily as in the next chapter. The series seems aimed for a very large and varied cast to come.

One of the questions that springs to mind is if it’s worth reading the novel if you’ve seen the anime. I feel that while the anime is a good adaption, they are different enough that having experienced one does not prevent you from enjoying the other. The general plot, pacing, characterization, and spirit is the same but the anime plays around with the details. So reading the novels is still a distinct experience. There are excellent companion pieces to each other.

Because of the series’ immense library you might be hesitant to dive in, but nothing could be more of a folly. Guin Saga’s intensity, its pace, and its characters move you along their path so effortlessly that you are in the throws of combat or exploring a dark chasm not sitting quietly on the sidelines (so much so that you forget you are on the subway going to work and almost miss your stop!). In a mere 50 pages I knew that I was not going to be able to put this series back on the shelf. So perhaps it is dangerous, not because it is so much to read, but rather because there is no way you won’t want to read it all if they follow in the stride of this first installment.

The first book of the Guin Saga is more the first of a five act play than book one an arc. That does not mean it does not have a definite and self contained narrative though. You get a sense that this part of the story is over but if there was never another book you would surely go crazy. This book merely introduces you to the main plot, shows the world that Guin finds himself in, and starts him on his long journey with his new found allies. It is the first step on the journey of 120+ books. This is hardly a bad thing. Like any good series the author keeps you anticipating the next book. You get your fill of action and adventure but still have a hunger for more. Don’t be too surprised if you find yourself rushing to the store to pick up the next four volumes in a hurry.

READ AN EXCERPT

Friday
Del Rey Panel
ImaginAsia Panel

Saturday
The Art of Reviewing Anime Panel
Katsushi Ota Q&A
Kobun Shizuno Q&A
Viz Media Panel
Otaku USA Panel
Unicorn Table Concert

Sunday
Vertical Inc. Panel
State of the Manga Industry
State of the Anime Industry

This was the first anime con in NYC since 2003, but nevertheless I had high hopes for NYAF. They were planning far in advance; they got the Javits Center; the schedule was up almost a month before the convention; and they were advertising. However, this last one was a bit worrisome, NYC is a big place and if everyone in it who likes anime shows up at a con you can expect a freakin’ crowd. Their projected numbers were around 15,000, I am eager to see what the actual was. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t seem that busy. It is not that I want to be squashed between otaku all day but for how big this con seemed like it was going to be, it wasn’t.

Without a doubt, this was definitely a professionally run convention. There were no major schedule changes and everything ran as smooth as silk. Even Otakon at it’s best did not run as smooth as NYAF. I think it could be argued that it ran a little smoother than Anime Expo. I have only gone to Expo once and it was very well run the year I went, 2006, but they still made things a little bit difficult and obtuse. They also had a bunch of schedule changes and mix-ups. So not matter what there is something to be said for professionally run conventions.

Saturday at NYAF, which is always the busiest day at most cons, seemed like a Friday at any other big con. When something like AnimeNEXT gets a crowd like that, it seems fine because they are smaller cons and have smaller expenses. They don’t need as many people to make back their money. Doing anything in Manhattan is expensive. I too wonder if this is the last we shall see of NYAF. First year cons almost always have a low number of attendees, so maybe they will wait and see if this con will grow. If given an chance, I’m sure that this con will grow but it has to be given that chance. According to this, BAAF had 3,500 people during its first year in 2001. Then again, BAAF 2001 was a much smaller affair from what I remember of it. Still, it was a convention that grew in numbers and scope as the years went on. BAAF did occur at another time but it still shows that even in NYC it takes time for a convention to grow. I’m also not really sure what exactly killed BAAF. I have heard several stories but they were more rumors rather than anything close to factual evidence.

Friday started out well for me, I got there around 2:30 since I had silk-screening in the morning. I met up with Kohaku to wander this new experience. The first thing that struck me was how the dealers room was set-up. It was very similar to comic cons and there was a lot of free stuff, which is always a plus. There weren’t too many people so navigation of the area was fairly simple. The entire convention was in a relatively small area but had very wide hallways.

I missed Friday because of work (and the fact that I accidentally FedExed the print out of my ticket to one of our clients). I guess on Monday there was a very confused guy opening up an overnight package. I showed up at around 6:30 to see Narutaki and Kohaku getting out of the convention.

