Ohisashiburi! Looks like I’ll be back to posting starting this month, and since the comments on the D.N. Angel blog entry have just been piling up and volume 11 is newly released in English, that seemed like the most logical thing to update first.
Tokyopop put out the final volume of the series on August 23, 2006, a full eight months after the release of volume 10. Even if you’d given up hope, you should be able to find it by now! Unfortunately, that is the final book in the series – for now - and the anime (which has been licensed by ADV and is available in a subtitled box set) is long since finished. The series does end with a bit of a cliffhanger, unfortunately – mangaka Sugisaki Yukiru is currently working on a series for Shounen Ace called EDEN, and the last time D.N. Angel ran in ASUKA magazine was August 2005. It’s not known when or if the storyline will continue, but if I obtain any new information on it I’ll be sure to post here. It doesn’t look like the novels or the animation-manga will be translated into English either at this point.
In any case, someone asked for a link to buy the English volume 11 online; perhaps you found the book by now, but if not you can pick it up on Amazon. Someone else inquired about buying the sountrack; for that I’d recommend trying CDJapan or Amazon Japan (search “D.N. Angel” in English). Both offer international shipping and English navigation to some extent. A link back to the D.N. Angel sheet music article is here for those who haven’t seen it. And I can’t give you guys any info on where to download the manga, which is what some people are commenting and asking for – wouldn’t you rather buy it and have a copy you can take anywhere? Support the industry, especially if you all love D.N. Angel as much as you say you do!
Feel free to ask any other questions you have, and if they’re within my power to answer, I’ll make a post or update with the info!
The Prince of Tennis (テニスの王子様, Tennis no Ōjisama) is one of the most popular manga and anime titles in Japan. It is written by Takeshi Konomi, who has also written a manga called Cool. The manga is published in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan, and is published in English in North America by VIZ Media. The anime showed its final episode in 2005 on TV Tokyo in Japan, though supposedly another 15 episodes worth are in the works, set to pick up where the original series left off. . The series has also produced a half-hour weekly radio show, over 100 music CDs, several games, multiple live-action musicals and a large selection of merchandise, and a live-action movie is also planned for 2006.
The manga is primarily set in Tokyo. Ryoma Echizen, a tennis prodigy, attends Seishun Academy Middle School, or Seigaku, in short, a school famous for its strong tennis club and talented players. Ryoma quickly defeats numerous upperclassmen shortly after entrance to secure himself a spot on the regulars team. In pursuit of their ultimate goal of winning the all-Japan junior high tennis championship, members of the team make new friends while learning and mastering increasingly complex techniques.
Even if you don’t like tennis, this manga is really interesting. Maybe it’ll even make you want to play – I got into Go from reading Hikaru no Go, after all!
Links:
Official Site
TV Tokyo Site
Shounen Jump Site
Prince of Tennis Domain (Fansite)
Source:
Wikipedia
The following new Tokyopop English manga titles have been confirmed by Anime News Network for July release:
Elemental Gelade (Erementar Gerad)
Kuro no Kishi
Redrum 327
Yorozuya Tokaido Honpo
Zapt!
Le Potrait de Petit Cossette
Strawberry Marshmallow (Ichigo Mashimaro)
Trash
Peppermint
Otogi Zoshi
Black Cat is a manga series by Kentaro Yabuki which was serialized in Shonen Jump. The series has concluded in Japan at 20 volumes. It is also licensed by Viz, and it is not released in English publically yet.
The story centers on a man named Train Heartnet who withdrew from an elite group of assassins called the toki no bannin (the Time Guardians) to become a Sweeper (a bounty hunter).
The Time Guardians are controlled by a shadowy parent organisation named Chronos. All of the members of the Time Guardians carry specially-constructed weapons made from a metal named Orihalcon. Train was the thirteenth member, and wields a gun made from Orihalcon. He appears like a cat, and disappears like a cat, and has never failed a job: he is known as “Black Cat”, the thirteenth, an ominous man who delivers bad luck.
A Black Cat anime also began airing in October 2005.
Source: Wikipedia
(I haven’t been able to locate any decent Black Cat websites to link to, so if you know of any, please feel free to email me or comment!)
The English translations of Negima!(volume #7) and Fullmetal Alchemist (volume #3) appeared in USA Today’s top 150 bestselling books chart, based on sales through Oct 02. Not too shabby!
Source: Manga News
Viz has announced their newly-acquired English license to the Konjiki no Gash Bell (Zatch Bell in North America) manga, with plans to distribute the anime in DVD form as well. This manga is pretty big in Japan right now – the 22nd tankubon, published by Shogakukan, was seventh on the Top Ten list last week. Check out the press release and read more about Konjiki no Gash Bell here!
Another little bit of manga history for you all.
Doraemon, one of the longest-running manga stories (if not the longest) ever debuted in 1970 and 1,344 separate stories were released by author Fujimoto Hiroshi before the comic series came to an end.
As the story goes, robot cat Doraemon arrives from the distant future and appears to Nobi Nobita, a hapless, lazy, weak-willed boy, in order to prevent a future in which his descendants are near-destitute because of his lack of success in life. Nobita, a bit of a crybaby, depends on Doraemon and his never-ending supply of futuristic devices in order to avoid bully trouble, gain morals and do well in school.
In addition to the manga, a feature animated film is produced nearly every year, and continually enjoys success, although Fujimoto-san passed away nearly a decade ago. Though the manga is really intended for children, it is still an interesting read, and greatly important in the history of manga, due to its ongoing popularity with new generations.
Not your typical thief manga, to be sure!
On Niwa Daisuke’s fourteenth birthday, getting rejected by the girl he loves seems like the worst of his problems. Until something strange happens to him…he discovers that he is the heir to a thieves’ legacy, and now that he has come of age, he must take up the life of crime that his grandfather before him led! A cunning personality named Dark lives within Daisuke, and whenever he thinks too much about the girl he likes, he turns into Dark. Of course, there’s more to the intrigue when it’s revealed who Dark likes…and the presence of a classmates’ long-standing family fued with the Niwas comes to light.
This series by Sugisaki Yukiru is being published in English by Tokyopop, and the tenth and finally eleventh volumes will be released in the next few months. It’s a great mix of genres that you shouldn’t miss!
Links:
Yami o Sukasu
OFFRAMP
Blind
For all of you gamers out there, upcoming quite soon is the much-looked-forward-to Jump! Super Stars for Nintendo DS. It’ll be featuring characters from many of the manga in Shounen Jump, so head over to The Magic Box for more info!
The Magic Box – Jump! Super Stars
Another CLAMP feature, Chobits is one of their newer series, with the same Gothic-style clothing of early titles but using neither the initial angst nor Magical Girl shoujo style they seem to have perfected in earlier successes. (Not to say that some angst doesn’t pop up eventually…this is CLAMP we’re talking about.) Instead, Chobits is more considered to be a guys’ manga, as it is the story of a young ronin (cram school, pre-college student) who finds a seemingly broken but beautiful female robot (a “persocom”, basically a walking computer) named Chii in the trash. As you probably might have expected, he immediately finds himself attracted to Chii, and can we go so far as to say that he…loves her?
Produced in 2000, the manga ran for eight tankubon before its completion, all of which are now available in English from Tokyopop. As you might expect, there is also an anime version, which is also commericially available.
Links:
Anipike – Chobits
(sorry about the cop-out links, my connection is to skippy to search properly! ;o;)
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