Bloom Reviews

Welcome back to another installment in “Last Week in Geekdom” where I comb the internet for all the news you need to know so you don’t have to. Happy new year to all my loyal readers and new people that have somehow found me! I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things after being away from blogging entirely for a whole month. It was super relaxing and now I’m finding it hard to get back into it, so expect delays and a not-so-predictable schedule for a while. Anyways, I had been talking about trying out something new for these news round-ups last year, so I thought I’d test out the new Top Stories format. Below are four top stories for the anime and manga section and the comics section. I’m still keeping the anime and manga announcements sections, but I’ve been trying to find ways to streamline and make these a little more interesting. Let me know in the comments if you like this format or want me to go back to just the plain bullet points. As always, have a great Sunday!

Top Anime and Manga News

A new visual for the second Made in Abyss film has been released. The first film, Made in Abyss: Tabidachi no Yoake, opened in Japan on Friday. The second film, Made in Abyss the Movie: Dawn of the Deep Soul, is set to premier in Japan on the 18th. Sentai Filmworks has plans to screen the films in the US this year to much fan excitement. Made in Abyss is one of my favorites from 2018, so I’m definitely looking forward to the release over here in the US.

Crunchyroll has released the 2019 line-up of its anime simulcasts for the coming season. Among the list is Boogie Pop and Others, Kemeno Friends season 2, and Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka. From the looks of the overall list of new series starting this Winter season, it looks like we may have slow one this time at least when it comes to what I’m interested in. Let me know in the comments if there’s any series you’re looking forward to in the Winter season.

Much chatter has been going on about Mokoto Shinkai’s new movie Weathering with You after Shinkai posted on his blog that he’s predicting the film will surpass all of his previous works and the website for the series has just gone up. It looks like the plot centers around a guy who meets a girl who can control the weather. So far it looks interesting and I look forward to learning more.

Changes to Japan’s Copyright Act could see those convicted facing up to two years in jail and a fine of up to two million yen. There have been a lot of discussions over the impact of piracy on the manga industry in Japan and the laws so far have not covered still images. But that looks to be changing with the new additions to the law in an effort to curb scanlations and piracy around the manga industry. I’ll be interested to see how effective this is and how it’ll affect the US scanlation scene.

Anime announcements:

• Naruto Shinden novel February 2019
• Baki Netflix anime on March 19th

Manga announcements:

• Gintama to end at 77th volume

Top Comic News of the Week

Aquaman tops the box office, earning more than Batman v Superman nearing $900 million in sales worldwide. Forbes predicts that the film will continue to hold strong at the box office, with sales inching ever higher, possibly becoming one of the biggest movies of December. It’s also passed The Dark Knight Rises as the biggest overseas grossing superhero movie to date. I’m interested to see if the trend continues and get out to the movies myself soon.

Todd McFarlane has said that the new Spawn movie will not follow recent comic book movie conventions in that it will be complete devoid of joy. The decision has spawned (for lack of a better word) a lot of conversation and speculation over whether this decision is a good one pointing out how the largest grossing superhero films are those that have some sort of comedy. But the Spawn series is itself fairly bleak, so the decision could work for this one.

Contributors to the Comic Book Journal have all come out with their top comics of 2018, highlighting some favorites of mine as well. There’s such an eclectic list of titles here that it’s got me interested in going through and adding a lot more to my to-read list. I highly encourage you to check it out and also let me know in the comments what you thought were the stand-out comic titles of 2018.

More news about the upcoming Netflix series The Umbrella Academy based off the Dark Horse comic series of the same name created by Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Ba. It looks like Way and Ba will be working closely with the Netflix team to keep the show accurate to the comics, with Way giving the staff a document detailing where the future books will be going and how the series will end. I’m kind of interested to see what happens with this come February.

Featured Articles

• Phil Boyle, owner of comics retailer giant Coliseum of Comics, comments on what he thinks are the major problems with comics retail and what publishers and retailers can do to solve them.
• ICv2 writer Rob Salkowitz makes predictions about the biggest changes that we could see for the comic industry in the coming year of 2019, including a move to Twitch platforms for comic creators to hold informal panels and meet-ups.

Featured Videos

• Oh No! Anime has a great compilation video of some great animation moments of the past year that I think y’all should check out. There’s no narration, just pure animation.
• Mother’s Basement has two great 2018 retrospectives this time with his videos on whether 2018 is the best year of anime and a video on the worst animes of 2018.
• Gigguk’s yearly wrap-up videos are always a treat, and this one for 2018 was no different.

Featured WordPress Post

• Atelier Emily talks opulence in Violet Evergarden touching on the Victorian Era aesthetics present in the show and how certain functions of the world lend itself to the overall appearance of opulence such as a post-war growing middle class.

~~Thanks for Reading!~~

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