I guess this is probably old news by now, but it’s been a pretty bad couple of weeks for manga lovers.  First, Go! Comi falls off the face of the earth, and now DC Comics is completely shutting down CMX, their manga division as of July 1st.

Unfortunately, I’m probably one of the people who helped lead to this in that my manga purchasing has pretty much dropped to zero for quite a few months now (sans the last couple volumes of Fruits Basket) until my financial situation is a bit better.  I can’t remember if I really bought anything from CMX anyway, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who has cut out things like buying manga (or comics generally) in an age where you don’t get any salary of any kind over the course of at least 3 or 4 years (and many would take even that), but the cost of everything else still goes up.

Here’s to hoping that some of their unfinished titles get picked up. Also, here is a list of all the titles they have released.

Gia also has more here.

This afternoon, Right Stuf International announced that they had licensed the anime series El Hazard: The Wanderers.  In addition, as opposed to some more recent Right Stuf announcements, El Hazard will be receiving a dub, per the website.  Right Stuff is releasing it in a single 26-episode box set on September 7th.  El Hazard was originally aired between October 1995 and March 1996.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, Funimation announced several new acquisitions, including:

• Rosario + Vampire (both seasons)
• Chaos;HEAd
• Chrome Shelled Regios
• Rideback
• Heaven’s Lost Property (Sora no Otoshimono), and
• GUNxSWORD

GUNxSWORD and Regios will be released late in 2010, while everything else is slated for release sometime in 2011.

Edit: El Hazard is apparently a rescue from Geneon, not an entirely new acquisition.

Thanks to @Sonicbug on twitter (via @calaggie) for noting that Go! Comi’s domain has apparently expired. The GoDaddy page in it’s place says that “This domain name expired on 05/08/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion,” so it only expired yesterday.

A WhoIs search for the domain shows that it was indeed registered by “Go Media Entertainment” on May 8, 2005, and the registration expired on May 8, 2010, but hasn’t been updated since February 27, 2008, meaning that they had bought the name for at least 3 years (May 2007 – May 2010), and it’s quite possible they bought it for a 5 year span back in 2005.

The fact that Go! Comi has been having problems isn’t anything new, but whenever a company starts blaming piracy for their financial problems, that’s probably a sure sign that the problems are much deeper than that. (I’m not saying that piracy and scanlations aren’t an issue, but they are unlikely to, singlehandedly, bring down a company.  However, it’s an easy excuse to give fans and possible investors without having to say what the real problems are).

Perhaps just as ominous, Go! Comi’s twitter account has been deleted.  The last cache file Google has for it was on April 8th, with the last actual tweet being from February 1st.  This definitely looks like a company which is winding down it’s existence.  You don’t start deleting your marketing efforts (especially free ones!) like Twitter accounts unless you just don’t plan on actually marketing things anymore, or there is no one left to market your products.

The evidence really is mounting that Go! Comi is going the way of other anime and manga companies, such as Central Park Media.

Update

The AnimeVice article about Go! Comi’s January post (referenced in one of the links above) notes this:

The company also posits that they may have to shut down their website in order to keep costs down and keep books coming– regular users will be given advance warning if this has to happen.

Running a website is hardly an expensive proposition unless you just run some huge site which takes up tons of bandwidth, which I have my doubts about with Go! Comi (I can’t remember what their website looked like, so I”m not really sure what they had), so the fact that they even discussed it as a possibility shows how short on cash they really were.  However, clearly no “advanced warning” was given about the website shutdown, which just piles on the evidence that Go! Comi is, in fact, shutting itself down.

I guess there may be some hope for the Gunslinger Girl manga series yet, as Seven Seas picks up the license from ADV manga, which appears to be shedding it’s manga licenses whenever it can.  Seven Seas will release the six volumes already released by ADV in two omnibus editions, and then will pick up with volume-by-volume releases with Volume 7, presumably sometime in the middle of 2011.

