PR: Viz Media At 2013 Licensing Expo This Week

VISIT VIZ MEDIA AT LICENSING EXPO BOOTH #A137

VIZ MEDIA SHOWCASES WORLD’S HOTTEST ANIME TITLES AT 2013 LICENSING EXPO

ACCEL WORLD, BERSERK: THE GOLDEN AGE ARC TRILOGY, ‘K’ And NARUTO SHIPPUDEN, Among The New Titles To Be Showcased

San Francisco, CA, June 17, 2013 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), the largest distributor and licensor of anime and manga in North America, returns to Las Vegas for the 2013 Licensing Expo with a robust catalog of some of the world’s top anime properties. The 2013 Licensing Expo is the world’s largest and most influential licensing industry event and takes place June 18^th-20^th at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV. VIZ Media will be located in Booth # A137.

The annual Licensing Expo (www.licensingexpo.com) is the licensing industry's premier trade event for leveraging properties and brand equity to develop merchandise, Licensing Expo attracts more than 400 exhibitors representing more than 5,000 brands and properties in entertainment; sports; fashion and apparel; publishing; art and design; automotive; animation/anime; home and housewares; and lifestyle. Attendees from more than 80 countries represent the world's leading retailers, licensees, manufacturers, distributors and licensing agents.

Anime properties VIZ Media will highlight at 2013 Licensing Expo include:

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN (Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens)

NARUTO has become the hottest animated series across North America and is one of VIZ Media’s most successful manga and animated properties in terms of sales. NARUTO has aired on TV since 2005, and is currently the most watched anime program on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block. On HULU, the 500+ subtitled episodes have reached over 200 million views. In addition, digital downloads are available on all major platforms including iTunes, Xbox, Amazon, Google and Xbox. NARUTO’s continuous popularity has brought more than 1000 consumer products to the U.S. market, including video games from Namco Bandai (7 million copies sold), graphic novels from VIZ Media (127 million copies sold), and trading card games from Bandai America (10 million packs sold).

Manga Review: Tegami Bachi GN 13

Tegami Bachi volume 13
Author: Hiroyuki Asada
Viz Media
200 pages

Spoiler warning: Review contains spoilers for the Tegami Bachi series so far. Read on with caution!

While Lag and his fellow Bees fight a desperate battle against the Gaichuu Cabernet, the dark secrets of Amberground come to light. What unspeakable things did Garrard, director of the Beehive, see in Amberground’s capital? And why has former director Largo Lloyd joined the rebel organization Reverse? The answers lie in the top-secret district called Kagerou… (Source: Goodreads)

Tegami Bachi is pulling a Bleach and doing a far better job than Kubo could hope to do: it's sidelining their main protagonist and hero, Lag Seeing, and putting the focus on other key players in the current battle against Cabernet. By shifting away from Lag's narrative, Tegami Bachi frees itself to expand on the stories of characters like Largo and Garrard and Connor. What comes of this shift of focus is a series of monumental revelations that add to the world of Tegami Bachi as well as set the stage for an inevitable all-out conflict between Amberground and its detractors.

Fujoshi O'Clock (6/13/13)

What time is it? It's . . . Fujoshi O'Clock, the biweekly feature at Nagareboshi Review, when I bring to you the latest fujoshi-related news and reviews and various shiny BL-flavored things. Why? Because rotten girls need love too!

This week on Fujoshi O'Clock:

• Bateszi Anime Blog, in response to the backlash against the KyoAni Free! anime, posts their treatise on fujoshi and the now infamous swimming anime.
• Contemporary Japanese Literature writes a great defense of fujoshi, with content warnings for discussion of rape and rape fantasies, that also tackles the bara/yaoi divide.
• I sense a trend here! Manga Therapy shares how thankful it is for fujoshi and links to several other pieces on BL culture.
• Alex Woolfson has yet another Kickstarter going, this time for his wonderful LGBT heroes webcomic The Young Protectors. Worth funding for the amazing stretch goals alone!
• An anime adaptation of the Love Stage!! manga has been announced in Asuka Ciel magazine. The manga, by Eiki Eiki and Taishi Zaou, started publication in 2010.
• The manga Wandering Son will be ending in the August issue of Monthly Comic Beam. The anime adaptation was simulcast on Crunchyroll; the manga is being published by Fantagraphics.
• Digital Manga has licensed two new manga titles: Hideyoshico's Apple & Honey and Natsuki Zippo's Wolf Magic. They also announced that Yaoi-Con would be happening in 2014.

Reviews:

• Naru at Organization Anti Social Geniuses reviews Silent Voice by Atsuki Kyoyama, a mixture of love and baseball and sketchy art.
• Boys' Luv.com reviews the OEL yaoi manga Punishment from Yaoi Press. Not surprisingly, it's underwhelming and has consent issues.
• Coffeeandink at Storytalk reviews The Heart of Thomas by Hagio Moto, BL manga classic, and really gets into the nitty-gritty of the book.
• Kate O'Neil at the Fandom Post reviews the fifth omnibus of Loveless by Yun Kouga, specially released by Viz Manga to cover the volumes previously published by Tokyopop.

Am I missing your blog? Got some awesome fujoshi-related news and reviews you think deserve a shout-out? Poke me with a link and a bit of description over at my Twitter: @theseventhl. I'm always on the look out for more BL love!

Manga Review: Library Wars GN 9

Library Wars volume 9
Authors: Kiiro Yumi, Hiro Arikawa
Viz Media/Shojo Beat
192 pages

There's a groper in the library and Library Force members Iku and Shibazaki are sent in as bait! Iku's undercover outfit makes her vulnerable...will she be able to defend herself if the pervert targets her? Later, Library Force members are required to take a test that involves reading stories to a group of rambunctious schoolkids. Coming from a big, unruly family, Iku definitely has the upper hand! (Source: Shojo Beat)

If you're a shojo fan and you're not reading Library Wars, one of the star titles of the Shojo Beat imprint, then you are missing out on one heck of a series. Nine volumes in and it's still the mixture of action and drama that has kept readers glued to the page, as well as the unresolved romantic tension that keeps shippers writing thousand word ship manifestos on Livejournal. In this volume, we see Iku and Dojo's relationship take a dramatic turn, Iku show why she deserves her position at the library, and watch Tezuka slowly come out of his shell thanks to the charm of children.

What Happened To Bilingual Manga?

Don't worry, I'll keep this quick. So if Chihayafuru is getting a bilingual language edition in Japan and Kodansha Comics still seems to be publishing the odd volume of Japanese & English language manga, where are they in America? I can't exactly walk into Barnes & Noble and buy a copy of Chobits that is both in Japanese and English. You can possibly buy them through J-List, but that doesn't mean they're intentionally for a North American audience. The ones I've found on Amazon are out of print - and painfully expensive.

Honestly, I'd love to learn to read Japanese but my local community college isn't offering the course right now. Should I just grab a Japanese language edition of Naruto GN 1, the Viz Media edition of the same volume, and a basic guide to Japanese written letters and figure it out that way? I'm not even sure if that would work; translation is not an exact science. As for the method itself - well, I'm an autodidact but that's a bit nonsensical, even for me.

Please feel free to correct me on this, of course. But where is the bilingual manga in America? And why can't I find any of it?