[a follow-up in spirit to this post]
An aside: Hiatus
You might have noticed, the heretofore-weekly manga bestsellers are late. (really late)
I didn’t post the online bestsellers yesterday — and I’m not posting anything today either, in keeping with my new year’s resolution to post nothing to the blog.
…but I’ve got a lot to say […]

This blog, in recent months, has become something of a one-trick pony. Granted, the manga charts are a pretty good trick, but there is much more to comics than obsessing over a top 10 list. Due to the time I invest in the online charts, though — time I had to borrow from […]

…and the phrase “crappy genre vampire romance schlock,” which should be a shelving category in my bookstore and is worth repeating 3 times in this article.
As the 13th is the Ides of November, this post is technically two days late. There’s a handy mnemonic for remembering if the Ides is on the 13th or 15th […]

The numbers are over there, in the usual two flavours; if all you wanted to know is if Fruits Basket vol 17 can continue to hold her own at the #1 slot against the assaults of Naruto Nation, feel free to skip this commentary.
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My manga rankings are a lovely little exercise: an excuse to […]

Before we get into today’s topic, an extended aside: Why no column for 3 months?
Those who have been following the site (I think there are three of you now) know that I used to do a weekly column, titled “5by8,” and while in the beginning it was mostly filler — an easy one-off (usually […]

[My apologies for the delay. A friendly neighborhood flu bug decided that I really needed to sleep 18 hours, on both Friday and Saturday — since it managed to convice my immune system to go along, I didn’t have much choice in the matter.]
While the previous column fragment (part one) was just a re-hash of […]

In a recent interview which everyone and their kid brother have blogged about by now, ADV’s John Ledford (Co-founder and CEO) spoke with Anime News Network’s Christoper Macdonald about how they wouldn’t publish any manga in 2006 even if by doing so it would have saved the lives of a box full of cute puppies […]

Same as last week, I’m the one chiming in too late on points others have talked about in depth (and in internet terms, for ages); too late to make any difference in the fast moving, run-and-gun world of comic fansite debate, at any rate. And I prefer to post in my own column, rather than […]

The story went out over the news wires yesterday: there’s a new manga award, and while some details (and of course the first winner) are still largely to be determined, there are two aspects of the award that are worth noting: first, it’s for foreigners, not native Japanese manga artists, and second, it’s being given […]

Anime and Manga III
(make that: Anime, Manga, and Games)
You know, if I had an editor, she would be demanding my chestnuts for roasting right now, first because of last week’s filler column, and now especially for wasting days before getting a new 5by8 up for general consumption. Well my actual “editor,” such as he is, […]

So– much like an anime breaking down and doing a clipshow for ep 11 because the series got picked up for another 13 episodes two months ago and now we have to stretch a couple of scripts to bridge the plot into the second season, rather than wrap it up in the initially planned two-part […]

The Ages of Fan:
– first — previous — next –
The on-going series where we look at just how American anime & manga fandom developed — to the point where today we use the phrase otaku, we know what it means, we know it’s not complimentary, and we call ourselves otaku anyway.
Hey, you guys remember when […]

The Ages of Fan:
– first — previous — next –
The on-going series where we look at just how American anime & manga fandom developed — to the point where today we use the phrase otaku, we know what it means, we know it’s not complimentary, and we still describe ourselves as otaku anyway.
It’s not ironic, […]

The Ages of Fan:
– first — previous — next –
The on-going series where we look at just how American anime & manga fandom developed — to the point where today we use the phrase otaku, we know what it means, we know it’s not complimentary, and we still describe ourselves as otaku anyway.
I was thinking […]

The Ages of Fan:
– first — previous — next –
The on-going series where we look at just how American anime & manga fandom developed — to the point where today we use the phrase otaku, we know what it means, we know it’s not complimentary, and we still describe ourselves as otaku anyway.
As anyone who […]