Bloom Reviews

Welcome back to another “Last Week in Geekdom” where I comb the internet for the most important news you need to know. I’m currently sitting on the floor of the convention hall at Anime Boston as I write this introduction. It’s the last day of the convention and the place is fairly dead. It’s been super fun revisiting a convention I haven’t been to in upwards of five years, and I hope you all will take a minute to read my Anime Boston recap and merch haul post that will be coming later tonight or tomorrow. There were some super cool panels and I bought way too much manga for my own good. Anyways, on with the news and I hope you’ve all had a great Easter/April Fool’s Day!

Anime and Manga News

• It looks like the last two episodes of “Marchen Madchen” have been suspended. The 10th episode will be marked as the ending, with episodes 11 and 12 coming at a later to-be-determined date.
• The “Saga of Tanya the Evil” anime movie got a new key visual. The movie’s plot will follow events after the end of the anime TV series.
• An OVA for the series “Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san” will be bundled with the limited edition 9th volume of the manga to be released July 10th.
• The popular Boy’s Love manga “Ten Count” is set to get an anime adaptation. The manga series completed its story on November 14th last year.
• Toei Animation has announced a restructuring of sorts which will make room for a third company department specifically focused on the “Dragon Ball” franchise projects.
• The Blu-Ray/DVD 4th volume of the anime “Violet Evergarden” will include an unaired episode said to take place between episodes 4 and 5 of the series.
• The Japanese Government is planning on introducing new standardization for drawing software used by the anime industry, which it hopes will reduce companies’ reliance on Korean and Chinese animation companies.
• Sentai Filmworks has just announced that it has just acquired all distribution rights to the anime adaptation of “Taka Never Falls in Love” for this Spring 2018 season.
• Ichigo Takano, mangaka for “Orange”, has just announced a new manga in the works entitled “Kimi ni Nare (Become You)”. The first chapter will be released on April 25th.
• Pony Canyon teased the release of a new anime film “Liz and the Blue Bird” at Sakura Con, the first of two new films in the “Sound! Euphonium” franchise.
• Crunchyroll has announced new additions to its catalog including “Prison School”, “Escaflowne: the Movie”, and more.
• Sentai Filmworks has announced that it has licensed the “Cutie Honey” anime for worldwide release. The anime is slated to be aired this Spring 2018 season.
• Yatta-tachi gives us a comprehensive list of this month’s manga releases.
• Viz Media has announced at Anime Boston that it has licensed the “Dragon Ball” Yamcha spin-off, “Ao Haru Ride”, and more.
• The author of the original story for “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, Eiko Kadono, has won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for writing.

Comic News

• DC Entertainment’s President Diane Nelson is taking a leave of absence. The decision seems to stem from Nelson’s recent surgery and family obligations, but she is expected to return.
• Marvel and SB Projects have announced a joint venture named Mythos Studios and has acquired a 50 percent stake in Aspen Comics. Future projects include live action and animation featuring various Aspen Comics’ IPs.
• Marvel has announced the release of a new magazine entitled “Marvel Universe”. The magazine will be journalism-based and will feature previews, unreleased concept art, and more.
• “The New York Times Book Review” is introducing a new comic book and graphic novel section headed by Hillary Chute and Ed Park.
• Creator of “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” is slated to team up with “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” writer Erica Henderson to create a new line of graphic novels entitled “Secret Book Club”.
• Marvel’s iconic IP “The Fantastic Four” is set to return to print in August of this year with a new series of comics.
• Image has revealed its line-up for the Las Vegas shooting benefit comic anthology “Where We Live”. You can see a full list of contributors on this press release.

Featured Articles

• If you’ve been following the anime community lately, especially on Twitter and Reddit, you’ll have probably run across discussions surrounding the Flying Colors Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to collecting data on western anime fans. It has currently shut its doors amid controversy and backlash from the community. I had a couple links from Medium looking into the issues surrounding the Foundation’s actions and message, but it seems like all of those have been deleted. I’ll leave you with a Reddit thread and Anime Feminist’s discussion of the Foundation’s problematic collection of data around mental illness.
• “The Atlantic” has put together a great discussion of the themes and story of the comic “Saga”. A great read for any fans of the series like myself.
• New tariffs on the importation of paper could be crippling to the newspaper industry, which may mean cuts to the comics featured therein. So far, the comics industry has dodged this hike, but some companies are contemplated price hikes that could affect the industry in the future. Comics Beat goes into more discussion here.

Featured Videos

• The Canipa Effect discusses how the new digital currency Otaku Coin created by Otaku Mode might be a scam.
• Not exactly a video, but this “Graphic Novel TK” podcast episode goes over the process of pitching a comic idea to a publisher featuring Callista Brill, the Editorial Director for First Second (:01) Books.

Featured WordPress Post

• Atelier Emily gives an interesting post about the appearance of the mundane world in the anime “Patlabor”.
• JekoJeko on Uem! goes in-depth into the discussion around where we draw the line in the Lolicon community and its art.

As always, if you would like to get your blog post featured in this section, or know of a good one that deserves more recognition, you can let me know through Twitter, Facebook, or my Contact page before next Sunday.

~~Thanks for Reading~~

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