Hey everyone, I’ve been out and about this whole month because of manga-related events.
I got a chance to check out Kodansha House, the pop-up experience that was in my home of NYC. And it was everything I hoped for. There was a lot of display of art from series like Akira, Initial D, Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Witch Hat Atelier, The Flowers of Evil, and Blue Period.
Not only that, there were goodies on sale, a bubble tea pop-up, 2 Initial D: Arcade Stage cabinets, a manga library full of Kodansha titles to read, and a 2nd floor for events with free concessions.
ALTI got a chance to watch the Blue Lock: Episode Nagi movie to celebrate the launch of the manga spinoff in the U.S.. It’s a nice change of perspective and it definitely pleased fans of Reo Mikage x Seishiro Nagi. The English voice for Yoichi Isagi, Ricco Fajardo, was also in attendance and did a Q&A about what he loves about Blue Lock and voice acting in general.
ALTBefore New York Comic-Con happened, I went to the Anitomo Manga Matsuri at the 53rd Street New York Public library and attended a manga publishers panel. Representatives from Viz Media, Yen Press, Square Enix and Kodansha all recommended titles worth reading in shonen, shojo, LGBT+, horror, series with anime tie-ins, and Spring 2025 picks. There’s a lot of titles worth reading and I can’t name all of them here. But popular titles like The Summer Hikaru Died, The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t Really a Guy at All, Kagurabachi, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Blue Lock: Episode Nagi, The Apothecary Diaries, The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity, and Dragon and Chameleon were featured.
There was some online commentary about The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity being listed as a shojo (it’s published in a shonen magazine) and someone at the panel did raise a point about a neglected manga genre that still hasn’t received its great moment yet (I might get to this in a future post). All in all, I enjoyed the intimacy of this panel as there wasn’t a large crowd and everyone immediately felt the energy of talking about manga with experts that know it well.
And while I didn’t go to New York Comic-Con, I did hear that anime and manga was front and center still despite major comic publishers not being at the event. A lot of the buzz came from Japanese-related businesses, so it’s nice to hear.
ALTFinally, I got a chance to see Makoto Yukimura of Vinland Saga fame. What a guy. I remember when Vinland Saga was first licensed here in 2013, not many people gave it a chance. Kodansha USA representatives at the time said the manga was struggling sales-wise and were relying on buzz to get new volumes published. Then an anime adaptation finally came 14 years after the Japanese manga debut and fans finally saw how great the series was. Yukimura was very chill and hilarious. He said he strives to be like Thorfinn as best he can. I got a chance to tell him that my favorite character is Hild an I’m looking forward to seeing how Yukimura ends the manga because the endgame is not too far.
Anyway, October was fun. I hope there’s more Kodansha House events in the future in other places. Other North American metropolitan areas deserve a pop-up experience like Kodansha provided. It’s an intimate setting for a community of fans that continue to demand the best from manga publishing folks. Everyone looked to have a great time, whether it was riding Kaneda’s famous bike to dressing up as a Titan lording over a town to playing Initial D to reading manga.
I’ll say this – despite manga sales not as high as they once were during COVID, manga is here to stay. We’re still in a golden age of manga here. Enjoy it while we still can!