Hot Gimmick novel!

Yay!  It’s way too late and I should be in bed but… the last volume of Hot Gimmick beckoned.  I loved it.  Ryoki was an irritable romantic, Hatsumi finally grew most of a spine but actually thought the words, “Maybe if we got married, he’d finally be nice to me.”  arg!  But also heh, in an appalling sort of way.  It’s so them.  The last half of the book has an incredibly cute Akane/Subaru story and…

The Hot Gimmick novel will be out in English in February 2007!  I’ve heard mixed reviews about the alternate ending, but I’m definitely going to look forward to it.

Rocking out with Mokona

Just because it’s been a rambling kind of night… here’s the ending theme song for xxxHOLIC.

Why Tokyopop sucks

(Updated at the top because this post is too long – I can’t tell if I actually sound mad here.  I’m not – it’s kind of a low grade irritation, along the same lines of but below my irritation at the library for choosing to not catalogue most of their paperback collection and therefore rendering it inaccessible to anyone who is looking for a specific book and is not lucky enough to find it on the shelf the day they think to look.  In both cases, it ends up costing me extra money.)  :) 

That would be their decision to stop selling previously established titles in stores and selling them exclusively through their website.  They’ve also picked some new, upcoming books for their online only section, which makes it even worse in my mind.  There are two round-ups of blog postings that I was checking out today, one on the Newsarama Blog and one on Comics Worth Reading.

I asked my comic store friend today what she thought of TPop’s new policy and she seemed genuinely surprised by the news.  The manga girl… the one who does much of the ordering for the store.  Sigh.  When I mentioned that Dragon Head would be one of the titles, BOTH of the store employees told me I had to be wrong, since that was a really popular title and sold well.  MCSF also asked me to send her a list of the exclusive titles “since she couldn’t handle Tokyopop’s new website.”  Neither can I.  It’s why my blogroll link goes directly to their manga list now.  I made the sacrifice, though.  If you haven’t seen it elsewhere, here’s the list:

November 2006
Atomic King Daidogan, volume 1
One, volume 10
Neck and Neck, volume 6

December 2006
Heaven Above Heaven, volume 6

February 2007
Heaven!!, volume 1 (From the creator of GIRL GOT GAME, which means it would have gotten an automatic buy had it made it into the stores)
Sorcerer Hunters Authentic Relaunch, volume 8

March 2007
Arm of Kannon, volume 9
Rure, volume 1
Soul to Seoul, volume 5

April 2007
King City, volume 1
Dragon Head, volume 6
Dragon Voice, volume 8
Short Sunzen, volume 1

May 2007
The Knockout Makers, volume 1
St. Lunatic School (Yoru nimo Makezu! St. Lunatic School), volume 1

July 2007
Atelier Marie and Elie-Zarlburge Alchemist, volume 1
Monochrome Factor, volume 1

August 2007
Hiyoko ya Shoten, volume 1

Is there really a reason why so many new books are online only?  Do they think they won’t sell?  If so, why the hell do they keep licensing titles they have so little faith in?

I did the letter of complaint thing tonight on their forums, even though I doubt anyone official at Tokyopop really cares about what their customers think at this point.  Here’s what I wrote, and it’s probably a lot more polite than what I would have written had I done the full rant here.  The sad thing is, most of my early manga is from Tokyopop.  They had my loyalty as a customer, and now they seem to be actively working to lose it.  sigh.

Apparently this is the only place to leave feedback regarding Tokyopop’s decision to restrict sales of certain titles to online only.  Fine.  Here goes:

1) I live in Canada.  You are now asking me to pay $9.99 US for a title I would pay $10 Canadian for at my comic book stores (I get a 20% discount at both).  On top of exchange I would also have to pay extra for shipping, which bumps the price of a volume to at least $16.00.  That’s not counting whatever random customs fee they will also decide to charge me.  I can safely say that I will NEVER be buying a book off of your website.  There’s no way it would ever be worth it.

