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R.I.P., CMX
CMX is the latest manga publisher to bite the dust--MangaBlog has an article about it here, and Melinda Beasi mourns the loss on her blog as well. What makes it doubly sad is that the demise may be due to lack of support from parent company DC rather than the bad economy. I don't know enough about the industry to know whether that's true or not, but it makes me angry to think that the loss of CMX could've been prevented, because I'm currently reading a number of their series, and have read many of their completed series. I'm mourning the fact that I may never get to finish Apothecarius Argentum, I Hate You More Than Anyone, Musashi #9, Venus in Love, Venus Capriccio, or The Young Magician. It's particularly frustrating since certain series, like Venus Capriccio, will be left hanging with only one volume left unpublished.
And I had just finished reading the first volume of Stolen Hearts, and was completely charmed by this shoujo romance about a teenage girl who discovers that the big, gruff, intimidating guy that everyone at school is terrified of is actually really kind and gentle. It has the added bonus of being set mainly in a kimono shop belonging to the guy's grandmother, where the girl goes to work off her debt after accidentally ruining one of the kimono--I love kimono! I especially love guys in kimono, but since this isn't a yaoi manga, most of the scenes involve having the heroine look adorable while modeling various kimono for the shop, which is still nice, and the guy (Koguma) also wears a kimono most of the time, and there's one scene where the guys in their class end up dressing in kimono. Book 2 will be one of CMX's final releases next month--there's only two volumes listed in the catalog, so I'm not sure if it's a short series, or if there's more that's been released in Japan, but I would be really sad to miss out on more of this series.
I had also just started reading Deka Kyoshi (a supernatural detective series) and the hilarious My Darling! Miss Bancho, about a girl who enrolls at a school ruled by a gang of rowdy boys, and winds up being the "Bancho" or "Boss" of the school after accidentally knocking out the old Bancho. So I guess I won't get to finish these either.
I have bought but haven't yet read The Lizard Prince and The Lapis Lazuli Crown, two fantasy series that I believe are complete (2 volumes each). And I have finished and enjoyed Cipher, Emma, The Girl Who Runs Through Time, Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne, Key to the Kingdom, Land of the Blindfolded, March on Earth, Moon Child, Penguin Revolution, Pieces of a Spiral, Shirley, Tears of a Lamb, Tenryu, The Time Guardian, and Tower of the Future. Some of these I read at the library, but most of them I bought myself--or in some cases, read the first few volumes at the library, then ended up buying the rest because the library didn't have the complete series. I ended up donating several of these to the library after I was done so that other readers could finish the series, too.
There were some other series in the CMX catalog that sounded interesting, like Fire Investigator Nanase and The World I Create, but I don't want to start them now, knowing that they won't be completed.
If there are any CMX books that you want to read, I would recommend grabbing them now before they go out of print. I cherish my Emma volumes, and I'm so relieved that they finished the series before this happened. (That's the series about the Victorian maid, and it has exquisitely beautiful and detailed art.) And I also highly recommend Land of the Blindfolded as one of my all time favorite series--it's sort of a modern fantasy about three teenagers who have ESP powers--it's a nice blend of fantasy, angst, and romance.
ETA: Oh yeah, and almost forgot The Name of the Flower, which recently ended--finished that one just under the wire, too! Nice angsty, if slightly skeevy romance between two emotionally damaged people--a misanthropic writer, and the young cousin he takes in after her parents die. Both have issues with trust and rejection, but the girl isn't quite as damaged as the guy, and brings him hope and the potential for healing, represented symbolically by the garden she grows in his yard. (Slightly skeevy partly because they are blood-related--distant cousins, I believe--but mostly because she's a teenager, although at least she's college age by the time the romance begins to blossom.)
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