Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

I received two publisher alerts and want to share them with the community. One relates to a Yaoi publisher closing shop and the second is Tokyo Pop’s Manga Pilot draconian contract.

Iris Print:

Iris Print is a Yaoi publisher who apparently closed up shop and failed to tell its authors. Giapet.Net first reported this on May 17:
Something I didn’t mention in my Yaoi Press report was that Yamila Abraham, when asked about publishing yaoi novels as well as comics, said that it tends not to work very well, and pointed to Iris Print as an example– saying that the company has actually closed up shop.
Emails to the owner of Iris Print have seemingly gone unanswered. From an Iris Print author:
Well isn’t that swell? Iris Print closes up shop and doesn’t bother to tell the creators they have under contract. Nice. So what about our books? What about our titles? :/ I don’t know what to say about this, except that I’m truly disappointed. I’m beyond pissed; I wonder though, where is Amazon getting their re-stock if Iris is out of business? What about all those people who paid pre-orders for Queer Magic? It would’ve been nice to know …

Dear Readers,
Here are two more first volumes, these two from popular series that I found I didn’t like as much as their popularity suggested I should.

Honey and Clover by Chica Umino. Viz. Retail $9.99. Rated T+ for older teen. 10 volumes (still ongoing in Japan; 1 released here).

Honey and Clover centers around a group of poor eclectic students at an art college that live in the same tiny, rundown apartment building. There’s a large cast of characters but these are the main ones: Morita is a weirdo genius slob who’s been in college for many years, and who leaves for weeks at a time and comes back exhausted and loaded with money. Mayama is a fairly normal architecture student about to graduate, but with hints of a mysterious past. And the last is a very average guy, the hero, Takemoto, who doesn’t have any real aim in life except he’s studying architecture as well.
One day they meet a tiny relative of a professor who enters the school as a Freshman. She’s Hanamoto Hagumi and both Takemoto and …

Dear Readers,

Two more vol 1’s from Viz. But the first is a Vol 1 from CMX, another publisher who brings quality shoujo to the US.
Land of the Blindfolded by Tsukuba Sakura. CMX. Retail $9.99. Not rated, but I’d say high school and up. 9 volumes (complete in Japan and in the US.)
(I should mention that the main story only takes up about 2/3 of the first book. There are also two unrelated short stories at the end that are rather sweet, both romantic.)
I actually heard of this story back when I first started reading manga and the concept intrigued me. I never knew it was released over here though until recently, and so I bought the first volume. It’s definitely a cut above other shoujo.
The story involves a high school girl named Kanade who can sometimes see the future when people touch her. She thinks of it like living in the land of the blindfolded, only her blindfold sometimes slips. One day she bumps into a young man in the hallway, Arou. He can see the past …

Dear Readers,
I got some first volumes of some shoujo series from Viz for review. I’ve not read any of the series, so I’ll just be providing my first impressions based upon all the Vol 1’s, a couple at a time.
Wild Ones by Kiyo Fujiwara. Viz. $9.99. T for Teen (innuendo, some cartoony violence). 6 volumes (still ongoing in Japan, 2 volumes out here)
I’m a sucker for yakuza (Japanese gangster) stories, especially the ones that are comedy so I was looking forward to this manga. Unfortunately this one, unlike Gokusen, didn’t have much special to make it rise above the rest.
The main character, 15 year old Sachie, is orphaned and trying to figure out what to do when her presumed-dead grandfather shows up and asks her to live with him. She’s a little shocked to find out that he’s the head of a yakuza family, and she is his heir. She finds herself thrown into this family of idiot gangsters with hearts of gold and decides to try to live as normal a life as possible. Unfortunately for her, her new bodyguard, the young and handsome Rakuto, …

From Far Away by Kyoko Hikawa. Publisher: Viz. Retail: $9.99 each. 14/14 volumes released in English. Rated T for Teen (some fighting, no sex).
Dear Readers,

I’m starting to feel a little like Harriet Klausner, with all the positive manga reviews I’ve been doing. But everyone knows there’s a lot of mediocre manga out there. I’m trying to share the good ones that I’ve come to love. This next one I came to love overnight just a few weeks ago and the romance is still new and sparkly in my eyes. That’s probably not the best way to review, but consider yourself forewarned. But for that reason I’m giving this a B+, since A’s really need to stand the test of time with me.
First, thank you to you readers! You recommended this to me after my Basara review, and I read it overnight. “So what?” you might think. “Manga reads fast.” So it was 14 volumes, I dropped $70 for it (yay for coupons and sales), and I couldn’t put it down, …

 
Manga Sutra by Katsu Aki. Published by TokyoPop. Retail: $19.99. 1/37+ released in English. Rated M for Mature (graphic sex). Note: Each single English volume contains 2 Japanese volumes.