2)  You’re charging the same price for a book that’s been marked up twice by the time it gets to me in a store, which means you’re getting your regular publisher’s price, the middleman/distributor markup and the store markup.  I don’t buy books for the library I work for from publishers who charge cover price, I’m certainly not going to support it personally.

3)  You’re restricting access of your books to people who not only have credit cards and are willing to give out such information online (an editor suggested upthread if you have a bank card you can buy online – not everyone wants to set up these kind of payment options with their bank account), but you’re probably also assuming most of your customers are visiting your website and can find these exclusive titles among the clutter.  If you can’t sell them in stores where it’s accessible on a shelf, what makes you think you’re going to sell any more with them tucked away in your website?  If you wanted increased visibility for these titles might I suggest either increasing advertising, offering samples on your front page or in other books or NOT flooding stores with all of your titles in one week?  They might stand out a little more if they’re not hidden in the middle of 20 odd other Tokyopop new releases.

Most of my other thoughts were covered by others in previous messages, but on a personal note, you’ve managed to make me pretty leery of picking up any new series from Tokyopop if you’re going to randomly pull titles and make them unavailable to the average consumer.  I’ll be finishing the series I currently collect from Tokyopop, but won’t be picking up new ones until you’ve proven you can finish the complete run properly.  It’s a shame, too, because I looked at the list of exclusive titles and there are at least three I would have tried, and there might have been more depending on the art and how many other books I was buying that week.

To give you a rough idea of the kind of money I spend on manga, I have 29 titles on my “must buy” list (11 are from Tokyopop, but 4 are ending in within one or two volumes) and another 33 on my “usually buy” list (again, 11 of these are from Tokyopop).  I realize I’m only one customer (and as an adult I don’t seem to be part of your target audience anyway), and the official responses here seem to be along the lines of “tough, deal with it,” but you’ve done a pretty good job of making me think less of your company.

So… too whiny?  Not irritable enough?  Should I have been pissier and do I think they would have cared anyway??  Ah well.  Viz has overtaken Tokyopop as my #1 supplier recently.  This did prompt me to go over my manga list and resort my buying priority levels…

If you’re interested, here are the results:

They’re just coming out at random now….

It was quite an odd week at the comic store for manga again.  I’m not sure what’s up with Viz this month, but it looks like they’re channelling Tokyopop when it comes to random release dates. 

This is what I bought this week:

Hands Off! 7 (next volume ends the series, sniff!)
Innocent W 1
Hot Gimmick 12 (!!! Last volume !!!)
Bus Gamer (a standalone from the author of Saiyuki)
Fullmetal Alchemist 9
Gerard & Jaques 1 – I decided to make this one a seperate post.

Bleach 15 - This was slated for an OCTOBER release!  Buso Renkin also came out this week – that’s two volumes in the same month.  wtf?  My first manga purchase of the day, and one I bought when I was picking up my comics at lunch.  (I have a comic store and a manga store)  What I’m finding interesting about the current Soul Society story is not (yet) another “Ichigo trains to get stronger” storyline, but the secondary characters.  There was a lot of backstory and a pretty good fight for Uryu (the Quincy) in this volume and a shocking development in the murder mystery as well.  The volume also had a short story at the end with some of the Soul Society members when they first joined the academy.  It was a good story, but I confess to being confused about who a couple of the characters were.  Guess I have to go back and reread a few volumes.  :)

Tuesday’s purchases were:

ES: Eternal Sabbath 2
School Rumble 3

And last week’s Friday stragglers:

Let Dai 3
Boy Princess 3
Kare First Love 9
Dazzle 3
Menkui! 2
W Juliet 12

Is that enough?  Am I done now??  All kidding aside though, this is what my “not yet published” dates for September look like now:

