Grief Stages

Friday it was announced that Tokyopop has closed its door. Hearing that a big business is shutting down is always hard to hear, especially when it’s a company who’s products you like, although it might be harder for some than others.

We never really read anything from Tokyopop, but I anytime I was looking for a new manga, I’d always check their catalog first. They were definitely the pre-eminent publisher for a very long time. While I could never find anything of theirs that i was interested in, there was definitely other people who did (although clearly not enough to keep things operational). Regardless of whether you were an avid Tokyopop reader or just a general manga fan, this will definitely affect the manga industry in the next couple of years.

CBR has a very advanced review of Thor and really likes it. The slug for the article said it was spoiler-free, but I found that there was a pretty heavy plot synopsis. If you skim past the synopsis, they say that the movie is pretty fun. I was afraid that the majestic Asgard sequences and mundane Earth sequences would give the movie a weird dichotomy that couldn’t be resolved into a consistent tone. It sounds like that isn’t the case and flowing back and forth between the two isn’t jarring. They also felt that the movie was well cast, which is great to hear especially since Chris Hemmsworth is such a new actor and this is his first lead role. We still have a couple of weeks to decide if this is going to be a movie worth hitting the theaters for, but it’s heartening to hear that early reviews give it such high marks.