Dork Tower takes on the media's treatment of comics. Now if only we had one for the hey, girls love manga! articles..

Also, Fantagraphics is having a 20% off sale.

Animeigo licenses Yawara! ***
In a surprise license, Animeigo has announced that they will be releasing the
anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's breakout hit, Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl.
Yawara is a long-running series about a girl who just wants to have fun and her
strict grandfather who's training her to be a Judo champion. The anime ran for 124
episodes, and Animeigo is anticipating the first box set to be released early
next year.
<--from rightstuf's newsletter. Woot! I remember when Bandai had it on a list of possible liscences, but Fancy Lala got licensed instead.

Disturbing and fucked up Transformers manga shows sexism at its most annoying. Because 12 year old looking girls are more than meets the eye. I'd like to also complain about people who whenever something strange comes out of Japan, start going "OMG, Japan is full of weirdos". No, it's not just Japan. If you look on the deep dark corners of the internet, you'll find things even more disturbing or weird coming from Americans. Try somethingawful or fandom wank if you don't think that Americans can be as crazy as the Japanese.

WTF? Full Metal Alchemist Movie?

In an anime related wank, some moron gets mad because shock and horror an anime company asks people not to fansub their stuff. Dudes, the companies are our friends. They want us to watch anime too. It's just that if you're a company, you have to at least make noises about how your stuff is your stuff. Anime is not made out of the love of the beneficant Japanese, it is in fact a commerical product. Anyway, there are plenty of series that haven't been brought to the US, and plus, if you're broke, you still don't have the right to anime. Of course learning to shop helps. I got 54 episodes of 12 Kingdoms for 120$. You know how? Checking out sales, knowing how to shop. Sign up for the rightstuf newsletter, use dvdpricesearch.com, check out Garage Sale Japan. Don't just bitch, use common sense

Finally, The Pain is back.

Finally, new Dykes.

Do vote hell yeah for buying of the print version of YU+ME. Good feedback can be the difference between being able to read YU+ME on a boring plane ride, and well, having to read other, inferior comics. Don't let that happen!

Hehehe, small penis.(nudity, but not sexual)

Why I prefer manga to superhero comics:As an infant, Donna was rescued from a burning building by Wonder Woman. Until she wasn’t, because of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Meanwhile, her Earth-2 counterpart was rescued by a fireman, her Earth-S counterpart wasn’t rescued at all, and her Earth-7 counterpart was rescued by the Anti-Monitor, who raised her to be Dark Angel, the evil counterpart to The Monitor’s Harbinger. Remember that, because it’s going to be important later. On the revised post-Crisis Earth, Donna was created by magic, from a reflection of young Diana/Wonder Woman to be her sister. She went on to become Wonder girl, then Troia, until her insane and prematurely aged son from an alternate future came to attack her as Lord Chaos. Chaos was defeated, but Donna gave up her Troia powers to ensure he would never exist. Then she became a Darkstar, then she regained her Troia powers. That’s until she was pulled out of reality by Dark Angel, who was trying to erase all Donna Troy histories except her own by tormenting Donna endlessly through mutiple realities. Dark Angel failed, and Donna was reincarnated as an infant who was rescued from a fire by Rhea, the queen of the Titans of Myth, who recognized Donna as one of a foretold twelve "seeds" who would save the Titans from extinction. Plus now Donna is somehow the living connection to the multiverse.

Time magazine interviews the mangaka of Fruits Basket. It's like a new era has been reached in manga.

Yesterday I got the box set of 12 Kingdoms(not at amazon, at right stuf for $60 because it was last week's weekly special. I love their specials.) The presentation made me squee in fangirlish glee. Instead of a thin cardboard box, with disks inserted, the cardboard box is nicer with a paperish feel and the dvds are in a box with lots of pictures which folds in and looks like a book when closed. The DVDs themselves aren't bad either, with the nicely themed menu.

Of course, I love 12 Kingdoms because of how they portray the idea of another world. Instead of every character being automatically able to speak the language, being calm and collected despite not knowing anyone, what is happening or how they are going to go home, or having everyone totally ignore the fact that people in odd clothing have shown up randomly in their world, 12 Kingdoms does the opposite. Also, the world is pretty well thought out. There are some mysteries, but once they are explained, it all fits together logically. So yea, thumbs up for 12 kingdoms.

There is a huge multi blog discussion on bad fan behavior from the terrible behavior of one fan who may be on disability because of mental illness(the mental health system is terrible) to a pedophile who filmed up a ten year old's skirt. Start from dangerous beauty and click around.

Pam Noles talks about the stupid on the TCJ message board so we don't have to wade in ourselves. Toxic levels of white privilege kill me. I'm glad I didn't go in for the BAM, because if I had I would have looked in, and my head would have exploded.

Ghastly may come back from haitus after all.

Also, there's a short overview of how the $10 unflipped book helped create the manga boom. I think it was certainly the price point. I know I always balked at the $15 price of the the GNs, and I have to admit that the small size made the books more attractive too. So instead of the 3 or 4 books a year I used to get, the $10 price makes it easier to rationalize the near 15 I get nowadays(at full price! I get even more at half or less price)

The rising stars of manga is a good training ground even for Archie comics(although I think I prefer the old Decarlo style) I hope that this volume gets good library coverage. If I had extra cash, I'd pick it up myself. I always liked the few Sabrina stories I got in my Archie digests as a kid.

Also, the emotional porn of shonen ai manga. You can't say that it's ok to objectify only women in superhero comics, when it's obvious from the huge fandom of gay porn comics that women love sexy men as well, you know.

A interesting factoid about dona dona a song that was in both Utena and Oniisama E

The Perry Bible Fellowship site is now new and shiny. Yay. Yay.

Pam Noles breaks down the black panel.

EGL comics and more. the lesbian college is Agnes Scott.

Black gay graphic novel. Reccomended for me when I added Wendel All Together to my wishlist.

Ah, memories. That Mario baby really was annoying. I read the whole series of Imadoki. It's not one for the ages, but is good summer read. The initial premise sounds similar to Hana Yori Dango(Boys Over Flowers)- middle class fish out of water in a posh school- but the execution is less weighted towards drama and more towards a sweet little story about relationships.