Romance is a curious genre, given that so many books, films, TV shows, even video games often feature romances but aren’t necessarily of the romance genre. When it comes to romance manga, however, the romance really is the point. Romance manga also stretches so many different genres, the terms of which can be a little …
Literature
When the Horimiya anime burst onto Funimation in Winter 2021, it turned a lot of heads, and many of us became instant fans. The Horimiya manga, however, has been a huge success for quite some time, racking up insane sales numbers. The question — for both new fans of the anime and manga readers who …
Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the world’s most revered and beloved living authors. His books have been adapted to the big screen, have established him as king of the unreliable narrator, and have explored complex but relatable and human themes. The Japanese-born British author has never written a bad book. Every one …
Taylor Bradley from publisher Honford Star shares insight into their process of choosing local cover designers for their East Asian books and why they wouldn’t consider doing it any other way. For the first book that we published at Honford Star, we made a small but hugely influential decision – we’d hire a Korean artist …
I’ve written and spoken before about how exciting Chinese literature in the 21st Century is. If you aren’t paying attention to the wealth of imaginative, surreal, political, and evocative Chinese novels in translation right now, you really should be. Chinese literature, however, has a very particular legacy. So much so, in fact, that this legacy …
Arab literature is a world that contains multitudes. From a Western perspective, you might expect Arab stories to provide you religious or political perspective on a world you know little about. Sometimes that’s true and sometimes it isn’t. While the Arab world is home to revered classic novels and modern works of brilliance, one of …
With the rise of Superman and Batman almost a hundred years ago, the US became the home of comic books. Then, before the turn of the 21st Century, eyes turned towards Japan and its manga industry. Today, it’s Korean manhwa (also known as webtoons) that have the eager attention of so many comics fans. We …
Much like how Netflix and HBO sparked a new golden age of TV a few years ago, shonen manga is seeing its own new golden age. In the 90s, there was Dragon Ball. Ten years later, we had the ‘big three’ of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. Now, we have series’ like My Hero Academia, …
2020 was a really excellent year for literature in translation, with some stand-out new Korean books that included the spectacular Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo (tr. Jamie Chang). 2021, however, is looking to top last year’s offering of Korean books by offering us a refreshing selection of genre fiction and queer fiction. Until …
Tatsuki Fujimoto has gone from rising star to king of the shonen manga genre in a very short space of time. Like Attack on Titan’s creator Hajime Isayama, Tatsuki Fujimoto’s rise has been like that of a rocket, with all the speed, excitement, and splendour. It began with the Fire Punch manga and was solidified …