The dealers room was definitely set up like the New York Comic Con when it was at the Javits Center. I don’t remember this convention having more free stuff than any other anime con. But maybe that is because I’m a moody loner that ignores other people where as Narutaki and Kohaku are normal functional human beings. I remember the comic con was pretty packed but things still moved nicely most of the time thanks to the large hallways.

It was also the best day to talk to industry people since there wasn’t a whole ton going on and they weren’t overwhelmed with questions yet. We chatted with Mike Bailiff (I think) from ADV and also Chris Oarr. We also talked with quite a few people over at the newest addition to the manga market, YEN Press. And as per usual, talked with the people from Del Rey as well. Del Rey certainly made a lot of acquisition announcements for the coming year, of which included a light novel of XXXholic and the manga of Gankutsuou.

I’m curious to see what the XXXholic light novel reads like. It was great potential to either be very good or very bad. XXXholic can be very episodic so a random story in the middle is not anything that would be obtrusive. I have not heard anything about the Gankutsuou graphic novel but historically any manga based on an anime is weaker than the original work.

ImaginAsia, I wanted go to to see how the classics were doing. I really wanted them to be going well! And thankfully they are, thanks to the sets being really nice and them being shown on their cable channel. They also have a block of programing that is all Geneon titles, I had to ask what was going to happen to that with the recent news. They said it would remain as is, and they have hopes that Geneon isn’t completely dead yet. I also spoke to them after the panel and asked about Rose of Versailles. I thought I was going to hear the usual about it being expensive, and the creator is problematic. But she told me that the biggest obstacle right now is Riyoko Ikeda wants the manga released first! Well, bring it on people!

Well did they not say that Riyoko Ikeda was not a super crazy lady but she was a super crazy lady who also wants the manga released first. Also Geneon still seems to be in an odd undead limbo between being fully dead and just half dead.

The dealers room, the industry booths, and the artist alley were one big mish-mash. I can’t really find a reason for this, except to possibly just fill the room to make it seem bigger. But after some searching you could find everything you wanted. And of course the dealers room did hold some gems. But this is not really my priority at cons.

I did not buy much this convention most because it was so close to Christmas. I did find it odd that they combined the dealers room and artist alley into one as well. I did pick up a neat Gundam doujinshi where they remade Azumanga Daioh strips with Gundam characters. Any doujinshi with Domon Kasshu and his glowing King of Hearts in a Azumanga strip is worth the price of admission.

The Art of Reviewing Anime panel was rather uneventful, but it did reaffirm my beliefs about the AnswerMan being jaded. I don’t think it’s impossible to work in the industry and still be a fan. Daryl from AWO was there to and it was rather amusing to see him and the AnswerMan saying the completely opposite of the other. But the Katsushi Ota panel was wonderful! Thank you Del Rey for bringing him. He is the editor of Faust which Del Rey announced they would be releasing parts of. It is a light novel anthology series that has illustration accompaniment. This will definitely be an experiment here in the U.S. and I’ve very excited about it. I asked him about digital distribution and he said there was something big coming up later this year that he couldn’t talk about.

Jaded? The tomb of a Chinese Emperor is not as jaded as Zac Bertschy. A noir gumshoe is not as jaded as Zac Bertschy. The fact that he did not light up cigarettes to put them out on members of the audience was somewhat surprising.

Well if nothing else, Katsushi Ota provided me with the highlight of the con. Kinoko Nasu who writes for Type-Moon (games like Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night) also has written for Faust so you know I was at this panel. I like the idea of light novels in general so I was probably going to go anyway, but once I found out they might be announcing some works by Nasu, I was there in a flash. Faust seems pretty interesting. They have a collective mix of authors and artists working on the book. We will only be getting selected parts of the Japanese Fausts but as long as we get Garden of Sinners, DDD, and see their CLAMP artwork I’m happy. I asked Ota what his impressions of Nasu were and he gave me both an amusing story and a definite insight into the man. That was awesome. I also thought that their boxed line of books looked nice.

I am always interested in more light novels being released, since I’ve such a big reader, so this is a dream some true to me. Ota seems to be smart, insightful, and has a desire to bring creative people together into projects. Anthologies haven’t been bigger sellers in the U.S. but I hope this turns that around. It will have short stories and also excerpts from longer works.

