Tokyopop.de’s December Titles

As usual Tokyopop.de’s email arrived shortly after Carlsen’s mail. Surprisingly it didn’t only contain more information about this month’s publications, but also on one of their new licenses: Zombie Powder by Kubo Tite. Their new licenses will be announced at the middle-end of December. Furthermore they added information on their other in house production and their Demon Diary Special Edition, which is to be released at the end of December.

New German Manga Licenses *UPDATE 3*

Several manga publishers have followed Heyne’s example and revealed their new licenses for Spring 2008. Below you can find some of the new licenses by Carlsen and hopefully all of Egmont’s the acquisitions. In Egmont’s case it’s hard to know, because there was no official announcement yet. An employee posted their release schedule until September and that included the new titles as well.

Carlsen’s December Releases

It’s that time of the month again!

Carlsen’s monthly mail containing the releases just hit my box. Besides the releases for December, which you can find below; it also provided additional information on their new series Vampire Hunter D and Kekkaishi. Furthermore they mentioned the most current status of the Dragon Ball Z live-action movie. And at last they also announced a few new acquisitions.

Kyoko Karasuma Volume 2 Review

Manga: Kyoko Karasuma
Mangaka: Ouji Hiroi(Story) & Yusuke Kozaki(Art)
Publisher: Carlsen(Germany)
Original Publisher: Gentosha
Published in: BIRZ
Price: 6,00€
Released so far: Volume 1-3
Release Schedule: Volume 4: January 2008
Additional Information: 1 coloured page

Welcome to the next review of Kyoko Karasuma, the fast-paced action-filled manga by Hiroi and Kozaki. As in Volume 1, and similar to other manga, the first page presents us with a nicely coloured illustration. This time, however it does not show our young female detective, but her hulky partner, Raymond with two drawn guns, eagerly waiting for a reason to pull the triggers.

Kyoko Karasuma Volume 1 Review

Manga: Kyoko Karasuma
Mangaka: Ouji Hiroi(Story) & Yusuke Kozaki(Art)
Publisher: Carlsen Manga(Germany)
Original Publisher: Gentosha
Published in: BIRZ
Price: 6,00€
Released so far: Volume 1-3
Release Schedule: Volume 4: January 2008
Additional Information: 1 coloured page, character sketches in volume 1, and extensive translation notes.

Kyoko Karasuma is a collaboration by the by the mangaka Ouji Hiroi, author of Sakura Taisen(licensed in Germany as Sakura Wars by Egmont) and is illustrated by Yusuke Kozaki, who did the character design for Speed Grapher and Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto. This is Yusuke Kozaki’s first attempt in a full-length manga. However, he’s not totally inexperienced as he also participated in ROBOT, whose fourth instalment has recently been picked up by Udon Entertainment. Five volumes have been released so far, but despite the fact that it’s been more than nine month since the release of volume 5 no set date for volume 6 has appeared on amazon.jp. However the German manga publisher Carlsen still lists it as ongoing and the usual interval between the releases were around a year, so no worries there. Now after the lengthy introductorily paragraph, let’s get right into it.

German Manga Charts October 2007

October sadly ended some days ago, so it was time for Carlsen and Egmont to publish their joint Top 15 Manga Charts and that’s what they did. Even though Carlsen was able to defend its top position, Egmont still had a better overall month, if you just consider the total number of placements. Tokyopop was only represented twice, a relatively low amount if you compare it to other months and Panini’s unusual appearance last month now has vanished.

Shin Angyo Onshi Volume 6 Review

Manga: Shin Angyo Onshi
Mangaka: Young In-Wan(Story), Yang Kyung-Il(Art)
Publisher: Carlsen(Germany)
Original Publisher: Shogakukan
Published in: Sunday Gene-X
Price: 6,50€
Released so far: Volume 1-6
Release Schedule: Volume 7: January 2008
Additional Information: Completed with 17 volumes.

The sixth instalment of Shin Angyo Onshi finally found its way in my cold dead hands…wait, wrong quote. Anyway, I finally got off my lazy butt to purchase the manga together with Kyoko Karasuma volume 3 at my local comic store, which had remodelled its layout, arrangement and shelves. It looks pretty neat now and has much more space available; after all there will be more and more manga published. I actually forgot to take the manga with me and had to go back and fetch them, truly an annoyance. Now, after this random musing, I guess I should talk more about the actual manga and its contents.

Cancelled Series and New Licenses

I have bad and good news. Commencing with the bad one: Panini decided to cancel a few series, mainly manhwa, but also some manga. I bought several of those affected series and as you can believe, I’m not amused. However, as I’ll be able to buy most of them from either an American or French publishers, there are no worries there. The named volumes will be the last ones to be published.

Shopping List for November

While I changed the design again… November looks to be a very expensive month for me. Then again that also means a very joyous month. I have lots of new reading and reviewing material, and I’ll try to review as many manga as possible.

I’m happy to see the first volume of Pumpkin Scissors published by Del Rey. I was interested in the anime and watched the first episode over at ADV films, but anime isn’t really my personal preferred entertainment medium. I rather go with manga. For my other November purchases, well I guess you know your way by now. ;)