Christopher, if you’d like a review copy of The Manga Cookbook (or any other Japanime/Manga University publication), please contact me by e-mail!

High school debut is good and after some time should be popular. I heard Beauty pop(?) the one about hair cutting is doing quite well. Lovely Complex has been raves in japan (even has a anime) but i dont think it will be a hit here in the US like ouran host club. I think the jokes wouldnt translate well with some readers. Honey&Clover, is a awsome series but i dont think it will hit with the younger shoujo fans. Its more on a joesi level and i swear that each page is overcrowded with text. (not a bad thing but i dont think some people will fully take the time to enjoy the deep emotional story attatched to it)

For manga I think that should be published. I think Clamp no kieski(sp?) should definitly be on the shelves here. People are begging for this title and for some reason TP wont do it. *shrug* i have no idea why.

High School Debut. If that one isn’t going to be liked, I’m going to be disappointed, especially since it’s so good.

And yeah, take all copies of GodChild, Cain Saga, and Vampire Knight too. All of these are gothic, and also going to be popular….

With Vampire Knight having an anime out in Japan, I expect Squee-Levels will only increase.

It is rather hard to judge these things due to how fandom tends to split- those who watch anime on tv/on dvd/focus on licensed manga, and those who are downloading god knows what. The later category doesn’t seem to be aware of where you can actually buy anime/manga, so they tend to freak out at Cons

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12484.html

Curiously, Fairy Tale seems to be doing really well.

Otherwise… Hell, Camera Camera Camera maybe?

Skip Beat!, Love*Com, Special A, Kitchen Princess are musts. Gakuen Alice as well. Honey and Clover and Sand Chronicles are getting raved by bloggers, so get those too. And there’s a little known manhwa called Bride of the Water God that’s quite liked as well. Volume 1 and 2 are out.

Josei will be a good pick. Get some LuvLuv or Aurora titles for that. Also, Eternal Sabbath and Nana will pull in many women….

That’s all I can think of at the top of my head…

Looking past Shojo Beat – Shugo Chara has a 4th book coming out before the end of the month, and a current (in Japan, anyway) anime tie-in (20+ episodes) that the kids may or may not be downloading. Also from Del Rey, I’ll add to the Kitchen Princess votes (but you likely already knew about that one).

It’s not manga, but the Warriors adaptations are going to be popular (again, you already knew that). The sleeper from Tokyopop may be Love Attack.

Let me repeat that: Love Attack

You might also look at the Aranzi Aronzo books from Vertical and the Manga Cookbook from Japanime — the kids may not know a damn thing about these but the covers almost sell themselves.

Lovely Complex should also be rising in the popularity charts, I’d guess, but again, not with quite the same levels of popularity. It’s going to probably be another six months or a year before we get another break out hit, just because that seems to be how these things go.

I can also see Sand Chronicles selling well. It’s a Shojo Beat title, and it has the added push of being serialized in the magazine.

Of course BL sells well too. The Junjo Romantica anime started airing in Japan recently, so the manga version (published by BLU) is definitely becoming more popular.

As for what’s hot these days– the Special A anime is doing pretty well, I think, so I’d expect at least a small surge in the manga’s sales. At least, *I* went out and bought all three volumes available to date. And if you still have any of the Slayers novels, I’m betting that the new anime season is getting people interested in picking those up again.

…But most of the series that keep coming to mind are ones that have just been licensed and aren’t out yet: Bamboo Blade, Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, etc, which isn’t much help. ^^;

ES, Eternal Sabbath is buzzing.

Doubt is brilliant(let me add this is the manga featuring the game ‘Rabbit Doubt’not the thing Viz are pushing with the pimple-faced girl), that is pretty much guaranteed to garner bad publicity about corrupting the youth, if history is anything to go by. Serial killing, violent game play and blood.

Someone always finds Blame for the first time and word of mouth makes it move. You get one person to open a copy in a crowded room and that’ll shift.

I like Asano Inio’s Solanin a lot. It looks modern, if you know what I mean.

Sand Chronicles got a lot of blogger praise, as did Honey & Clover, but I’ve no idea if that translates into actual sales.

If you are not above BL then you might try stocking some new releases from June

http://www.junemanga.com/index.php?

I make 99% of my manga purchases online due to where I live and the fact that Chapters has a miserable selection of manga for women (young and old) and you need to order their yaoi/BL online.

You might also win points if you can get some of the Josei/ladies manga from LuvLuv or Aurora press

http://www.luvluv-press.com/

http://www.aurora-publishing.com/

Many younger things who are not armed with credit cards and are therefore are not able to order online, so you might make some gals really happy if they could pick up some of those titles at your table.

For a general manga though ~ not girlie type, I’d like to recommend Masashi Tanaka’s GON. My 8 year son is mad for this wordless series about a tiny T-rex.

Girls seem to like Kitchen Princess (Del Rey), Love*Com (Viz/Shojo Beat), ….maybe Gakuen Alice?