Top moeblob manga K-ON! is to resume in the spring, much to the joy of fans.

The announcement comes in the pages of Manga Time Kirara – further details are promised at a later date.
Naturally, with the nature of the ending there are plenty of questions over what form the continuation will take; if it is to be a chronological continuation a “university chronicle” seems the most likely form. Given the dependence on existing characters an “Azunyan inheritance” scenario seems less likely.
The actual motivation behind the restart is not hard to guess at – more material for a third season, most likely.

Seven manga artist from Enterbrain has created this lovely mural for the Machi★Asobi Vol.4 anime event in Tokushima

All of the mangakas represents Enterbrain’s bimonthly magazine Fellows! and drew something related to Tokushima in the mural. They are:

• Michiyo Nii (Good Afternoon Teatime)
• Aki Irie (Lan to Haiiro no Sekai)
• Ruchi Kikuchi.
• Koji Miyata (Last Dance wa Odoriba de)
• Natsuko Takahashi (Ren Sensei no Shosai)
• Masao Otake (Hina Matsuri)
• Kaoru Mori (Otoyomegatari)

The mural is drawn live in front of visitors and took 8 hours to finish

A video of Kaoru Mori drawing on the Mural

For more video and pictures you can visit the Gigazine website

The adventures of the Genshiken (Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai 現代視覚文化研究会, or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”) of Shiiou University will continue with Genshiken II

Genshiken II or Genshiken Nidame will feature most of the old cast, including the now club president Ogiue Chika. The manga will be serialized in the Kodansha Monthly Afternoon magazine starting this November.

Via Livedoor

Popular Shounen Jump manga, To Love Ru will have a spinoff in it’s sister magazine Jump Square titled “To Love Ru Darkness”
The title, which ended abruptly last year was highly popular with readers of the magazine, and even had an anime series based on it. While no other information is given, it’s highly plausible by looking at the promo picture that this will revolve on the character Konjiki no Yami (Golden Darkness).

REJOICE EVERYONE — for we have a story piece to welcome the Bon Odori Festival! The new series of popular comic Crayon Shin-chan (local release is entitled Dik Cerdas) will hit the streets of Japan next month!

The Japanese manga series came to an end after the tragic death of its creator, Yoshito Usui last year. However, fans from around the world requested for the return of Crayon Shin-chan in any form from the publisher. Hearing those plea, Usui’s former assistants formed the savior team – the Yoshito Usui & UY Studio – and continued on with the series! The new series of Crayon Shin-chan will be published in Futabasha Publishers’ monthly magazine Manga Town on Aug 5th 2010. “In response to the fans’ expectations, we would like to provide a high-quality finished work,” a Futabasha official said

Crayon Shin-chan follows the adventures of five-year-old Shinnosuke “Shin” Nohara, or just Shin Chan and his parents, neighbors, and friends. It was first published in 1990. Usui was found dead on Mount Arafune, Japan in September last year. He was believed to have slipped and fallen off the cliff as the last shot in his camera was taken from the place. I hope with this new continuation, all of us fans can re-live back Shin Chan’s adventure & enjoy the future of the great Yoshito Usui’s legacy

Sauce: http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/news/20100716k0000e040013000c.html

See the three mangas above? Any difference? Not really. Indeed they are of 3 different languages, but they are still manga, and all of them are “official”, since the English and Malay version have been given the license by the original Japanese publishing company to be republished in local language. But what irks me is whenever anyone talks about “original” manga, why they never consider the Malay one to be original?

This issue started when the case of scanlation based websites are in danger of being shut down came to surface. Apparently many butthurt patrons of these websites are trying to justify their actions, saying that the reason they use the websites are because “original mangas are expensive to buy”. I found that surprising, since well, for me a manga that cost RM5 is not really what they call expensive right? But then I realised that when they say original manga, they meant the overpriced, English translated imported ones, rather than the locally Malay translated nor the original Japanese published ones.

First and foremost, what IS licensed manga/book/materials? Well, they are legitimate reproduction of the original product, usually being changed to cater for a local audience, by a company that has been given this license by the original publisher/producer of the product. In the case of manga, it’s usually by the publisher in Japan (eg: Shueisha, Shokagukan, Kodansha) given to a local publisher in that particular country (Viz, Tokyopop, del Ray in the US, Tora Aman and Comics house in Malaysia) to publish a local version of that manga. If you buy a licensed manga, if you turn to the back page, you can see the license information for that particular title

an example license page shown here on the back of the One Piece Malay manga

In practice, any manga that is published with this license are considered original. Now for the love of god, I still can’t fathom why manga readers in Malaysia, especially the younger generations still can’t consider these locally published ones as original. I mean these companies have been around in Malaysia for ages. Tora Aman was the original (and still is) license holder of the Doraemon manga in Malaysia. Comics House published Dragon Ball ages ago. And yet most of the younger generation only consider the US imported ones as originals. Basically I have no qualms with that. Their superior taste has nothing to do really with me, but when most of them starts to use that “oh original manga cost a lot thus why I don’t buy them”, then I want to say, “just stop bullshitting then”.

Some of these people also says that the reason they don’t buy local published manga is because the quality of translation is not up to par with the US published ones. Hmm? Well I don’t know about you but I still remember this

Tokyopop’s English version of Initial D encountered a lot of controversy due to the editor’s decision to translate everyone name into English, and make them talk like a bunch of redneck drifters. Apparently, many was not amused, and panned the decision. So much for quality eh? Not only that, I hate how the english version lacks dust jacket, changed the volume covers, and made larger. I love the original size of manga that the local publishers follow since it fits in my trouser pocket.

Amazingly enough, even places like Kinokuniya and Borders are shunning them. During my manga reviewing days, all I got from them were the English versions, apparently using us to boost sales. But the most perplexed thing about this is how Kinokuniya can have a large section of Chinese translated mangas imported from Hong Kong/Taiwan, but non from Malaysia! I can only shake my head is disbelief.

Apparently all of these actions have a knock on effect on the local publishers, since that they are slowing down with the publishing. Some titles have even been dropped, titles, that you CAN’T GET from the “superior” US publishers. And I am left fuming since the only option that I am left with to finish these titles are to get the original Japanese ones. Thankfully it’s still cheaper than the US version. But it won’t be long till the local publishers will publish less and less, and stop altogether, and for me it will be a sad day. I still prefer my Conan to be called Conan instead of Case Closed. FML