Ohikkoshi, the great crossover hope?; Tokyopop adjusts ratings system; misc. grunting about IE7

Don’t know why I missed this, but Journalista reviews Hiroaki Samura’s Ohikkoshi… seemingly in direct response to the  aforementioned TCJ thread.  Dirk finds it’s not high art, but not completely commercial lowbrow either… which might make it ideal as a gateway manga for the uninitiated.

Oh, and Samura sensei draws some mean traditional Japanese bondage art.  No relevance to this review; I just like mentioning that factoid.

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MangaBlog links Crocodile Caucus links True Confessions of an Hourly Bookseller, who documents a Tokyopop rep’s visit regarding a recent manga controversy (more on this later.)  One of the developments revealed here is that Tokyopop will be adding genre labels to their books, in addition to their age ratings.  Unfortunately, it is not clear whether the genres Tokyopop will be using will refer to subject matter (i.e. mystery, sci-fi, horror, etc.) or intended audience (shoujo, shounen, seinen, etc.)  In addition, Tokyopop will make their age ratings even more conservative, which illicited some head-scratching from Brigid.

While on the subject of labelling…this is one area I feel manga publishers in general have shown far more responsibility than other comic publishers (many of which are quite opposed to it.)  One thing censors have proven time and time again is that context is not important to them… a scholarly work using a small image with nudity as an example makes no difference to them as, say, one of our books.  So I’m all for more reasonable, honest labelling, applied consistently.  If a book has violence, say it has violence.  If it has T & A, say it has T & A… age appropriateness may be subjective, but these things, not so much.  And while Tokyopop’s proposed system is not perfect, it’ll be one of the best out there.  In a way, this is another example of how manga, as a whole, places more importance on serving the public… the dumb, dumb public (except you Icarus Publishing readers, you’re smart, smart, smart!)

Oh yeah, and the controversy that prompted the visit from the Tokyopop rep?  It was Paul Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics.  Pulled off the shelf… Again.

And if you don’t know, the offending image in question is a panel from Condom’s seminal (heh) ero-manga series, Bondage Fairies.  With all the talk about Seven Sea’s recent questionable licenses, it’s actually Fantagraphics who has managed to get a book pulled from 2 libraries now, moving us ever closer to midnight on the manga doomsday clock.  Naughty, naughty Fanta.

(Come to think of it, one gentleman is currently writing a licensed manga compendium, and our books will be mentioned in it… ooooooh boy.)

Edit: Brigid is pretty certain this refers to the same incident as reported earlier this year.  I assumed it was different because the blogger declined to name the library, even though it’s already gotten quite a lot of coverage online, so the library branch where it happened is common knowledge… mea culpa.

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One more late night tidbit… Tokyopop’s website finally looks right in Internet Explorer 7.  So a pat on the back to the code monkeys at TP, and a furled eyebrow of disapproval at Microsoft, which managed to break half the internet for me and mess up my UPS lables because the browser automatically shrinks images to fit for printing.  Thanks for adding a feature that no one asked for and can’t be turned off.  Just what were they thinking? =p