Manga drives iPhone in Japan

December 8, 2009 in Comics Conundrum, Manga Minutiae, Potpourri | 17 comments

Nope, nothing to do with this blog. Just felt like mentioning it.

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Comic publisher Devil’s Due is still facing financial turbulence stemming from over-leveraging in the collapsed book market. Massive, unexpected book returns (it’s the punch no one saw coming) have hampered the publisher’s ability to pay artists on time. Not to downplay the anger expressed by some on the forum, but this is a story that’s been repeated often throughout the industry in the last couple of years.

Devil’s Due is involved in the production of Rumble Pak for eigoMANGA, and had published various Capcom-based adaptations by Udon, and GI Joe/Transformers crossovers.

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Mobile analytics site Flurry reports that the newest iteration of the iPhone is enjoying success in Japan, and much of that is attributable to manga. In the month of October, the number of manga releases from major publishers was over 160, compared to under 30 titles in July.

One hopes that would encourage greater outreach from Apple to comic and manga publishers in the US. And maybe ease up on those content policies, too…

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Meanwhile, a potential selling point for the Droid over the iPhone? Porn.

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Spotted via MangaBlog… Graphic Novel Reporter has an interview with yaoi mangaka Makoto Tateno.

Her response to the question of scanlations is about as polite as a mangaka could be about it…

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It’s a slow news day, and you know what that means…

Random Porn Post!

From Pudding Pai Falling in Love, by Hiroyuki Ando, debuting in the last issue of Comic AG (weep).

You gotta admit, our manga pages look crisper and cleaner than anyone else’s.

17 comments

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hirohisa4president on December 8, 2009 at 12:27 pm

I hope youll have a review of bayonetta in january ^.^

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1. Simon on December 9, 2009 at 2:35 am
  
  Nah, I don’t do reviews here. But honestly, the last true action game I enjoyed was Ninja Gaiden. I was never a huge fan of the Devil May Cry series…
  
  Reply
Apple on December 8, 2009 at 12:43 pm

Oh no. I hope they haven’t turned Silent Hill into a Slippy Slidey Ice World.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlippySlideyIceWorld

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Masamonkey on December 8, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Hopefully the icey theme will hook grandmas into picking up SH:SM as Christmas presents.

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Randall Fitzgerald on December 8, 2009 at 6:28 pm

That is indeed a crisp and clean looking manga page… now if only it was called Pudding Pop Falling in Love and starred Bill Cosby, then we’d be talkin’ about some high class eroticism.

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Thomas on December 8, 2009 at 9:53 pm

You’ll have to let us know if Silent Hill is any good. As Americans and Europeans have proven incapable so far of understanding what made Silent Hill great, I’m not exactly about to use my Comic AG money on it yet.

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1. Simon on December 9, 2009 at 2:55 am
  
  Well, I wouldn’t say that western developers don’t get Silent Hill. It’s just that Silent Hill 2 set the bar so high, and every game after has been trying to recapture that magic too hard, and falling short. Honestly, I was disappointed with the last two outings from Team Silent; the villains in Silent Hill 3 were bland and had no clear sense of purpose in the scenes they occupied, 4 had an interesting premise but poor execution. Homecoming had great visuals, but it was very predictable.
  
  I’m actually excited about Shattered Memories, expressly because it doesn’t try to hew closely to the occult mythos of the original, or seem encumbered by the expectations of being another Silent Hill 2.
  
  The strength of SH2 really was the plot, which was an amalgamation of Jacob’s Ladder, Lost Highway, and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (most of the young’uns miss this one)… all western films. Every character was memorable, nothing felt tacked-on. The sense of oppression permeated the entire course of your journey. Too bad the scenario writer for SH2 was only ever involved in that one game.
  
  I think we (players and future developers) all just need to accept that the concept behind Silent Hill 2 cannot be redone. It is a stand-alone game. It’s in its own universe.
  
