Posts Tagged ‘shueisha’
When I heard that Shueisha’s Jump would start a josei magazine, I was skeptical. Jump may have a following that spans a large age range and influences both sexes but I never felt they had the “josei” touch. Jump rode on a formula and given that their josei magazine bears Shueisha’s most famous franchise, I doubted if they had what it takes to catch up with the new wave of poignant josei stories with their magazine Jump X (pronounced as Kai and not X).
Ninomiya Tomoko was Jump X‘s darling poster child, the banner girl that they will be doing things “right” with Jump X. At that time Ninomiya just finished the first run of Nodame Cantabile. Other authors were sound among Josei fans (I believe Est Em joined them later on) but none were particularly worthy of public attention apart from Ninomiya.
So when they finally announced the title, 87clockers, I was hoping for something spectacular. Instead, and not disappointingly, I met the same Ninomiya that has the same quirkiness, intelligence, obsession and humor as I did in Nodame. Which was all right… I think.
Wow. What a year.
As compared to last year, 2012 was good to me — very good to me.
However, because it was good to me, it also meant it ate my time. Lots of my time. Particularly, my champloo and manga reading time. In terms of my time for this blog, I didn’t fulfill my wonderful spotlight series monthly. Nor did I even continue the columns I wish to continue! I wish I can do more and please don’t blame my tumblr habit. ; 3; It’s easier to reblog than write. My life in tumblr is filled with likes, porn, and tons of reblogs. But yes, in general, I have nothing but my life to blame on why I didn’t get things up to speed. At the very least, I was happy that I managed to host my first MMF quite successfully.
Despite this madness, 2012 was still a great year of manga. Here’s a list of 12 mangas I read in the last year. They’re not necessarily manga released in 2012 but they are all amazing manga that I’ve discovered and love this year. In no particular order, here are my favorite mangas read from last year.
When I think of April, I think of spring.
When I imagine spring1, I think of sakura trees.
And when I think of sakura trees, I dream of walking under rows of sakura trees, while a blossom gently falls on my forehead.
And then I die in Rainbow Bridge. Or fall off Tokyo Tower.
And that’s when I think of nothing but CLAMP.
I think it’s proper to assume that we’ve all had our sakura dreams thanks to CLAMP.
- we only have summer, rains, and cold drafts in Manila [↩]
The winners of the Osamu Tezuka Cultural awards are out and the winners will definitely take us a trip back in time.
The Grand Prize was shared by two titles. First one (and the only one I’ve seen… at least in drama) is Jin by Murakami Motoka, a story of a surgeon who falls into a time slip and changes history by introducing his knowledge of medicine during the Bakumatsu period. I was only introduced to the drama a few weeks back but I’m happy to hear that this series has a strong manga enough to win the prize.
The other title is Takemitsu Samurai, drawn by Matsumoto Taiyou and written by Eifuku Issei. It’s a historical manga who has a mysterious ronin for a protagonist. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about it beyond it being printed in Big Comic Spirits. I’m only assuming that it’s one of those critically acclaimed yet unpopular titles (doesn’t even have a wiki page. :<)
The New Artist award was won by Full Metal Alchemist. And the Short Story award was won by Yamashina Keisuke.
I think this year’s award winners are quite a lovely set and I think their stories are definitely worth a read. I find it amazing though that Jin won this year. It’s like a nice homage to Osamu Tezuka. In a way, Jin is like the Black Jack of Edo. Sort of…
An awarding ceremony will be held on May 27 and the winners will be awarded 1 million yen and a bronze statue of Atom. Congratulations to all of the winners and hopefully we’ll have another lovely set of manga to read by next year!
I thought that this has got to be the funniest joke but it turns out, it was no joke at all.
I’ve seen this being tweeted for some while but it wasn’t long until I finally saw the commercial for Shueisha’s new quarterly BL magazine (under its subsidiary Homesha), BL-ink.
But don’t they have Weekly Shounen Jump already?
I know. It’s crazy. But it seems Weekly Shounen Jump is not the “Sweet BL” that BL-ink is trying to offer. The magazine is a dedicated BL magazine for Homesha and I think this is perhaps an outright acceptance of the popularity of BL.1
What I found interesting was it took some google powers to find the site. It’s mostly mentioned as BLink which doesn’t come out much in searches. Looking at Shueisha’s website doesn’t even announce the magazine (or at least I didn’t see it.) I had to find the websites of actual authors in the magazine to actually figure out that it should be searched as BL-ink to finally find the proper search term for the said magazine.
As I mentioned, BL-ink will be sold more under Homesha, but it’s inevitable to not associate this publishing firm with Shueisha. In fact, in the advertisements, they would proudly put the banner of Shueisha as if it’s quite important and crucial that Shueisha’s involved in this. After all, the company has had a love affair with fujōshi especially with Shounen Jump.
- strangely, the niconico video has only been seen by 1000++ people! [↩]
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