Looking back on my most recent license requests, I notice an unfortunate trend: none of them run to the outlandish end of the spectrum. It’s all well and good to ask for things that you may actually receive, but it’s also important to pull out the stops from time to time… to ask for something massive, something commercially suspect, something old… something like Suzue Miuchi’s Glass Mask.

This is the sprawling tale of an ambitious, would-be stage actress named Maya Kitajima who responds to her mother’s dismissal and criticism with a burning desire for fame. (As Roxie Hart sagely noted in Chicago, “And that’s because none of us got enough love in our childhood. And that’s showbiz, folks.” Okay, Renée Zellweger’s Roxie may not have said that, but Gwen Verdon’s did, and Verdon’s is the one that matters.) Maya apparently endorses the Method, throwing herself into rehearsals and performances with reckless disregard for her own health.

And she has a rival, Ayumi Himekawa, who takes a more learned approach to acting and thinks she’d be much better in Maya’s dream role, the lead in The Crimson Goddess. And she has a mentor, Chigusa Tsukikage, whose own very promising acting career was prematurely ended by a disfiguring accident. And she has at least one love interest, entertainment entrepreneur Masumi Hayami, who can only reveal his feelings for Maya through gestures as an anonymous fan.

It sounds like the acting version of Kyoko Ariyoshi’s Swan (CMX), and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Both series launched in 1976, with Swan in Shueisha’s Margaret and Glass Mask in Hakusensha’s twice-monthly Hana to Yume. Swan concluded in 1981 with its 21^st volume. Glass Mask is still running, though it did move to Hakusensha’s monthly Bessatsu Hana to Yume. The 46^th volume of Glass Mask came out in October of 2010. The series has enjoyed to anime adaptations, one of which has been released in North America.

Dauntingly long? Check! (Miuchi indicated in 2009 that the end of the series was near, though.) Vintage, difficult-to-market shôjo style? Double check! (Hakusensha is somewhat skimpy with preview pages, but if you click on the red button with the open-book icon on the third entry down in the right-hand column, you can see a bit of Glass Mask and gape.) Do I want to read it like Maya wants to play the lead in The Crimson Goddess? Triple check!

What ridiculously long, commercially questionable series would you like to see licensed? Or do you just want the chance to read the rest of Swan, From Eroica with Love, and Oishinbo?

Anime News Network passed along the announcement of the manga nominees for the 15^th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize. You all know what that means, right? We’ve struck a vein of license request ore! It’s an interesting and diverse slate, and I’m sure it will fuel future license requests, but there’s one title that has an unshakable grasp on my imagination and curiosity.

That would be Jin, written and illustrated by Motoka Murakami and serialized in Shueisha’s Super Jump for a total of 20 volumes. Any manga that launches with a modern-day doctor finding a carcinogenic fetus in a patient’s skull, followed by that fetus then sending said doctor back in time is a manga I want to read very, very badly.

It’s being published in French by Tonkam, which makes it much easier for me to figure out details about the book. I’m guessing that the fetus is just a MacGuffin to send our hero, 30-something doctor Jin Minakata, back to the Edo period. He adapts to his new/old world and begins applying his modern medical knowledge to bygone problems.

A cholera epidemic in Yokohama… communicable diseases among the courtesans of the red-light district… “discovering” penicillin centuries ahead of time… a geisha with breast cancer… If you want to be a busy doctor and seem like a miraculous genius whether you are one or not, it seems like all you have to do is go back in time. (How you get there is your own problem. My suggestion would be to randomly x-ray the skulls of your patients for mysterious fetuses. Of course, any fetus you find in someone’s skull is bound to count as “mysterious.”)

Judging by the sample pages from the first volume that Tonkam has shared, the art looks very clean, detailed, and attractive in a seinen sort of way that won’t be unfamiliar to fans of creators like Jiro Taniguchi. And while it’s perhaps a little soon after asking for Zipang to dip into the well of rewritten history, I think Jin sounds different enough in era and focus that they wouldn’t cannibalize each other’s audience, should we see a day when they’re simultaneously published in English.

