Thursday, May 21, 2009

PREVIEW CHILDREN OF THE SEA ON NEW IKKI SITE

Some exciting news has been buzzing around the interwebs last night and this morning... Viz is launching a web-only English edition of the rad seinen manga magazine IKKI. The site is now live at http://www.sigikki.com/ right now.

More details are in this article from PW, which explains that they will be putting up previews of new series on the site for free, and using the site to gauge interest in which titles to release in print form, etc.

Some other artists that have run in IKKI:
+ Taiyo Matsumoto (Number Five)
+ Naoe Kikuchi (Tetsuko no Tabi)
+ Iou Kuroda (Sexy Voice and Robo)
+ Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma (Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga 2.0)
+ George Asakura (Heibon Ponch)

The awesome news for us? The first title they are posting is Daisuke Igarashi's Children of the Sea.


[Click here to read the official first chapter in English]

They also posted an interview with Igarashi today. I'm skeptical of some of these initiatives, but IKKI is home to some awesome titles and the site is starting out pretty strong. According to them, upcoming series they'll release on the IKKI site are Natsume Ono’s House of Five Leaves, I'LL GIVE IT MY ALL...TOMORROW, by Shunju Aono, and Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida. FRESH.

UPDATE: A lot of international folks have noted that the IKKI English site seems geo-restricted to the US, like Hulu.com. You can search for tips but here's a quick way (from this site) to set up a proxy and check the site out from abroad:

0. Search for "us proxy list" or something similar and find an active US proxy ip and port. Write that down.
1. Start Mozilla Firefox.
2. From the main menu click on: Tools >> Options.
3. Click on the "Advanced" icon.
4. Click on the "Network" tab.
5. In the "Connection" frame, click on the "Settings" button.
6. In the "Connection Settings" dialog box that appears, click on the "Manual proxy configuration" radio button.
7. In the "HTTP Proxy" textbox, enter the IP address of the proxy server.
8. In the "Port" textbox, enter the port on which the proxy service is running.
9. Click "OK" to close the "Connection Settings" dialog box.
10. Click "OK" to close the "Options" dialog box.
11. Proxy server configuration is complete, restart the browser and check out http://www.sigikki.com/.

Did that work? Leave your tips in the comments for other folks.

20 comments:

Karel VeselĂ˝ said...

Cool. It's like scanalation, but legal :) Funily enough, IKKI was the magazine I brought myself from Japan just to have some "real manga" mag in my bookshelf. Not being japanese reader, all I could do was to browse the pages and guess the meaning.

Ryan S said...

@Karel: I like your description. It's a... FREELATION!

IKKI is a very nice looking book with a lot of interesting seinen series. It and Morning 2 are the ones I would gravitate to just based on their covers :)

RSS said...

Gettin hot'n'heavy over 20th Century Boys lately has me wondering if I'd like Heibon Punch! Bring it.

Azraelito said...

I would like to see more things of koji aihara, Iou Kuroda and toyokazu matsunaga!!

apart from that it is a great news, Today when I read it in animenewsnetwork I couldnt believe what I was reading!!

I hope this kind of proyect open doors to publihers in order to look for more underground or bizarre artists!!

saludos from argentina

Anonymous said...

Before I freak out over this completely oh-so-awesome news; I'd like to say a big thank you for all the coverage you've done on so many great manga authors. I'm a late Same Hatter but what you've done has negatively encouraged and fed me unsavory inspiration as an artist!

IKKI is great and you. don't. realize. how. facking. excited. I. am.

Travis McGee said...

Oh, lord, I was so excited, but it's VIZ's stupid media reader, which is scripted so that you have to be in the States to view it. So much for that ...

Anonymous said...

could somebody, whose manga-reader is working, save the pages and upload them somewhere plox?

Anonymous said...

so it's really one of this "for US viewers only"-shit like they often have on official animestreams? i just thought they have some temporary server problems or coding errors. they could have showed a note at least >:(

Ryan S said...

@Azraelito: Yeah, I would love for them to finally publish more of Even a Monkey Can Drawn Manga... it's hilarious and such an insightful parody of the manga industry and genres.

@smashingtofu: Oh man, that's so nice to hear. Thanks for the comment! I too am SUPER.DUPER.EXCITED>aboutthisshit!

@Travis, anonymous: Oh wait, is the site US only? derrrrr. That's really annoying. During my trip to Canada I felt your pain when I realized HULU is not accessible outside the US. Can you run a US-based proxy through yr browser and get access to it? (that's a bunch of steps, but maybe not too much hassle?)

Travis McGee said...

Ryan - I'd attempt it if I had the computer literacy to know what on earth I was doing ...

Eoin Marron said...

Wow, this is some awesome news! I couldn't fucking believe it when I read your post!
Can't wait to see what other series they'll be having, though anything from Ikki should be top-notch anyway.
Also, I'm having trouble getting the Manga Reader to load as well...

Ryan S said...

@travis: I'll try to type up some simple instructions and update the post! :)

@Eoin: It's a very cool development. We knew that they had licensed Children of the Sea but the other titles (and the entire 'do it online for free' angle) was a big surprise!

m said...

ryan: the instructions for the proxy set up works fine! i'm reading it now, thanks!

m said...

wow, just finished it, and this looks FUCKING AWESOME. seems really really good, thanks for the heads up, definitely gonna follow this one!

Travis McGee said...

Ryan - that did work! - thanks for helping me 'stick it to the man' ... read a little on the security issues with these things and it looks like one needs to be careful, but with that in mind, I can now view the content..

Ryan S said...

@m: glad it worked, the series is lovely-looking.

@travis: Nice, yeah I know about this from traveling and watching Hulu from Japan. Also, my buddy had to do it all the time to watch stuff and check out blogs from China

Hige said...

Thanks for that workaround - it worked a treat. The lack of a zoom option on Viz's manga viewer is a bit crap, but beggars can't be choosers. Igarashi's awesomeness overrode any minor niggles.

Ryan S said...

@hige: glad to hear it worked! It's weird that it doesn't have a zoom button, but i found when i made my browser huger (or even, my resolution higher) I could get it bigger as it scaled to fit the window.

Either way, happy it worked! I think many of SH readers are outside the US, so we gotta make sure they get the hook-up too :)

Eeeper said...

Hey Ryan, just read your post and the advice about reading outside the US. Finally I can this stuff. Nice one! Thanks!

Ryan S said...

@eeper: I am to please, my friend!