Bloom Reviews

Welcome back to another installment of “Last Week in Geekdom” where I comb the internet for all the news you need to know so you don’t have to. I have returned from my short hiatus and am feeling much better, so I’ll be hopefully going back to a Wednesday/Saturday schedule of reviews with our regular Sunday news for the following weeks. If anything changes or I feel the need for another short break, I’ll let you all know. For now, the highlights of this week are: Lion Forge and Oni Press have merged leading to a bunch of layoffs in the industry; Funimation has hired ex-Crunchyroll exec to be their new GM; and Marvel topped 50% marketshare last month for the first time in nearly a decade. Be sure to check out the articles and videos I linked to below as well. There’s some good stuff this week, especially from Twitter. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, and as always, enjoy your Sunday!

Anime and Manga News

Sony and Funimation have appointed ex-Crunchyroll executive Colin Decker as General Manager of Funimation. Sony hopes Decker’s experience with Crunchyroll will help increase the influence of the FunimationNow streaming service.

Crunchyroll has added a host of classics to its line-up including: Space Warrior Baldios, The Twelve Kingdoms, Dancouga: Super Beast Machine God, Blue Seed, Blue Seed 2, GoShogun, the GoShogun: The Time Étranger movie, EAT-MAN, Kaiba, Ultra Maniac, and the Inukami! TV anime and movie.

The Japan Times goes into detail over the struggle that many young animators face in the Japanese anime industry. Japan Animation Creators Association points to improved pay and conditions for older and more experienced animators, but conditions and pay for younger animators, specifically those that do “between” work have remained low and stagnant.

Anime Announcements:

• Non Non Biyori season three announced
• Blade of the Immortal to get new adaptation
• Adachi to Shimamura TV anime announced
• Val X Love anime announced
• Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! Anime announced
• Bones teased work on new original movie

Manga Announcements

• Junko (Kiss Him Not Me) launches new manga in June
• 341 Sentōdan (Black Lagoon creator) launches June 12

Comic News

Lion Forge and Oni Press have merged companies in an effort to strengthen their market share. The new company will now be based in Portland, OR with Oni Press taking over publishing of all creator-owned books and Lion Forge staying the home of Catalyst Prime and all company-owned IP’s. The New York Times dropped the news on Wednesday and The Comics Beat has followed up with coverage of layoffs of many key staff members and recent announcements.

Marvel Comics has topped 50% in the April 2019 comics marketshare, beating out DC at 25% for the first time in years. Bleeding Cool points out that this is the first time they have seen Marvel this high since 2008. This is likely due to the fact that Marvel released twice as many titles as DC that month, many of them making the top sellers list.

Avengers: Endgame is set to top 2 Billion dollars at the box office this week. The film has drawn quite the crowd and ticket sales are rising fast, nearly double that of any other film out in theaters right now. Though that is to be expected of the last film in the Infinity franchise. We’ll have to see how high it continues to grow.

Comicsgate has launched another wave of attacks on trans and non-binary comic creators by falsely accusing creators of transphobia. Comicsgate members have been launching hate on Twitter and then changing their profiles to claim they are trans to then falsely report people for hate speech and get them banned. Bleeding Cool has some of the details on this latest drama.

Featured Articles and Interviews

• Deb Aoki on Anime News Network answers the question of why so many publishers are doing omnibus editions of manga now.
• @Minovsky on Twitter covers the recent interview with Junji Ito at TCAF 2019 in this long thread.
• Kazuma Hashimoto (@JusticeKazzy_) details why thinking Japanese media is inherently apolitical is a fundamental misunderstanding often driven by lack of accurate historical texts outside of World War II.
• Comic store owner Nick Rowe (@SPD4649) on Twitter details his frustration with the comic industry and its early failed attempts to bring Junji Ito overseas.
• Anime Feminist looks at shoujo manga and how sexual assault and harassment have become normalized within the genre.

Featured Videos

• Strip Panel Naked discusses Sex Criminals and how its subtext is brought to the surface through fourth-wall breaking moments. It’s a comic I’m not a huge fan of, but I can appreciate the analysis here.
• Mother’s Basement talks about why animation quality generally doesn’t matter among fans and how the new One Punch Man season took advantage of this.
• Super Eyepatch Wolf discusses how manga and anime creators have altered what it means to be a battle series, creating a new genre that’s basically non-battle battle stories.

Featured WordPress Post

• The Afictionado looks at how and why the recent Marvel movies have turned her off from the franchise as a whole through their ever widening stakes and a divergence from personal stories.

~Thanks for Reading!~

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