OK, lesson learned. I will never go on vacation again. Sheesh.
Seven Seas snuck out a 4th license right after I made my post the other day. Aoi Sekai no Chūshin de is being released over here as World War Blue, and is nine volumes long. It runs in Micro Magazine, which is owned by… well, Micro Magazine, and is about a war between Sega and Nintendo with the serial numbers filed off, featuring various anthropomorphic consoles. Honestly, compared with the other three titles Seven Seas talked about the other day, I find this the most intriguing.
Vertical, meanwhile, has two new releases that are quite interesting. Satoshi Kon is better known for his anime productions, but in 1990 he did a short manga for Kodansha’s Young Magazine called Kaikisen, about a young man and the legend of a mermaid. It’s been re-released every few years or so in Japan, and Vertical will now be bringing it out over here, in one complete volume, as Tropic of the Sea.
The other announcement is, surprisingly (to me, at least), from Hakusensha, who seem to finally be getting back into licensing titles to North America after a long Tokyopop hangover. Shi ni Itaru Yamai is a two-volume series from Hikari Asada and Takahiro Seguchi. The author only has one other title (a short ecchi school series), but the artist is well known for his saucy series, including maid series Enmusu, which ADV briefly published before dying, and a very popular series in scanlation, Oretama, which I refuse to discuss. (And no, don’t discuss it in comments, either.) This series, Sickness Unto Death (as Vertical will release it), is about a clinical psychologist who lives at a boarding house while he gets his degree, and a girl who also lives there who has the worst case of despair this side of Zetsubou-sensei. It looks to be a psychological drama, and is probably the title of the three of these that I’m looking forward to the most, despite the reputation of the artist and the fact that it ran in Young Animal.
Huh. Given its pedigree (and its cover), the fact that Vertical is putting out Shi ni Itaru Yamai is the only thing that would make me give it another look. I didn’t recognize the nickname “Oretama”, so of course I went and looked it up to see what was so bad it couldn’t be mentioned; it’s actually something I’ve heard about (although not read) and it doesn’t sound as horrific as all that. Frankly, if you’re gonna write a totally shameless pandering ecchi series I could imagine much ickier premises.
Kaikisen, on the other hand, looks like something I might actually read,