The Dark Horse of Scanlation?
Since my previous post already gave away most of the details, I’ll try to keep this one brief. Today, we are launching two new projects which, once again, demonstrate how broad Kotonoha’s scope of interest can be. Both Hourou Musuko and Shigurui (there, now the cat is out of the bag ;)) are among my favorite ongoing serializations in Japan despite the fact that they are almost polar opposites of each other. On one hand, we have a sweet and endearing story about coming of age with an irresistibly charming cast of characters, on the other hand, we have a bloody and disturbing exercise in human cruelty. However, once you get past the palpable differences, you’ll soon discover that both stories are equally compelling in their own way. If you want to learn more about the craziness that is Shigurui, I suggest you try this link (the text in question is a bit down the page).
I realize that I’m terribly late with this announcement, but we have started a new joint project with Lililicious. Double House is written by one of my favorite josei authors, the wonderful Nanae Haruno. I once harbored the wish to scanlate Papa Told Me, her magnum opus. Alas, its sheer length was enough to crush a fanboy’s fanciful dream. Thanks to Sailor Avalon and her team, I can now at least work on one of her books. *sniff* *Thank you!*
Speaking of gratitude, mine goes out to all the proofreaders and copy editors who recently joined us and helped make today’s releases possible. Here they are, in no particular order: Drake Rain, Demus, The Postindustrialist, Jiji and Daniel. I strongly hope you all will stick with us for many months to come. 
P.S. I feel rather weird to point this out, but Dirk Deppey from The Comic Journal mentioned Kotonoha and a few of our projects in a recent entry of his blog Journalista (you’ll have to scroll down to the entry’s bottom to find the passages in question). While I’m flattered that he compared us with Dark Horse, I’m not sure if that was adequate, seeing that Omanga would be a much better candidate. If I have to seek out an English publisher to associate with, I’d rather choose Del Rey (with a touch of Fanfare/Ponent Mon).
NEW STUFF! It was nice of Deppey to give you guys a shout-out, though as I said on Journilista, I’m a bit shocked he didn’t mention Marie, especially since TCJ loves Furuya. Then again, no one really seems to know about this hidden masterpiece…
But I actually like the DH comparison, as if you dig through their catalouge past Hellboy and Sin City, they’ve published pretty much every type of comics there are; from horror to childrens books to classic reprints and alternative stand-bys.
Huff October 5, 2006 @ 11:54 pm
My goodness! The timidity, yearning, embarrassment. I didn’t expect the creator to encapsulate with uncanny precision how some of us transgender people felt. Such a gut-wrenching “I was there” feeling. Powerful. Thanks for the release. I found it quite excellent.
Sarah the Monster October 6, 2006 @ 11:10 am
Tremendous, isn’t it? I was trying to refrain from running wild expectations, since Sweet Blue Flowers swept me of my chair so easily, but am I glad you guys picked up The Transient Son –by the bye, excellent choice of title! I’m wondering how things’ll come about for Shuuichi, especially after running around so nonchalant in ’such a manner’.
Wada October 6, 2006 @ 1:59 pm
Glad to be aboard! It’s been hectic: moving into a new place, working more at my job, and being sexually assauted by my new roommates cat; but helping with Sigurui was fun and I hope to do more in the future!
Fishes of the World, Unite!!!
The Postindustrialist October 6, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
It took me a socond to figure out what you were taking about, RE: Dark Horse, Viz and all that. You have to understand that The Comics Journal has historically been overwhelmingly weighted towards Western comics. All introductions of manga as a topic for inquiry in recent times have been innovations on the part of myself and my predecessor in the print version, Milo George. When we do discuss manga, we have to write from the assumption that our readers, while posessing a sophisticated understanding of the medium in general, are pretty ignorant in regards to the Asian variety.
The refgerence to Dark Horse, therefore, wasn’t in comparison to manga publishers but to other Western comics-publishing houses. There’s a deep divide in the American comic-book stores between superhero comics (which I’ve taken to mockingly refer to as the One True Genre) and, basically, everything else. There’s a further divide between superhero comics fans and fans of “literary comics” — works by R. Crumb, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and the like — that gets so polarizing that stuff in-between the two extremes gets lost in the argument. Another thing that I have to take into consideration is that a significant portion of my readership tends to turn their collective noses in the air towards anything that doesn’t aspire to the depth and complexity of a written non-genre novel. Manga? In many comics shops, manga doesn’t register at all. Yes, it’s a screwed-up industry, another thing I’m quite fond of mocking, but that’s as nevermind.
Anyway, the comparison was between Mangascreener, which I compared to a more literary comics publisher (Top Shelf Productions) and Kotonoha, which I compared to a company that publishes both well-made genre works and more self-consciously “literary,” esoteric stuff as well (Dark Horse). It’s not a perfect comparison by any means, but it’s one that a majority of my readers will understand, and you work with what you’ve gone.
