PWCW top 10 manga/top 5 manhwa list

The few days right before Christmas always seem to be the busiest, eh… gotta get everything done before everyone dissappear for a week. >_<;;

BTW, if anyone has the DVD set of Connections 1 by James Burke, I'd trade you $300 worth of pr0n for it.

+++

The latest (and last of the year) PWCW newsletter has a couple best-of-year lists, a top 10 for manga and a top 5 for Korean manhwa.  Of course, this begs the question of why "manga" is treated as a stylistic genre, while "manhwa" is determined by place of origin.  Anyway, I'm just nitpicking...

Top 10 Manga and Top 5 Manhwa

There are a few surprises… Boys of Summer, written by Chuck Austen and art by Hiroki Otsuka, and Air Gear by Oh! Great make the list.  No offense to either titles, just… unexpected.  Especially how highly Air Gear ranked (5th).

The other surprise… the buzz around Ode to Kirihito, arguably the most well-reviewed “literary” manga this year, failed to capture a slot for Vertical, while the top spot goes to The Building Opposite by Vanyda.  A quick search on Amazon only turns up the Spanish language edition… does this mean the book has yet to be released in English?

Oh, and PWCW also gives a tip of the hat to Ranma 1/2, which just recently concluded with the release of volume 36.  Neat.

Edit: MangaBlog has a growing collection of reactions to the list.  Apparently David Welsh has had The Building Opposite on order for well over a year, and even he hasn’t seen it…

And on a tangentially related matter, Comics Reporter has an interview with Anne Ishii of Vertical.