  Reply
  1. Roscoe on December 9, 2009 at 5:48 am
    
    It’s really too bad this on the Wii. Horror games, more than any other genre, can take great advantage of powerful hardware to improve the experience. It does look nice for a Wii game, but it’s still going to be running in just 480p.
    
    Regardless, I’ll still get it. Pretty excited about the lack of combat, since SH combat is awful anyway.
    
    Reply
    1. Simon on December 9, 2009 at 6:24 am
      
      SH5: Homecoming did a lot of cool things graphically; the world transformation sequences were almost as beautiful as the movie. But I think Silent Hill has always been about strong art direction, not necessarily pushing the limits of the hardware.
      
      One thing I did notice about the screen shots from Shattered Memories is that they tried really, really hard to recapture the character modeling style of the Japanese Silent Hills, and while not spot on, they were definitely more successful than the team behind SH Homecoming. It’s incredible just how convincing the character models from SH1~4 still look, even in this age of PS3s and Xbox360s. It’s too bad T. Sato isn’t working in games anymore.
      
      Come to think of it, with Yamaoka now gone, all the instrumental creators behind Silent Hill have moved on from the series.
      
      Reply
  2. Masamonkey on December 9, 2009 at 4:09 pm
    
    I really liked SH3 because I thought the story was really all about teen pregnancy and abortion and I love games that have something besides getting the bad guys behind them. You’re right though: every game has had these really neat concepts and themes, but the culmination is always, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s actually crazy cultists and some kinda goofy magic stuff!’ It always seems really tacked on to whatever thoughts and concepts are supposed to be going on in the player’s head up to that point. SH2 wasn’t the only one to have those deeper concepts involved, it was just the one that was able to tie those deeper concepts into the actual game-play much better.
    
    Reply
  3. Thomas on December 9, 2009 at 4:28 pm
    
    I am somewhat being unfairly essentialist, but there are a couple of things I’ve noticed in the Western adaptations, including the movie:
    
    1) Everything has to be spelled out. This is especially bad in the movie where Alessa tells you why she did everything. In playing the game, you kinda had to go through it two or three times just to figure out what happened. Some people may hate it when it’s this vague, but I love it.
    
    2) A focus more on the action than the story. Killing monsters in Silent Hill is just filler to me. The fact that Homecoming had a young veteran in the main character missed the point. The fact that Harry has no weapons in Homecoming makes my heart smile.
    
    3) No Japanese weird crap. Where are my Silent Hill no Uta and dog endings? I swear to god, Homecoming better have one.
    
    4) Maybe I’ll accept the ice. But no air-raid siren?
    
    The fact that you have no weapons is the big selling point for me, now. Maybe I will check this one out.
    
    Reply
    1. Simon on December 10, 2009 at 4:34 pm
      
      That scene almost completely ruined the movie for me. That, and the performance from the little girl who played Sharon. Her acting was very…. coached. There was nothing natural or convincing about her. But when it comes to child actors, a lot of it depends on what the director is able to coax out of them, so I blame Gans. The visuals were still very nice, though.
      
      Reply
hirohisa4president on December 9, 2009 at 12:33 pm

@simon so you must be excited for ninja gaiden 3 going to be multiplatform?

Reply
1. Simon on December 10, 2009 at 4:36 pm
  
  Not sure how I would feel about a Ninja Gaiden not made by Itagaki…
  
  Reply
  1. hirohisa4president on December 11, 2009 at 9:27 pm
    
    I thought ng sigma series was done pretty well since itagaki said he’d quit ninja gaiden after 2 was released anyway in an interview.
    
    Reply
Fezmonkey on December 10, 2009 at 1:42 pm

I’m really looking forward to Pudding Pai, and Witchcraft, and Teka-Pita, and Sister Summer, and Read Me, and Girl with a Thousand Curses and almost all of the stuff on the release schedule.

Reply
1. Simon on December 10, 2009 at 4:36 pm
  
  Girl with a Thousand Curses is available right now. Read Me is shipping.
  
  Reply

Manga drives iPhone in Japan

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