Dear Readers,
This one is slightly different for me. Some people might just call it hentai (Japanese porn). But while it does contain scenes that qualify, its purpose isn’t just to titillate, but to educate. The author put it this way in his short preface:

This isn’t just a hentai manga. It’s about love, sex, and how-to… I wrote this with the hopes that it would serve as a bible to those who dream of having the best sex ever! And I really mean that.
 
That’s cute. So to serve that purpose Aki-san gives us Makoto and Yura, virgin newlyweds in an arranged marriage (still fairly common in Japan with businessmen and women who are too busy to date). They’re basically pretty nice people, though not very outgoing (hence their virginity), and they eventually fall in love.
But they …

The Crimson Spell by Ayano Yamane. Published by Kitty Media. Retail: $11.99. 1/2+ volumes. Rated: Mature (this title is adult-only, sexually graphic yaoi (MxM).)

Dear Readers,
This is my favorite manga release of 2007. There are some with loftier ambitions that I might admire more, like Town of Evening Calm, but when it comes to pure enjoyment of a book, The Crimson Spell wins hands down.
The story is a fairly simple one. Prince Vald’s country is overrun by demons and there’s only one way to save them, to take up an accursed family sword. For the sake of his people he does so, but the sword’s demon begins to take him over. At first it’s only at night, when he changes into an erotic beast-like version of himself (and whoo boy is he one erotic looking beast). His country’s wizards are able to give him ensorcelled shackles that keep the change at bay each night. But he knows it’s only a matter of time until the demon takes …

Basara by Yumi Tamura. Published by Viz. Retail: $9.99. Rated T+ for older teens (frank sex and violence. The sex isn’t graphic but the violence can be.) 25/27 volumes published, complete in Japan.
Dear Readers,
Some long running romance manga series are drawing to a close this month, and all deserve mention here. This column is for the first, Basara, a shoujo manga classic that is Romance in both the old and new senses of the word.
Basara is a sweeping saga of 27 volumes, the tale of the death and birth of a nation, epic in length and scope. It’s also an involved love story that is as heart-rending as anything you’ll read (but *hint* it is a romance manga when all is said and done). The main story ends in volume 25, which is just out this month. The last two volumes are side stories.
The gist of the story is that Japan has had an apocalypse that’s sent society back into more primitive times, and it’s now ruled by a dissolute king and his four wicked …

Dear Ms. Ganter,

My blogging partner Jan reviewed this series earlier and I was so impressed by the review and by the artwork she included that I posted to her review. She graciously offered to loan me the volumes of “Sorcerers and Secretaries.” I’ll be honest and say that I’d never tried any manga and in fact hadn’t read any type of comic or graphic arts book since childhood. Yep, manga has swept the world but hadn’t swept me. That is until I read this book. Now I begin to understand the appeal. I might not be a convert but this is one novel I might just have to search out.

I’ve included ‘manga’ tags on this review so it will show up on our website along with Jan’s original review but I’m not reviewing it as manga. Since I don’t know the genre enough to speak with any authority on it, I’m talking about it as a romance. And a delightful romance it is. Nicole and Josh have to work through their problems as any romance couple I normally read about do. Nicole is one smart cookie. Though she initially likes …

Ai Yori Aoshi by Kou Fumizuki. Published by TokyoPop. Retail: $9.99. Ratings: T+, older teens, for most volumes (many sexually suggestive situations a.k.a. fan service - the cover gives you a taste for that), Mature for the last volume (tasteful sex between the h/h). 17/17 volumes published.
Dear Readers,
Two long running romance series have drawn to a close this month, and both deserve mention. This one is different from what I normally review because it’s a shounen harem story, written for boys. Oddly perhaps for those of us in the west, while the other series, Basara, was written for girls it concentrates on warfare and politics albeit emotionally; this series however concentrates on love and relationships. It’s called Ai Yori Aoshi.
Ai Yori Aoshi is, through much of the story, a typical harem manga. That means a young man finds himself living with a group of young women, generally stock characters, all of whom fall in love with him. Circumstances always keep him and the one he truly loves from being together until the end. …