Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

Story & Art: Fumi Yoshinaga
Publisher: Viz Signature
Rating: M for mature
Retail: $12.99
Length: 2/5+ volumes
Dear readers,
A few months ago, I read the first volume in this wonderful series by Fumi Yoshinaga. The premise is deceptively simple: What would happen if a plague wiped out the majority of the male population in Tokugawa era Japan? How [...]

Explicit sex is hard to write well and even if you do write it well, it means you are just packaging up pornography for women. Also, bla bla bla, romance books are killing romance bla bla bla. All according to this  article by Alan Elsner.  I don’t plan to comment over there because Alan [...]

Story & Art: Fumi Yoshinaga
Publisher: Viz Signature
Rating: M for mature
Retail: $12.99
Length: 1/4+ volumes
I first heard of Ōoku about a year ago from a friend.  The premise, she said, was that due to a disease that targets only men, the power hierarchy in Japan was genderflipped.  Women filled roles that had, up until the disease struck [...]

Comic Review: Solanin (2008)
Art & Story: Inio Asano
Publisher: VIZ Signature
Genre: Josei / humour / drama
Pages: 432
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1421523213 ISBN-13: 978-1421523217
Solanin is one of those rare comics that manage to something memorable out of a predictable story premise: a coming-of-age story revolving around the lives of twentysomething college graduates.
The heart of the 432-page comic are Tokyoites [...]

Dear Readers,
Netcomics is a publisher that publishes manga and manhwa online. No e-reader is needed, just $0.25 per chapter. They publish not only their own but Luv Luv and Yaoi Press comics among others. The way it works is that you buy e-cash in $10 amounts, then pay as you view [...]

Dear Readers,
I just have to tell you about this manga. This isn’t a typical manga for me to review because it’s not a romance manga, and it’s not really about the characters. It’s about food. I’m a serious foodie. I love exploring foods of all cultures, from low cuisine to high. [...]

Tokyopop announced that it is spinning out the multimedia arm into a new company, Tokyopop Media LLC. TokyoPop Inc retains control of the publishing arm and will reduce the output to 200-225 titles per year to “allow for less cannibalization at retail.” With the change, 39 positions with Tokyopop are eliminated.
Is this a [...]