Manga cancelled for copying photo; Tokyopop to bring back Gutsoon title?

So uhh… see anything interesting on the news lately?  Yeah…

The classy thing for Turner to do would be to graciously apologize and offer to make a huge donation to the city of Boston.  But given the righteous fury of Boston mayor Thomas Menino and his ”post 9-11 world” schlock, I hope TBS fights this to the end, and offer the money directly to relevant police agencies and charities rather than give Menino a feather in his hat for re-election.

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Totally forgot to mention that AG issue 50 reached stores this Wednesday.  But hopefully you all remembered to go pick up your copies anyway, right?

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ComiPress has coverage of a new manga plagiarism scandal… however the author wasn’t caught copying another drawing, but a photograph.  Eager to show their tough, zero-tolerance policy on such misbehavior, publisher Shueisha promptly canned the manga series Switch by Rin Yoshii.

I’m really surprised that the punishment… cancellation of the offending series and perhaps the destruction of one person’s career pending an investigation into two other manga by the author… is so swift and severe for what could be generously described as photo-referencing.  And for only one single instance, which could easily be remedied with a new panel for the now-immaterial trade paperback.  If such a hardline stance were adopted here, I’d imagine just over half of the creative workforce would be laid off.

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Prospero’s Manga reviews Council of Carnality Unlimited:

But aside from that, this is a title that doesn’t make me want to scrub my brain afterwards. 

That is so going on the back cover of the 2nd printing.

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The still-permalink-less Anime News Service has the rumor of the day… two, actually.  First, Berserk may be ending soon.  If you don’t care about this news, you’re a jerk and I don’t like you.

Second, Tokyopop may be republishing a title from the now-defunct Raijin magazine, the almost-seinen manga anthology whose greatness was simply too overpowering for American audiences, and whose cancellation has led me to curse the pocky-chomping, plush-glomping, wai! wai!-spouting manga fandom each and every day since.  You ingrates.

Quoting ANS quoting Daniel Zelter paraphrasing Tokyopop rep:

It’s not out of the question. In fact, we’ve already licensed one of the old Raijin titles. It isn’t scheduled yet though, so saying which one it is would be premature.

Please don’t be Guardian Angel, please don’t be Guardian Angel, please don’t be…