When a mecha suit lands in his bedroom, 14-year old Renton Thurston gets recruited into Gekko State, an anarchic skyfaring militia/commune. He then meets a cute, blue-haired girl who's also a mecha pilot, and things only get stranger (and more exciting) from there.

That, (and a bunch of surfing robots) is just some of what you'll find when you read the first omnibus collection of Eureka Seven, Bandai Entertainment's collection of the first three volumes of the manga by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou (the creators of Deadman Wonderland) based on the anime series from BONES.

Guest reviewer Shaenon Garrity dove into this mega-sized omnibus and found echoes of another anime in its story -- but she also found that it's got a few things on its side that help it to transcend being just another manga adaptation of an anime series. Read Shaenon's review of Eureka Seven Manga Collection Volume 1 and find out what she found to be most fascinating about this anime-inspired manga.

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Now that you've had a chance to check out the list of 50 Essential Manga for Libraries, you might be asking yourself, so how do I convince my local library to add them to their collection?

According to librarian and author Robin Brenner, you don't just run up to your friendly neighborhood librarian and holler "Hey, you guys really need to get more manga here!" Besides shooshing you, the librarian will probably need more info to act upon your suggestions. So with that in mind, I also asked Robin to give some tips on how to approach a librarian and get them to see things your way. She kindly obliged and came up with these 6 easy tips to get more manga in your local library. Read more...

The Fall 2010 convention season is now upon us, and in less than a month, both anime/manga/J-pop culture and comics/sci-fi fans will be converging on Jacob Javits Center in New York City for the first ever combined New York Anime Festival and New York Comic-Con on October 8 - 10, 2010. In prior years, the two events were held at different times of the year, but this year, Reed Exhibitions is taking over most of Javits Center, making this combined show New York City's biggest comics-centric event of the year.

In past years, NYAF attracted a diverse array of anime and Japanese pop culture talent, and this year is no different.  The music line-up is particularly strong this year, as pop duo Puffy AmiYumi will be performing at Irving Plaza on October 10, visual-kei rockers VAMPS will be performing at Roseland on October 9, but will be at NYAF for a special Q&A session with fans on October 8. Read more...

Recently, I asked librarian and author Robin Brenner to write up an essay explaining why borrowing manga from a library isn't the same thing as reading unauthorized scanlated manga online. In her essay "4 Reasons Why Libraries Are Not The Same As Scanlation Websites," Robin made this comment:

"For those of you who exclaim that your library doesn't have manga, or doesn't have the titles you want to read: There's a very simple solution for that. Ask for it. Go to the library, walk up to the Reference Desk, and tell them how very much you want manga in the library. Give them a list of the top ten titles that you think they should order. Get your friends to do the same."

So I threw it out to About.com readers: which 10 manga titles would you most recommend to your friendly neighborhood library to add to their collection? Many of you responded in the comments and via Twitter, which was awesome! I collected and tallied your choices, and narrowed it down to the 50 most frequently mentioned titles. I then passed it on to Robin to get her take, from a librarian's point of view. The result is the list of 50 Essential Manga for Libraries. Check it out and maybe more importantly, pass this list on to your favorite librarian.

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