Anne Freaks Volume 3 by Yua Kotegawa – Sep 25, 2006 released
Beauty Pop volume 1 – September 5, 2006 released
Death Note  volume 7 – September 5, 2006 released
Fullmetal Alchemist volume 9 – September 19, 2006 released
Hands Off! volume 7 – September 12, 2006 released
Hot Gimmick volume 12 – September 19, 2006 released
Kare First Love volume 9 – September 12, 2006 released
Naruto, Volume 11 by Masashi Kishimoto – September 5, 2006 released
Ouran High School Host Club volume 7 – September 5, 2006 released
Read or Die, Volume 4 by Shutaro Yamada – September 19, 2006 released
Shaman King, Volume 10 by Hiroyuki Takei – September 5, 2006 released
Skip Beat!, Vol. 2 – September 5, 2006 released
Prince of Tennis volume 15 – September 5, 2006 released
W-Juliet volume 12 – September 12, 2006 released
Whistle! volume 13 – September 5, 2006 released
Yakitate!! Japan volume 1 – September 12, 2006  released

Afterschool Nightmare Volume 1 by Setona Mizushiro – September 25, 2006
La Esperanca, Volume 4 by Chigusa Kawai – September 6, 2006
Little Butterfly Volume 2 – September 6, 2006
Ghost Hunt  volume 5 – September 26, 2006
The Wallflower volume 9 – September 26, 2006 

(I passed on getting Naruto last week because I still haven’t read the last two volumes, a fact which shames me considering the trouble my poor little nephew has while trying to find new volumes…)

still not blogging….

… because I’m still not sleeping!  arg!  Actually, last night was an improvement as I fell asleep at 9:00 pm and woke up at 4:30 am, as opposed to my usual sleep at 9:00, wake up at 1:30, sleep again at 4:30 or 5:00, wake up at 8:30 to be late for work…

Bah, enough whining!  For today is Wednesday, the greatest day of the week!  (Only trumped by Friday, if it’s a payday.)  Due to last week’s flood of Viz manga, it looks like most of the titles I had planned to buy in September have already been released.  I’ll be interested to see what manga makes it’s way into the stores this week.  The two I’m most looking forward to are Hands Off! and the last Hot Gimmick.  Yes, it’ll finally be all over, sniff!  I must say that I liked the first half of HG more than the last part, but it gets total props and extra points for single handedly getting at least 4 people I know (and keep in mind that I don’t know that many people) into reading manga.  There you go.  Instantly addictive and good for luring people in.  :)

Tonight is also the season premiere of Bones, which according to Entertainment Weekly will have a vampire theme.  heh.  Poor David Boreanaz.  He just can’t escape the vampire thing…  Gah!  There were no vampires.  I’m so disappointed.  Entertainment Weekly – you failed me!  Still a very entertaining episode, though.

My new Sex BoB-omb t-shirt arrived from Oni last night.  It’s pretty, but be warned if you plan on buying one – they’re made small.  So a large isn’t quite a large.  Mine was really tight but loosened up after a few hours, but still nothing I’m willing to wear in public, at least not without something to wear over it.  Still, I now have a t-shirt for my favorite fictional band.  (That’s from Scott Pilgrim, for those of you who aren’t cool enough to know all by your lonesome.)  When I ordered it, the men’s t-shirts were AWOL, but they seem to be back now.  I might have gone for one of those, just because I prefer to wear my shirts loose. 

And speaking of weird purchases of stuff I probably didn’t need, last nights jaunt into Chinatown revealed that Ouran merchandise has finally made it’s way to Toronto!  Or, I’ve finally noticed it.  :)  I saw a Tamaki charm/strap thingie (it attaches to a cell phone or cd player, but has a handle), a tin box featuring all of the characters and some sort of compact that I declined to look at more carefully (it was behind glass).  Did I buy any of it?  NO!  My inner fangirl clashed with my inner cheapskate and I decided not to spend $30 on something I didn’t really need.  (They were $30 each, btw.)  Especially when Amy just brought me a bunch of peachy keen Ouran stuff from Japan.  She was so nice to me!

Oops!  Gotta go get ready for work, or I’ll be late again.  And there’s no real excuse for that considering I’ve been awake for four hours…

Curse you Viz!