So that’s my first choice from the current Tezuka nominees. I’ve only chosen one cover image, because they’re all pretty similar, featuring a strangely blank Jin standing with a beautiful woman. I used to work at a local newspaper, and so many submitted wedding photos looked kind of like these covers, with the woman actively engaging the camera and the man staring out of the frame at something shiny.

Which of the Tezuka nominees would you most like to see licensed?

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I should request something in a romantic vein, but I’m just not in the right groove. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve spent most of the week catching up on Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack (Vertical) and reading Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (Last Gasp) for next week’s Manga Moveable Feast. Gory, often cynical fiction and autobiographical despair don’t suggest chocolates and flowers.

It’s also possible that I’m still a little fixated on mountain men and prize-winning manga. Fortunately, Shogakukan provides the right crossover property in the form of Gaku: Minna no Yama, or Peak: Everyone’s Mountain, written and illustrated by Shin’ichi Ishizuka, currently being serialized in Big Comic Original. Gaku won the inaugural Manga Taisho Award in 2008, and it won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2009.

Gaku seems to track more with my expectations of what happens when you try and scramble up the side of a tall and forbidding peak: you get in trouble. And when you get in trouble, you need someone like protagonist Shimazaki Sanpo to rescue you. Sanpo helps out with a volunteer rescue team that helps climbers in trouble in the Japanese Alps.

It seems to be fairly episodic, with various character stumbling into danger and being saved (or not) by our hero. It also seems to be very beautifully drawn. Shogakukan has a number of preview pages available for several volumes. If you click on the button under the cover image on this listing for the first volume, you’ll open up another window that offers a sneak peak… er… peek. I always like when creators combine stylized character work with realistic backgrounds.

Okay, so it’s possibly not the ideal time of year for rugged, outdoor adventure or stories set in wintry landscapes, given how sick most of us are of the wintry landscapes outside our front doors. But Gaku sounds like fun, and just look how excited Sanpo is about the prospect!

You know what seems kind of weird to me? That nobody has licensed any manga from Akiko Higashimura yet. She’s been nominated for the Manga Taisho Award three times for three different titles. She was nominated for the Tezuka Cultural Prize in 2010, and she won the Kodansha Award in 2010. Of course, the admiration of one’s peers and critics doesn’t necessarily translate into something marketable.

And yet, there’s evidence that her highly regarded artistic sensibility yields commercially successful product. Kuragehime, which won the Kodansha, has been adapted into an animated series, which is available in the United States through Funimation as Princess Jellyfish. While it’s not unheard of for a josei series like Kuragehime (which ran in Kodansha’s Kiss) to be made into an anime, it’s still unusual enough to be impressive.

The manga also has the advantage of falling into the “Nerds, yay!” genre. It’s about an apartment building filled with female otaku. They describe themselves as “nuns,” and each has her own religion. The lead, who’s loved jellyfish since memorable trips to an aquarium with her mother, wants to be an illustrator and has moved to Tokyo to achieve that, but she’s cripplingly shy. She makes an outgoing new friend, though, who becomes her roommate. The friend turns out to be a cross-dresser from a well-connected political family who’d rather work in fashion.

So there are geeks, secret-identity shenanigans, big dreams, romance, and, if I’m correctly informed, the pernicious influence of gentrification. What’s the hold up? Based on existing enthusiasm, I’d imagine that Kodansha is waiting for the best offer, or to establish their outpost well enough to publish it themselves. It’s up to six volumes.

And if I’m going to be perfectly honest, I’d rather read her Himawari: Kenichi Legend, which is running in Kodansha’s Morning. It’s about another aspiring artist, this time a would be mangaka who toils at an office lady for the same company that employs her eccentric father. There are 13 volumes available so far, and I just get a good vibe off of it, particularly because it’s supposed to be loosely autobiographical.

Her current series is Omo ni Naitemasu, which I’ve seen translated as Mainly Crying, running in Morning and up to three volumes. As near as I can determine, it’s about an extraordinarily beautiful woman who lives a rather isolated life. It also has really striking covers, which is always a plus.

So what are your thoughts on Higashimura’s license prospects? She’s clearly talented and prolific, neither of which ever hurt a mangaka. Which of her titles tickle your fancy? Do you think any of them will be announced by the end of the year?

My official guess: Kodansha will announce Kuragehime at this year’s Comic-Con International.