As I hope the current scanlations tour in the Journal’s weblog suggests, I’m very interested in getting my readers better acquainted with the higher end of the Japanese comics tradition. Back when I was edited the print version, I believe I was the first editor to devote a full issue to manga (the shoujo-manga issue, see TCJ #269 with its Moto Hagio cover), and that was a hard enough sell — it debuted at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, and watching typical Journal readers was both funny and slightly discouraging. They’d notice the beautiful cover, pick it up and thumb through the pages, realize that it really was wall-to-wall girly-manga stuff, and set it back down like it had been printed with plutonium ink. It was like I’d produced the perfect reader-repelling issue of the magazine or something.
Still, I’m an obstinate sumbitch, and the current feature on scanlations is my latest attempt to jam the subject down my readers’ throats. Once serialization in the weblog is completed, “A Western Comics Fan’s Guide to Scanlations” will be collated and copy-edited, illustration examples will be added, and the results will be published in the archives of the main body of the website as a single piece. I hope that it does a little to assist the Journal’s readers to appreciate the depth and scope of the manga available today. We shall see.
Dirk Deppey October 6, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
Great to hear your plans Dirk (I’m the guy who keeps ranting on in your comments section about The Music of Marie after your posts; what can I say, I’m an Usamaru Furuya fan boy). I remember a while back everyone at ANN was fumming over a TCJ article about the poor state of the US manga market; you wrote a great argument for the authors point and more importantly explained the Comics Journal wasn’t just a bunch of stuck-up snobs who “hate” manga. It’s great to see someone willing to go out of their way and make the effort to get smart manga recognizes by both American comicbook fans and older manga fans who really haven’t stepped beyond what’s on the shelf of their local Barnes and Noble. Keep up the great work.
As for actual releases, I need to read more of Shigurui to make an opinion, but Shimura has impressed me yet again. I might have to re-read SBF while I wait for volume 2.
Huff October 7, 2006 @ 2:04 am
Oh dear, Takayuki Yamaguchi… my only reference to him is Media Blaster’s Apocalypse Zero, which I once accidentally bought. It’s been like year or so and out of 3 vols I got I have read first and glanced the second a bit. Yes, it was that bad.
That certainly tones my enthusiasm down, but hey, it’s not like every work some mangaka does are masterpieces nor turdpiles. At least he has had existing story to work with in this. Thus I’ll leave my commenting till I’ve seen the first vol of Shigurui.
Anyways, thumbs up for picking up historical series.
Jinchi October 8, 2006 @ 3:31 pm
@Jinchi: I don’t know much about “Apocalypse Zero” (aside from the fact that its anime adaptation has been dubbed the most violent anime of all time), but “Shigurui”’s story is fantastic (and it gets better with each volume!), definitely one of the best period mangas featuring samurai to come out from Japan in recent years. Surprisingly, it’s only based loosely on Norio Nanjô’s original novel. Yamaguchi is said to have pretty much cooked up his own version of the story. Here is a manga that takes the samurai genre to a new level. It’d be a shame to dismiss it because of the artist’s previous track record.
@Dirk: Thanks for stopping by and clearing up my confusion. I now see where you are coming from. I know that Kotonoha’s selection seems bewildering at times, and I’m certainly the main person to blame. I guess I’m one those people who’ve always been more interested in stories than they are in genres. Manga is a very dynamic and versatile medium that changes and evolves constantly. New talented artists and interesting stories are popping up every day. I’d like our line-up to reflect this dynamic.
Of course, efforts are underway to streamline our catalog to make it look more consistent, but diversity will always be one of Kotonoha’s prominent quality. Like kids, we always want to play with new kinds of toys.
Nomad Soul October 8, 2006 @ 5:03 pm
Oh god I knew I recognised that artwork. His association with that…”manga” makes me extremely wary of the future of Shigurui, but the first chapter shows promise and I trust your praise enough to go into it with an open mind. Hey, people’s writing does improve; alot apparaently.
Huff October 9, 2006 @ 1:16 am
From reading the description, Shigurui sounds like it’d float my boat. I love violent mangas for some reason. Especially if the story is mature enough to warrant the violence. Samurai mangas haven’t let me down so far either. Although I never liked the Kenshin manga that much. And I haven’t even tried SDK. But Vagabond had a really good start, and while it lost a lot of my interest by volume three, it picked some of it back up in the later volumes. Blade of the Immortal, as you may be referring to in this text, is probably my favourite among the samurai manga I’ve read. Although I’d have liked it to be a bit less stereotype. As it is now, the violence and serious tone is the only thing that sets it apart from your average shounen manga.
Most of the none shoujo mangas here (and some of those as well) are really worth the read, too. So I’m guessing the chance of me being dissappointed is very low. Although you never know untill you read it. Sorry about the ranting, I just don’t have a lot to do while I’m downloading, and I figured any feedback is better than none.
Keep up the good work guys, I love y’all
cactus January 2, 2007 @ 4:52 pm