My only worry here is that Seven Seas is sometimes themselves not the most reliable manga publisher out there (though they were always better than ADV manga).  However, they might have gotten something good here with Gunslinger Girl.  I haven’t bought any manga in months, both because of money and because nothing really interested me, but this may cause me to buy some again.

Funimation has announced that they have licensed the anime series Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji). Black Butler is a 24 episode series that aired between October 2008 and March 2009, and was produced by A-1 Pictures and Aniplex.

A second season is scheduled to start airing in July.

As you may have seen, I have a new “News” link in my navigation now, which I hope to fill up with, well, articles about anime news.  However, seeing that there isn’t actually anything in that category yet, I thought I’d start things off by creating a post going over some of the news from the start of the year:

New License Announcements

• Funimation licenses Hero Tales, Master of Martial Hearts anime series (Jan. 7, 2010)
• Funimation licenses Hetalia – Axis Powers, The Sacred Blacksmith (Jan 8, 2010)
• Media Blasters licenses – and I have no idea why – Kanokon (Jan. 15, 2010)
• Sentai licenses Gintana (and the masses rejoice), Hidimark Sketch x 365, The Living for the Day After Tomorrow (not about blizzards), and Petite Cossette anime (Jan. 21, 2010)
• It’s nice to see anime licesnors start up rather than shut down. A new one is NIS America, and their first licenses are Toradora, Pandora Hearts, Persona -trinity soul-, and Our Home’s Fox Deity (from KadoUSA). (Feb. 11, 2010)
• Media Blasters licenses Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (and the masses rejoice again) (Feb. 18, 2010)
• Media Blasters grabs Record of Lodoss War from bankrupted CPM (Feb. 19, 2010)
• Sentai keeps going wild by grabbing Asu no Yoichi, Eyeshield 21, and Hell Girl 2 (Feb. 26, 2010)
• Funimation licenses Baka & Test and Dance in the Vampire Bund (March 4, 2010)
• Sentai/Section 23 licenses Papillon Rose, La Corda D’Oro, and Brighter than the Dawning Blue (March 19, 2010)

Other Generally Cool and/or Disturbing News

• 450,000 people visited the shrine that appears in the Lucky Star anime/manga.  I’m not sure that it’s cool that there are that many dedicated anime fans in Japan, or disturbing that they’re actually bothering to visit a shrine from an anime during New Years.
• Shockingly, I have not watched the entirety of FLCL. I think I watched one episode, maybe two, on Cartoon Network at some point, and then quit.  However, the fact that it is getting the HD treatment (now that I actually have a Blu-Ray player) may finally convince me to give it another shot.
• The fact that 80% of an Anime Con’s workers threaten to resign, and management don’t seem to think of it as a problem, would seem to show that the problem is with management, and not the workers.
• I thought my hiatus was long
• Finally, the news I’m most stoked about recently – several series, including CLANNAD and – unbelievably – Blue Drop are getting dubbed by Sentai.  It also suggests that Sentai/Section 23 has gotten back on it’s feet enough to actually spend the money on dubbing again.

My less-than-stellar colouring of the manga but I love this scene so much EDIT: FUCK YAY! THERE IS GOING TO BE A SCHOOL RUMBLE Z (2?) WHICH WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WILL BE ABOUT BUT IT’S OUT OCTOBER 17 GUYS As you may or may not know, School Rumble is my favourite anime/ manga franchise of [...]

Oh look what we’ve done! Your favourite website has reached one year old, that’s right ONE whole year. If you didn’t enter our competition YOU SUCK, you didn’t get the awesome cool prize which was by the way a voucher for Yes Asia, sucks to be you losers! Doesn’t that give you can incentive to enter [...]

Okay gaiiz, who else is pumped? Right now the views of The Asian Invasion are 99,932 - THAT’S RIGHT, almost 100,000 100 000 as of 7.32pm EST 2nd June 2008 (and in which both the admins sadly printscreened) so this is the perfect opportunity to announce a few things including: 1. A COMPETITION (with prizes) 2. THE COMING [...]