This week was all about Viz!  I picked up 8 new manga and left 5 behind….  I’ll go back on Friday and will probably get the rest then.  Same deal as last week – I’ll try to update my boring little list as I read the new stuff… 

Ouran High School Host Club 7 – Kyoya gets trapped in a mall with no money and no cell phone!  Fortunately Haruhi comes to the rescue.  Also, Hunny’s brother Chika shows up determined to defeat his brother once and for all (and Mori’s brother is here too – they left him out of that episode of the anime).  There’s also a story with the Zuka Club girls kidnapping Haruhi (the Club guys and her father try to come to the rescue) and we get a glimpse of the twins as 5 year olds (so cute!) and their most beloved nanny….

Gals! 7
Whistle 13
Skip Beat 2
Yakitate!! Japan 1
Rozen Maiden 2
Beauty Pop 1

….and….

I had this conversation at the store today with my comic store friend:

Me, thinking as I browsed the new stuff: Zombie Powder?  Powder?  That’s… so lame.
CSF: There are a lot of new books this week, huh?
Me: Yeah, but what’s up with some of these titles, anyway?  Zombie Powder?  heh.
CSF: That’s from the guy who does Bleach!
Me:  ….  What?  Really??  Arg!  Now I can’t mock it anymore!

I also had to buy it when I had very virtuously decided to stop buying.  Such a hard life.  Anyway, it’s one of the few I’ve read so far and I really really liked it.  If you’ve read Bleach you already know what the art style looks like – it’s pretty close.  Maybe a bit rougher in places since it’s his first book, but I thought it was amazing how good the art is. 

A boy named Elwood gets caught up with a criminal named Gamma Akutabi and joins him on his quest for the 12 Rings of the Dead, which is the source of “Zombie Powder” a mysterious substance that can raise the dead and grant immortality.  This is a western/sci fi type book (think Trigun if Vash were scary) and very much an action story.  I laughed when I read the author’s introduction inside the book:

Hello, Kubo here.  This is my first graphic novel.  Mainly, it’s all battles.  It’s completely OK to just read through it without thinking about anything.  But if you feel like it, go ahead and recall some of these details as you read.  Like for example, in here, the one thing that brings the dead back to life is not God, or an angel, or a Phoenix, but Zombie Powder.  A powder that has a really annoying name.

My friend also had the nerve to call me a geek when I went back for it.  I countered with “Who’s playing a para para remix of anime tunes in the store??”  I believe it was a draw on the geek front.   We also assured a guy that Yakitate!! Japan had only gotten good reviews as far as we both had heard.  “Well, if it’s about bread… how could it be anything less than great?” was his vaguely bewildered answer.  I think he bought it though.  :)

Bits and Pieces

Ah, I almost blew off blogging tonight. (Again!)  I was finishing up Moon Called, which is (much to my happy surprise) a fairly decent werewolf book.  I’m not entirely sure why I bought it, since the blurb is kind of weird and disjointed and the cover isn’t great, but I’ve liked other books by that author so I gave it a shot.  Mercy is a skinwalker who shifts into coyote form.  She was raised by werewolves but never quite fit in, since she wasn’t able to join the pack and was then forced to leave her childhood home.  Now she’s in another pack’s territory, living on the edges and trying to get along with the werewolves, vampires and fae that live in the area.  I’ve not had great luck with a lot of werewolf books so I was glad this turned out well.  :)  I liked the characterizations of the wolves, the urban fantasy element was done very well (see Kitty Does the Midnight Hour for a bad example…) and the heroine was brave and plucky without being stupid about it and putting everyone else in jeopardy.  There’s nothing worse than a heroine who keeps getting into trouble because she’s too stupid to back down and find another plan…

More AMV torture

Well, not exactly music videos… I’ve already sent these to most of my friends, but what the heck.  Two I really liked with Azumanga Daioh characters – The Wizard of Ozaka and Lord of the Yen which are more movie trailer spoofs than anything… and Quid Pro Quo which has the characters from Descendants of Darkness debating what they would trade for a flying car (which is originally a skit from two of the guys from Clerks).  These are the things that made me laugh last week…

