Reading Manga On The Kindle: Maximum Ride Review

While the Kindle has kept me from being buried alive by my books, the comics and manga just keep rolling in. For as long as I have owned my Kindle, I have dreamed of reading manga on it. I live in Manhattan in a teeny-tiny studio. Similar to many urban bookworms, I fight a loosing battle with available space for new books.  Every purchase is bittersweet because I don’t really have any place to put these acquisitions.  Manga purchases though are the worst because while I love the printed format, I only get about a half hour’s worth of enjoyment out of something that will take up space on my shelves indefinitely.  I would have loved for the Kindle to have been able to come in and be my savior.  Alas, not yet.

There are obvious reasons to be skeptic of Amazon’s e-reader as a platform for manga.  The artwork after all is the most powerful and compelling component of visual storytelling, and on the grainy screen of the Kindle 1 and 2 the fine ink strokes of an artist’s hand are not likely to translate well.  But when I stumbled upon the first volume of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride the Manga in the Kindle store, I still bought it without a moment’s hesitation.  I just had to give this a try.

I’m not going to really review the story itself this time.  As Maxiumum Rise is a graphic novel adaptation of James Patterson’s YA noveland I haven’t read the prose of Maximum Ride yet, I don’t feel like I could comment on it fairly.  The initial attraction for me was that here was the first manga that I had seen for the Kindle published and it was published by Yen Press.  I really love that house.  Though they come no where close to the volume that is manga giant Tokyopop, they’ve always put out a consistent and original line.  Small as they were in the beginning, they’ve taken some rather daring risks and I really respect them for that.  But that’s a convo for another day.  I could gush about Yen Press for quite some time.

I had little difficulty falling into the action of reading the manga over the e-reader.  I’ve been a web-comic reader for years so the idea of reading comics over a computer device is not all that unnatural.  To the Kindle’s credit I wouldn’t say the reading experience was horrible, but it does have a ways yet to climb.  It was much better than I expected. The scenes were reasonably clear and my eyes followed the story panel by panel without much stumbling.  The only confusion occurred whenever there was combat involved because the dialog got completely lost in the action. To fit on the Kindle screen, the image has to be reduced from what you would ordinarily see in a printed tpb.  That made for some very tiny type.  And though I have artificially perfect vision, my eyes really strained to make sense of what might as well have been kanji for all I could tell in places.  Now on a 1st generation Kindle I could not zoom in on the picture in order to enlarge the type.  To be fair though, the 1st generation really wasn’t designed to support graphic novels.  There have been other articles claiming that significant improvement was made n the second generation to better allow for manga and graphic novels.  And I believe you can zoom in, though don’t quote me on that.

I had to really struggle to read this volume and I definitely put in more than a half hour in order to do it.  I enjoyed it however, despite the challenges, but I’m not convinced yet that the Kindle is the place where the digital comics revolution is going to occur.  I would consider buying more comics for my Kindle; however, if a series grew into a property that I well and truly loved, I would likely switch back to paper for that line.  If you feel differently though, let me know and be sure to check out Tumor when it first pubs exclusively for the Kindle through Archaia with a HC run to follow. The first issue will be reportedly free, with the seven subsequent issues priced at .99 a piece.

/End of Line

~ L.

A Retrospect: “PW: Graphic Novel Sales Up; Manga Down” (Blamed on Twilight)

Okay so the story behind this post is that, I began writing this a long while ago after coming across an article in Publisher’s Weekly while researching my thesis. Never got around to finishing it, but in light of recent Twilight news this seemed like an interesting draft to salvage with the manga having been announced last week in EW.

From a PW article about Graphic Novel and Manga Sales from February:

“Griepp blamed the decline in manga sales on the tough economy as well as inventory reductions at Borders and the ongoing closing of mall stores. He also cited a decline in exposure of anime on cable TV and the overwhelming popularity of the blockbuster Twilight series, which competed with manga for the consumer dollars of teen girls.”

Bwhaaa?  Really? I fail to see how a set of four books published over a span of years competed for consumer dollars no matter how much merchandising was out there.  It certainly would have had an affect on the profits of specific series and genres.  The decline in exposure of anime on basic cable is the far more likely culprit along with the economy and ever increasing competition for shelf space.

We’re well into the field of personal opinion so feel free to ignore me; I have no delusions of being the Lorax of geeks.  While I can’t agree with the PW article, supposing Griepp was right, the Twilight manga is mildly ironic.  With the adaptation heading towards the Manga aisle will we see a significant sales bump across the format as a whole?  Of course.   So in a sense, Twilight will be saving manga from itself.  My hope is that Twilight fans will also pick up Vampire Knight and Rosario Vampire while they are over there.  (Especially Vampire Knight. <3 I have so much love for that series and one day I will get around to blogging about it.  Team Edward, you’re going to love Kiryuu-kun.)