At the end Katsushi Ota gave me the first two books of DDD and then took my picture with the books and promised to send the pictures to Nasu himself. WIN! That is the second Japanese creator that now has a picture of me. Without a doubt my favorite part of the convention.

The Guest of Honor was Kobun Shizuno. At first Patrick Macias asked him about how he became a director in the anime industry and what he though of the industry in general. Then Shizuno showed a pretty long clip of his newest show, Cross Climber. It seems to be about a full immersion virtual reality MMO with a sinister secret purpose. Then a bunch of people asked him questions about the Evangelion movies that he could not answer. The most interesting part was listening to how Shizuno worked his way through the industry to become a director. I sort of wished the people from the audience had asked him some more interesting questions. I did like that someone asked him a Princess Nine question. That show does not get enough love.

You are kinder than I was. I was practically leaping from my seat in outrage at the crappy questions. Two questions were not about his OWN work but about Ginax works. This man is a director, not a film critic, you shouldn’t be asking what he thinks of other peoples’ work. Not to mention there was only time for about 5 or 6 questions so them being wasted was quite a frustration. After this panel we also man into Dave and Joel from Fast Karate and talked with them a bit.

I had never heard of Unicorn Table before they were announced as the musical guests. But I am always up to hear some J-pop! So the concert was something of a high priority for me, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were 10 or 11 songs, which was more than I could have hoped for. We pushed our way to the second row and enjoyed quite a show! We survived the otaku stink for nearly an hour and a half. Although, I wasn’t crazy about her solo songs in the middle, the entire band was the best part. They really got the crowd up and cheering. There was even a raffle at the end, they gave away a t-shirt, a DVD, and a small bag.

Unicorn Table was pretty fun, although my favorite part was when the guitarist and the bassist just started to rock out while the main singer was changing costumes. I stayed away from the madness at the front of the concert and enjoyed myself in the back. I also have no need to be around stinking touchy-feely otaku.

The panels were all industry run and this was my biggest complaint. I really like a mix, I always go to many industry panels but I also like things about older anime or some aspect of anime. I hope this can be remedied next time around. The best things were the state of the industry panels where people from all over got together for a round-table of what’s been going on in the last year. As can be imagined, the anime one had a lot of what if’s and what can be done. It was really informative.

I’m not sure why they did not have any fan run panels. I admit when fan panels are bad they are very bad but they also could have had some good fan runs panels. It might be that as a professionally run convention they did not want to take the risk of a non-guest/nonprofessional run panel. Excluding fan run panels cuts down on your poorly done panels but also excludes a good many interesting panels that could exist.

It was really interesting to hear the two state of industry panels. The manga panel was happy talk and full of what are we going to do next. The anime panel was full of what can we do to pull ourselves out of this mess. Both panels talked about digital distribution. The manga panel speculated on why they were doing so well and how they could keep up their success. On the anime panel, they discussed why sales were down, what they could do to counter it, and what their hopes for digital distribution were. John O’Donnell, from CMX, definitely stole the show during the anime round-table. His answers/tirades were insightful if a little harsh.

I feel like this was a small con that seemed bigger because of the industry involvement but really it wasn’t anything like Otakon. A small con dressed up in big con clothes. Then again, it was its first year and also it is the winter…in NYC, not exactly the most inviting scenario. I also feel like it should have gone on longer into the night. Panels running till 8 or 9 at least and showings till at least then if not later. We know they could do it since the concert went on till almost 10. Overall, I had a good time and learned a lot. It wasn’t the best time I’ve ever had at a convention but I look forward to another one of these, if there is one.

I like having a con basically in my back yard. I’m sure I would fly halfway across the country to go to NYAF, but I will definitely take a subway ride again next year. It was not my favorite con but I had a good time and it did everything I need a con to do. I was never at a real loss of what to do; there was always something interesting going on. I sort of wish I had had some more time to see some of the movies they premiered on the big screen but there were too many good panels. Too many good things is never a real problem. It proves that a for profit convention can be done in an acceptable manner. If NYAF takes what they did this year, and grows, it has the potential to be one of the big name East Coast cons. I look forward to seeing how things turn out next year.