And in honour of my nephew, who has developed an Ichigo Mashimaro obsession to be proud of (I suppose it’s a good thing he can’t get any IM merchandise) here is a little promo episode of the show.  I guess it’s not really supposed to be on You Tube since the show has been licensed and is available for purchase.  Maybe you’ll want to go out and buy the dvd after watching…. :)  Also, I’m not sure why they’re in space.  It’s an imagination thing and no, they’re not in space in the regular series, though they do like a good game of pretend.

Snakes on a Plane

What to say that hasn’t been said already?  I had a great time at this one, though I couldn’t watch a lot of it (I spent a great deal of time cringing from the snake bites) and I left the theatre with a giggle headache, which is always a good sign.  I probably won’t be buying the dvd, though.  Like I could go through that again…  One thing I was surprised by and really liked was the sub plot with the FBI agent on the ground who was investigating the snakes and trying to find anti-venoms before the plane landed.  I just thought it added a nice relief from the SNAKES!!  Also, there were some characters who refused to learn and were entirely too casual about 1) being left alone in areas where snakes were known to get in and 2) sticking their hands into piles of stuff where snakes could be concealed.  There was a guy sitting a few seats down from me who really should have gone opening night.  He was by himself and kept shouting things at the screen, which got old really quickly. 

Vanished

My first new tv show of the season, and a disappointment.  I didn’t like it.  By the end of the episode I was so bored I didn’t care about the last twist and I was tired of the actors’ overacting and trying to be really really INTENSE (especially Rebecca Gayheart, who couldn’t quite pull it off).  The lead FBI guy should have just gotten a badge that said “I don’t take crap from anyone” and spared me the angst.  And poor Ming-Na.  She was reduced to running in to report things to the lead FBI guy (INTENSELY) and then looking serious while he did all the work.  It was like she was his secretary who got to pack heat.  Also, SIX subplots in one episode?  Geez!  Save something for episode two…  I have a friend who loved it though (probably because she likes the guy from Queer as Folk who played the INTENSE!! FBI guy) and one who merely liked it.  If I was really really bored I might consider watching this one, but quite frankly, I’d rather spend the hour doing something else.

Random Manga Observation

I was rereading Land of the Blindfolded the other night (such a good series, and I’m missing volumes 3 and 4 for some reason.  I think I lent them out and never got them back….) and was struck by the difference in the art for the first story in the series.  Even later chapters in the same book are much smoother.  Also, this series is really all about Arou for me, and he seemed so different when he first appeared in the story.  Much more mischievous and darker than after he falls for Kanade, and once Namiki shows up he kind of usurps the role of the rebel in the book.  In an angst competition between the two boys though, Arou wins hands down, which is probably why I love his character so much….

That’s about it for today, I think, though there were probably other things I felt like babbling about.  Hmm.  I guess I’d also like to mention that Tanya Huff (my favorite author and goddess of urban fantasy) will be at the World’s Biggest Bookstore on September 9.  My inner fangirl is squealing as I type….

Battlestar Galactica season 3

So… after neglecting my poor little blog all week, I’m back with a link only post!  But, it fits in with my last post which was all about tv so that’s okay.  The two season 3 previews for Battlestar Galactica are on You Tube and… I want it to be October now.  Really.

A spoilery type preview

A non-spoilery type preview (basically a lot of character poses over an inspirational speech from Tigh)

I’ll do a real post tomorrow, I think.  I hadn’t been sleeping again all this week, so while I’d kind of wander around online every once in a while, I wasn’t really up to writing anything coherent.  I’m feeling much more awake now, and since I’m going to go see Snakes on a Plane tomorrow, I’m guessing I’ll be in an energetic mood when I get home.  :)

Today at the bookstore this boy came up to me with a video game and asked me if the price was in dollars or pesos….  Dollars, kid  You’re in Canada.  He was cute though.  :)