Wish reviewed; US Navy to publish manga full of seamen

Onii-chan no Ecchi has an audio review of A Wish of My Sister which, despite the, umm, visual stylings and themes, is probably our one book with mainstream manga appeal.  Go listen.

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A Geek by Any Other Name points to a post at the Libre forum revealing an imminent re-release for the yaoi series Finder in English.  The title has been in limbo ever since the dissolution of the original Japanese publisher Biblos led to a licensing dispute between Libre (who rescued those licenses in Japan) and US licensee CPM/Be Beautiful.  The English licensee has not been named, which makes for a lot of fun speculation over its identity in the comments section. 

CPM had previously indicated it was investigating legal options against Libre over the contested books, which made those licenses very unattractive.  This news may be a signal that, whether CPM’s original contracts were valid or not, they are nearing their expiration dates.  The forum post quoted doesn’t specifically rule out CPM as the publisher either, as far as I could tell, so another possibility is that the two have actually had a reconciliation.

That said, my money is on Aurora.

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In an interesting twist on the Japanese concept of “soft power”, military-focused newspaper Stars and Stripes has photos of a manga commissioned by the US Navy, to be distributed in Japan in an effort to improve the image of American servicemen there.  The book, drawn by Japanese artists, has a print run of 30,000 and was produced at a cost of $3 per copy (which seems a tad high, but this is a military program after all…)

(Found via MangaBlog)