ICv2 is getting a little tired of posting the same story week after week, that story being “Fruits Basket holds bookstore market in unrelenting death grip.” I can sort of sympathize, because I feel a similar wave of ennui every time I see tiresome, event-driven Marvel and DC comics at the top of ICv2’s monthly tallies of what’s selling in the Direct Market. (June? House of M 1. May? Green Lantern 1. April? New Avengers 5. And so on.)
I also tend to agree with David Taylor at Love Manga that it’s exciting to see a shôjo title at the top of the heap. Beyond that, it’s great to see FB and Fullmetal Alchemist consistently at the top of the charts because I think they’re both terrific.
(At this point, I need to interject something about publisher web sites that was discussed over at Cognitive Dissonance. Viz really, really needs to work on its web site. It’s incredibly difficult to find anything resembling general title information. Tokyopop’s, on the other hand, is a model of organization and detail by comparison.)
Okay, back to FB. I wasn’t crazy about the first volume, but the ceaseless, pounding repetition at ICv2 convinced me that all those readers couldn’t be all that wrong, so I tried subsequent digests. And I don’t know if they only started treating the paper with epidermally transmitted narcotics with the second volume or what, but that book is frighteningly addictive. I’m only up to volume four, and while I’ve managed to resist openly weeping while reading it, there have been a number of close calls. (That Momiji kid is like a pathos bomb.)
So… um… suck it up, ICv2. Yeah.
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It’s Monday, and sure enough I’m blathering about some damned thing or another over at Comic World News. This week, it’s the latest in hot, plastic-wrapped manga from DMP.