Jun
17
Goodbye, Kissa10
Filed Under Features | 5 Comments
It breaks my heart to say this, but this month, my second manga home, Manga Kissa 10 is closing its doors. No more maids. No more mangas.
Because of this, they are selling all of their mangas for the price of P50/tankoubon. Despite this, you can only buy the entire set of mangas and not by piece. If you buy a series with more than 30 volumes in it, you get a 20% discount. When I visited Kissa 10, a good number of the good mangas were already disappearing. Some of my favorites were still there, but Touch and Master Keaton were no longer there. I managed to get some but I had to stay within a particular budget. If only I can save all the mangas there, I would. ;A; So many mangas all gone.
I’ve had lots of great memories with Kissa10 and I really wished the cafe would last a longer. But life in this island is very difficult, and more often than not, people would rather spend their 500 pesos in a restaurant than in a manga shop where they can only read. I will miss Kissa 10 greatly. This would only mean losing access to some really great mangas.
The shop will no longer be in operation starting this week, but they are still open just so that people can buy the mangas off their shelves. Manga Kissa 10 will be open until June 30, from noon to 8 p.m. Their mangas are already P20-P30 per piece… so enjoy… those who can still enjoy it.
Dec
6
Another visit, another fangirling
Filed Under Features | 2 Comments
One of my Christmas wishes this season was reading time in one of my favorite places, Manga Kissa 10. A good friend of mine decided to grant this wish and decided to make Khursten faint again over manga! True enough, just like every time, I’m turn into a happy kid reading through all the stuff inside the Kissa 10.
First, UPDATES! They finally have English-translated manga! Yay! SO PEOPLE! YOU SHOULD GO! There’s now Bleach, Naruto, Fruits Basket, HanaKimi, Midori Days (my recommendation!), Basara (or was that Blame!? ><;; Ah mou~忘れちゃった！) and a lot of others whose names just escape me. The titles are still few compared to their exponentially rising Japanese manga line, but for those who are interested to read some of their favorite mangas in English just request in the small survey sheets found in every table. Again, just like before, you request, and they buy! :3 I’ve had my legion of visit and requests. I usually go there and request a title and true enough, on my next visit, the manga I’m waiting it’s there.
During my last visit, I requested for 20th Century Boys (after noticing that they didn’t have it in their Urasawa Altar!) and, my dang true enough… IT WAS THERE! :3 More than that… IT HAD 21st Century Boys! I swear, I love this store! They even updated their Nodame and they now have Nodame 19! There’s more shoujo manga now too, but they’re the borderline shoujo mangas, the ones wherein guys can still look cool even if they read that shoujo manga (lol, the idea of knowing mangas like this exist is just hilarious for me). Other than Nodame Cantabile and a couple of Moyoco Anno ones, there’s really little josei titles going around. Someday. :3
The great part about the store is that it’s brimming with life. The last time I went, there were rarely any people who went in and out of the cafe. My friend and I were usually the only ones who were there for three hours. Now, most of the chairs are packed (although 90% are still Japanese) and even the shelves are starting to look really shelved. With so much mangas out there, I wonder how the owners would juggle their mangas around.
For example, they added Yuukan Club and Tokimeki Tonight (luffles!) to their line, which are old manga. They also added Liar Game, which is one of the newer titles. Sure, Manga Kissa 10 would love to cater to their frequent readers but time will come when their library would need some major reshuffling or a massive shelving system would be implemented just to cater to these new mangas. So far, the place is still at its comfortable pace and has grown quite well over the past year. I just hope they maintain their readership because the last thing I’d want is to lose perhaps the only place I could physically grab a manga off a shelf.
On a side note, they’ve added a promo point card system (See my オタ魂 burning!!). As you spend more time in Kissa 10, you get some bonus free hours. So, for 10 hours you’ve spent in Kissa 10, you get 1 hour free. For 20 hours, you can get around 3 hours more free. I think this would be easy. Spending for Kissa 10 is always no issue for me. The bigger issue is if I have time for it. -_-;; My December weekends are packed and I wish I had more time to play. -_-;; Or read for that matter. やっぱあたし時間がねぇーHoliday stresses are definitely coming in.