Anyway as far as the rest of the article went.:

Graphic Novel sales were up 5% in 2008 while manga sales declined by 17%.  5% is a fairly small number so perhaps this is not indicative of a larger trend and was just a fluke.  However based solely on my own buying habits of late the statistics held very true.  And then I got to thinking.  Why was this so?

A lot of it has had to do with recent forms of peer pressure that have popped up in my own life.  Even geeks want to fit in with their fellow nerds and degenerates.  My boyfriend is a comics nerd as are many of my co-workers/former classmates and the bloggers whom I follow.  So now the people I talk with are this kind of geek, but there was a time when my posse was very different.  I mean, hell, I was President of our college anime club.

I don’t know where along the road I fell into these circles and fell out of touch with the same manga crowd  who fed my addictions.

This peer pressure thing is something that is very specific to my life based on the friendships I’m attempting to forge; however, the article prompted me make a few other observations about my current buying habits that perhaps have a broader impact.

In by-gone days I didn’t blink an eyelash at spending $100+ every month for the newest volumes in my favortie lines.  Those were before the darktimes, before the Empire, before tuition, groceries, and utilities.  Now, I struggle with the decision to lay down the money for a b&w,  200-300 page book which will only last me a half hour and yet will remain with me, taking up what limited space I have in my apartment, indefinitely.  Whereas a graphic novel may take me longer to make up my mind about it, but I tend to suffer less guilt after having bought a$19.95 trade hardcover printed in 4-color on a heavy pound, high-gloss paper.  The perceived value is higher, and now I’m at an age where hat kind of thing has begun to matter.

HELP ME!  Oh to young again and haphazard about my personal fiances.  Just kidding, but seriously, winning the lotto right now would be nice.

/End of Line

~ L.

Manga Review: Hayate Cross Blade

Not much going on in the blogosphere today.  I figured I ought to actually review something since this is supposed to be a review blog after all.  One problem…and this is a terrible thing for me to admit…I haven’t been reading much this semester.  Or rather, I haven’t been finishing much this semester.  I’ve got three books which I’ve been reading since September, but it’s going so slowly since I have virtually no free time this semester.

I have been trying to get back into the manga scene because at least I can plow through those in a spare half-hour and I do really miss it.  So I thought I’d share with you the one I’ve been pushing on all my friends lately. 

Hayate Cross Blade
ISBN:978-0765321817
Publisher: Tor/Seven Seas
Pages: 192  List Price: $9.99

Summary:  

When her twins sister falls ill and is unable to start school at the elite Tenchi Academy, Kurogane Hayate steps up to the plate.  Posing as her sister in order to hold her place until she recovers, Hayate becomes one of the sword-bearing students.

What makes this school’s sword program so unique is the ongoing tournament that sword-bearing students are able to participate in, the Hoshitori.  Through the Hoshitori students duel one another in fighting pairs to steal stars from their opponents. The more stars one has, the further up in rank the fighting pair goes.   And…students can win money for their victories.  

Hayate sees the Hoshitori as a chance to win enough money to pay back the loan her orphanage owes to the Yakuza.  There is one problem.  Hayate needs a sister-at-arms in order to compete, and she has her sights set on the morose Mudou Ayana,  Ayana has her own reasons for not wanting to participate in the Hoshitori after the recent breakup between her and her former sister-at-arms, but Hayate just won’t take no for an answer!

My Review:  

CUTE!  I loved Hayate Cross Blade.  I’ve been in such a slump over manga lately because the shelves are stuffed to breaking at Borders and maybe only half of it looks any good.  

Hayate Cross Blade was cute and hilariously funny.  I love the team that Ayana and Hayate make.  It isn’t just that they create a good balance, but their opposite personalities push each other to change and grow.  I can’t wait for future character development, and oooooh do I hate Yukari. Ayana you can do so much better!  The Yuri is kept light and sweet in this first volume, though I’m told it grows.   

As for the art style, again I have only good things to say of it.  There is a lot of variety in the shading, expressions, and body poses that keeps you interested in the art while remaining very clean.  The action scenes never get too crowded or confusing which I thought was impressive, especially when Ayana and Hayate enter into a bout with no less than 18 other girls -at once-.

Anyway, check it out!

Brief Vacation

I’ll be out of town this weekend at my boyfriends until Tuesday.  Actually, I’ll be out of town the next three weekends so posting ought to be light.

Anyway, for curiosities sake here are the books I’m taking with me this weekend:

World War Z by Max Brooks

Flash by L.E. Modesitt

and Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer

We’ll be stopping by Otakon in Baltimore for one day.  Mayhap I’ll have some updates on the manga industry or some such.  At the very least I might pick up a new series.  I’ve been meaning to get back into manga.  Anyone have some good recomendations?