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Mangasplaining Podcast Launches Newsletter With English Releases of Okinawa, 'These Days' Manga
posted on by Adriana Hazra
The staff of the Mangasplaining Podcast announced on Tuesday that it has launched the MSX: Mangasplaining Extra newsletter. The newsletter will include English releases of curated manga and will launch with Taiyo Matsumoto's "These Days" one-shot manga and Susumu Higa's Okinawa manga series, in partnership with Fantagraphics Books. MSX is also partnering with Udon Entertainment, and it will announce more titles soon.
These Days is a digital-only exclusive title and is available in the MSX archive for one year from publication date.
The newsletter is a weekly manga magazine that will feature curated new and classic titles. The magazine will publish chapters on Fridays. It will also include additional content for manga fans, including weekly links to new episodes of the Mangasplaining Podcast, the podcast show notes, original articles on manga, and interviews with manga creators. A paid subscription to the newsletter is priced at US$5 per month. A free subscription to MSX will give subscribers access to all of the non-manga content, as well as previews of the manga. Some titles will also be available as print editions.
Christopher Woodrow-Butcher, Andrew Woodrow-Butcher and Deb Aoki created the MSX: Mangasplaining Extra and the Mangasplaining Podcast.
MSX: Mangasplaining Extra describes These Days:
These Days is a meditative short piece about a manga editor who quits his job, and then isn't sure what to do without manga in his life. This work was created as a prototype short story for Matsumoto's eventual series Tōkyō Higoro, now serialized in Big Comic Original Zōkan (Shogakukan) in Japan. This early version of this story from the creator of Tekkon Kinkreet and Ping Pong has never been seen before – even in Japan – and will be released in its finished, inked form, as well as directly from Matsumoto's raw pencil artwork, offering an unprecedented look into the creative process.
Michael Arias translated the manga. Christopher Woodrow-Butcher lettered and edited it.
MSX: Mangasplaining Extra describes Okinawa:
The first project, Susumu Higa's Okinawa, was originally published as two thematically linked manga: Sword of Sand and Mabui. Okinawa begins as a chronicle of the particular impacts of the war on the Okinawan people, caught between the invading American forces and the Japan that annexed their once-independent nation only a few decades earlier. Rooted in that difficult history, the second half of Okinawa explores the present-day echoes of that war, which continue to affect the lives of the archipelago's residents. It's a gripping, powerful work, told in stand-alone chapters that can be easily read and appreciated on a weekly basis. Okinawa will be serialized 2 to 3 times per month, with a print collection planned for release in Winter 2022 from Fantagraphics Books.
Jocelyne Allen translated the manga for the newsletter and Patrick Crotty was in charge of lettering. Andrew Woodrow-Butcher is the editor. Fantagraphics Books published the manga in English in January 2019.
Source: Email correspondence