Sep
4
It’s been a year…
Filed Under Features, Insights, Site Updates | 6 Comments
… and I missed my celebration! ??????(?????????) ?????????????!! I honestly wasn’t able to keep track of when I actually actively started this blog and it turned out that my site went in motion on August 23 and I forgot to celebrate. lol. I’ve been busy during the past few days as well due to the bookfair so the date just slipped away. Gomen ne. ^^;;
A lot has happened back when I started. Back then, I was on student allowance and now I’m fortunate to at least have something to sustain the hobby. lol. More so, there’s been a lot of developments in terms of manga in the Philippines.
In the past year since I started, there’s been a surge of English translated manga in the Philippines. Booksellers have become sophisticated in their choice of mangas and have started to bring in a lot of more popular titles as well as some to cater for those who have eclectic tastes (but trust me, just like in the US, finding them can be a total pain. -_-;;) . Another interesting thing to note is the resurgence of Japanese mangas in the Philippines through Manga Kissa 10 and the JFMO library. Although you won’t be able to buy the manga, at least you would have access to the weekly magazines and the likes.
But perhaps the most interesting development this year was the discovery of my friend while going through their local Japanese grocery. In this said grocery, they started selling tagalog translated volumes of Doraemon. The book is not as well printed as its American counterparts. If I have something to compare it with, it’s closer to the Malaysian manga releases. Not so sure if it’s the same for Indonesian prints. The paper’s closer to newsprint and the print was closer to that of the weekly magazines than it is that of a tankoubons. For the cheap price of P60 ($1.20) , it’s the best kind of print they can do.
In terms of translation, the manga turned out quite well. The conversations were casual and some things were appropriately contextualized. Mochi was turned to Bibingka1 and the translators were not afraid to use colloquial terms over those that would deem to be more proper in literature. Sound effects and variations thereof were also translated which made it all the more fun. In short, the translators made an effort to keep the spirit of Doraemon by sticking towards a translation that is closer to home. I hope that this characteristic and its cheap cheap price could spiral a new industry in the Philippines.
I just realized this morning that this was not the first tagalog translated manga in the Philippines. (Sorry about that Ed. ^^;;) Barefoot Gen was also published in the Philippines for a short while before the 80s. In fact there was a big effort after the war to distribute Barefoot Gen to the Filipinos to show the impact of the war to the Japanese, but I’m not so sure what happened afterwards. The choice to translate Barefoot Gen was more of a political effort than a commercial effort. What makes this Doraemon release special is the fact that it’s being released commercially. As I told Ed this morning, there are around 4 volumes available and this could be the start of something new for mangas in the Philippines. Many countries in South East Asia makes a big effort in translating Japanese manga to the local dialect. Indonesians has a bustling translated manga industry. The same goes for Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. These countries have been ahead in the game, and it should be time for Philippines to follow suit. Hopefully… HOPEFULLY, this publisher could get more licenses with more titles and start publishing them here.
- a local rice cake, not the same texture but both are ‘essentially’ rice cakes [↩]
Aug
28
Manga Kissa 10 brings the magazines to you!
Filed Under shorts | Leave a Comment
YES! YES! YES! Manga Kissa 10 is willing to take orders for magazines!! Well, for our interest, manga magazines!! So yes!! Order away! Finally Shounen Sunday and Kiss. :3 waai~
Jul
10
I’m a little late on the announcement, but I checked Manga Kissa 10’s website and they announced that they are planning to bring in some English manga to the store and they want people’s insights on what they want to read, a great move if they want their shop to be open to people other than Japanese readers.
If you have a manga in mind that has been translated to English, feel free to drop by their multiply account and ask them to get those english mangas for you. I just hope that for some of them, they are releasing the bilingual copies. *w* I haven’t gone there in a while. I wish they have already some of the mangas that I requested.
-
Otaku Champloo is...
a small serving of bittersweet manga bits by a manga addict named Khursten.
She currently digs mangas about boys who live to be men. -
Feeds are Good!
