Comics 5
Igort’s Japanese Notebooks
By Andrew Osmond. Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs is somewhere between a comic strip and a picture book. Either way, this 180-page hardback, published by Chronicle Books, is a thing of beauty. It’s not a manga, being originally published in Italy, but its author Igort Tuveri has a rare distinction; he’s […]
The World of Japanese Girls’ Comics
Lee Brimmicombe-Wood looks for the mojo in shojo. The touring exhibition of shojo manga, which finishes its run at London’s House of Illustration in June, is not so much about comics as about the shojo aesthetic. The exhibition presents a world of slender, beautiful men, of flowers, of soft-edged pastels. If you knew nothing of […]
Manga: Kill la Kill
by Chris Perkins. Anime and manga have always had an extremely close relationship. Despite a recent increase in those based on light novels and videogames, a sizeable proportion of anime today are still adapted from manga, or at least conceived simultaneously. But what about those manga adapted from properties that started life as anime? It’s […]
Manga Taisho 2016
Meghan Ellis on the shortlist for this year’s Cartoon Grand Prize. Those responsible for adapting manga into anime or live-action must keep a close eye on the Manga Taisho nominations. Known in English as the Cartoon Grand Prize, only manga with 8 or less collected volumes are eligible for release, placing emphasis on quality of […]
Books: Manga in America
Jonathan Clements on the bistromathics of manga. Casey Brienza’s Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics reveals an ultra-modern publishing industry, exploiting the bleeding edge of digital ingestion and yet staffed by scattered freelance peons, some of whom literally sift through dumpsters for their dinner. Or is it, perhaps, a […]