Otaku, No Video

According to a recent Anime News Network report, Kodansha has announced that its new manga Makiko-san will be published both in its magazine Morning and for free on its website every Thursday.  Moreover, the web version is licensed under a Creative Commons (bn, nc, nd) license, allowing anyone to copy and share the comic as long as they attribute it to the author, don’t charge for it, and don’t change it.  Kodansha’s site explicitly encourages people to share the work.

This is ground-breaking because (as far as I know) it’s the first time that a major comics publisher has used a Creative Commons license.  This can open the gates for other publishers to use CC, which might see the use of broader licenses.

Personally, I’d like to see manga published under a CC license that allows others to modify the material if they so choose.  Non-commercial would be fine.  One can already do this under certain systems of law (including the American one), as long as the modification creates a new work of art.

Yen Plus cover

Hey, have any of you all come across a manga magazine called Yen Plus?  I stumbled across it in a rack at my local comic store, and picked it up mainly because it had cover art of Soul Eater (I’m the lone fan of the anime on the podcasts) and a slick-looking manga called Jack Frost.

The magazine is rather awesome, to be honest.  It has Japanese, Korean, and American manga, so one half is left-to-right (the Korean and American parts) and one half is right-to-left.  I enjoy a dominant percentage of the series, too, which surprises me.  (Then again, I had a similar reaction to Shonen Jump when it first started.)  Among the notable series are Higurashi, Bamboo Blade, Maximum Ride, Nightschool (by Svetlana Chmakova, creator of Dramacon), and the aforementioned Soul Eater and Jack Frost.  It’s mostly shonen, with some shoujo and comedy mixed in.

The mixture of content’s what surprises me most.  With Shonen Jump out there, I expected that any competing manga magazine would be left with the dregs.  But this stuff is good; clean action, consistent anatomy, solid character designs, and interesting stories (I was particularly amused that this issue of Jack Frost is narrated by a schoolgirl’s severed head).

Obviously, if you don’t like shonen, or you’re looking for something incredibly Deep And Meaningful, this won’t do much for you.  But this is just darned fun.

My lone copy is from November 2008, and it’s their fourth issue, so they haven’t been around for a while.  I do hope they can keep going; the American anime industry could really use another good, solid manga magazine right now to solidify the fanbase.

As you may have noticed, just about everything about Otaku, No Video has changed recently.

For one, our esteemed colleague Eric has decided to move on, as he’s become busy with his many cool creative projects.  He may still pop in now and again, for old time’s sake.

Meanwhile, Nick and I are changing the format of the podcasts.  Instead of talking about news that you can just as easily get from Anime News Network, and providing brief impressions about a bunch of different shows and movies, we’ve decided to go deeper.  We’re now watching ef – a tale of memories, and reviewing it three episodes at a time.  Each episode of the podcast will go deeply into three episodes of ef, discussing artistic direction, character design, editing, cinematography, and all sorts of stuff.  Ever wanted someone to really sink their teeth into an anime series, and analyze the heck out of it?  That’s what we’re doing.

There are also a few changes to the site.  This blog, for one, plus our YouTube channel on the homepage.  With the expanded media options here, we’re hoping to bring you much more cool content.

As always, let us know how we’re doing, via blog comments or Twitter or YouTube or what-have-you.  We hope you enjoy, and find us useful.