Animanga in the News: 5/12/11

Here you will find a run down of today's anime and manga news! If anything sent waves through the anime and manga world today, you'll find it in this post! By the way, I'm vintagemistakes and will be trying to fill in for Saladesu over the next couple of days. ;)



As of May 8, the 62nd volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga has sold 2,367,582 copies, including 1,788,455 during the May 2-8 week according to the survey firm Oricon. It is the 13th consecutive One Piece volume to sell over 2 million copies since Oricon began publishing its book sales ranking charts in April of 2008. (One Piece volume 50 shipped in June of 2008.)

Volume 62 is also the third consecutive One Piece volume to rank #1 on Oricon's weekly comic sales chart for two straight weeks. The first volume to accomplish this feat was the 60th volume in November of 2010.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web & ANN

You can see the full Japanese comic rankings here




The Japanese publisher Hakusensha ran a two-page, full-color ad in Wednesday's edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun paper with messages from 106 manga creators in Hana to Yume, Young Animal, and other Hakusensha magna magazines. The messages offer support to Japan after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake disaster (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai). Wednesday marked the two-month anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Hakusensha also posted all of the messages on its website. The manga artists featured in the newspaper spread are:


Sources: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web, Comic Natalie, and ANN



The Japanese publisher Kodansha announced the results of its 35th Annual Manga Awards on Thursday.



The winners will be honored in a ceremony on July 5 at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward. Each winner will receive a certificate, a bronze statue, and 1 million yen (about US$12,000). Inazuma Eleven, Ace of Diamond, Kuragehime, and Giant Killing won last year's awards.

Sources: Sports Hochi & ANN




Former Go! Comi creative director Audry Taylor confirmed on Facebook and Twitter that the gocomi.com address is now being used by an unknown party that falsely claims to be reviving the manga publisher. Go! Comic had stopped publishing in October of 2009 and had let its gocomi.com website domain expire last May.

The current holder of the gocomi.com domain claims to be Go! Media Entertainment, LLC, complete with Go! Comi's "The Soul of Manga" logo. The site is also asking for donations via a PayPal account. Taylor gave the following warning:

"The former gocomi.com website that I used to run has been turned into a scam by unidentified criminals unrelated to Go! Comi, a company which no longer exists. It is not real. Do not donate. Gonna [sic] my lawyers on them. Please share this post with manga fans and readers. "

Update: The domain is registered under a phone number and email address from Austria, and the PayPal account is associated with an email address from Germany. However, a domain registrant's contact information is not necessarily verified as accurate or true during the registration process.

Source: ANN




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