{"id":816,"date":"2011-10-25T13:14:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T05:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/?p=816"},"modified":"2011-10-25T14:15:38","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T06:15:38","slug":"ready-to-taste-sublime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2011\/10\/25\/ready-to-taste-sublime\/","title":{"rendered":"Ready to taste SuBLime?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Yaoi-con just wrapped up and while I have never been there to witness the famous slave auctions, this year, there was one announcement that I wanted to catch up on: Viz’s BL line, SuBLime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve been teasing in twitter that Viz doesn’t need a dedicated BL line because they already have titles that has been keeping the fujoshi heart ablaze. Shounen Jump has enough treasures for us. We can start with Naruto, then down to Bleach, Gintama (although they stopped before it even got more fun), even One Piece and now the new favorites: Ao no Exorcist, Reborn, and the Legend of Nura. We can also look back at some Shounen Jump classics like Prince of Tennis and even some Shounen Sunday favorites like Case Closed for some fujoshi staples. Needless to say, Viz has enough to make some fujoshi squee with joy.<\/p>\n

However, I honestly don’t blame them considering starting a BL line considering that there’s currently one active publisher that sells BL manga: DMP. I personally am not a big fan of DMP hence I welcome SuBLime in the market! I also find their name cute because it seems that a good number of BL publishers have this knack of finding BL in their names (BL-ink<\/a>?). More so, it’s loaded with meanings of subtext and lime. For those in English fandoms, you might remember that lime was an old term used to describe the soft porn of fanfics. Yaoi was not spared from the lime category and thus I thought, it was a smart homage to that old term. Of course, I was surprised that they didn’t color their pages to lime and chose the more romantic, harlequinesque color of purple. I asked them over at twitter and they’ve noted that it was because it was a mature color<\/a>. It’s actually nice and pretty. Not bad, but we’ll see how they package their covers as DMP seems to have started mimicking the famous Beboy Comics side box.<\/p>\n

SuBLime has made the announcement of their website<\/a> and their plans in the recent US Yaoi-con<\/a>. Here’s a rundown of their nefarious plans:<\/p>\n

1. SuBLime is a partnership between Animate and Libre.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This means we’re going to get access from the treasure trove of BL titles that are published by Libre. We have titles running from the classic BeBoy, Beboy Gold, Beboy Luv, Super Beboy, etc. What also excites me about this is this means that Viz will have access to Libre anthologies too such as Citron, Beboy Honey, and Beboy Phoenix!<\/p>\n

2. Partnership with Libre means access to some of the best BL authors out there<\/strong><\/p>\n

While I have been writing spotlights for Ohta Shuppan authors like Asumiko and basso, Libre does have an amazing wealth of BL authors under their belt: Est Em, Kyuushu Danzi, Suzuki Tsuta, Aniya Yuiji, Nekota Yonezou, Natsume Isaku, Akira Norikazu, and I can go on forever. Some of these artists, such as Naono Bohra, have not been licensed yet and finally… FINALLY they’re getting some love in English. It honestly excites me to finally see these titles in English. \u00c2\u00a0Among the authors that they’re publishing, look out for Sakae Kusama, Nitro+Chiral, Naono Bohra, Akira Norikazu, You Higashino, and Natsume Isaku!<\/p>\n

3. The partnership entails worldwide distribution of BL manga via the SuBLime website, as well as printed English translated titles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

YESSSSSS!! \\o\/ This means our tropical isles and every other place in the world that has access to internet CAN download their BL. According to the news brief, it’s a Download to Own option, which I am curious as to how this will be folded out. I suppose this means that after paying, we basically own that copy. If I base it on Viz prices for manga online via the iPad app, it will cost around $5.00. Still cheap compared to the prices of English BL manga here (which can go for $15-16)\u00c2\u00a0However, unlike the vizmanga.com app, this one is going global. I wonder how they will address non iPad users. Could they even sell via Android? I remember Amazon taking out BL titles from their kindle line, and with Kindle Fire coming out, will they have something to answer to that as well? If it’s download to own, does this mean that we can keep the file to ourselves and access it anywhere and everywhere and even offline? I’d like to see those details someday. Also, what would be the payment scheme for SuBLime? Can they account for the number of fujoshi with no credit cards yet?<\/p>\n

With all of these lined up, it made me reflect on a couple of things.<\/p>\n