Blogs

One Piece #57 is Fastest Manga to Sell 2 Million

The 57th volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga has sold 2.005 million copies in two weeks to become the fastest manga volume to surpass the 2-million-copy mark in the history of Oricon's ranking charts. Shueisha had printed three million copies of the volume in its first printing, and it had already sold 1,690,932 copies in its first week of release.

Naruto Shippuden to be available online right after it broadcasts in Japan.

RE:
http://www.japan-manga.jp/content/spunky-ninja-rides-digital-convergence...

I can't tell you how surprising this is. I remember going to comic conventions and buying
illicit VHS tapes. Then eventually you could get anime, but it was *years* after the Japan release. I can't believe how much the market has changed that you can get your anime so quickly and online legitimately.

Now, if more production companies would follow suit, I'd be thrilled.

--appleseed

Studio Ghibli's Miyazaki to release manga about the inventor of the WWII Zero fighter

Studio Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki will be producing a manga for Model Graphix hobby magazine. The two-part series will be called "Kaze Tachinu" (The Wind Rises). The focus will be Jirō Horikoshi, the famed inventor of the notorious Mitsubishi A6M Zero, Japan's signature fighter plane of World War II.

This is a inflammatory topic for a studio best known for touching stories of childhood ([amazon B0001XAQ0A inline]), cautionary tales against war ([amazon B0001XAPZ6 inline]), and impossible love ([amazon B0018QT94I inline]).

Ball And Joint Dolls

I have never been into figurines. Mostly because I am clumsy. I am really impressed with the
work going into these new dolls. It is some hybrid between cosplay and garage figurines?