Yes, they just won’t stop announcing things! Well, they may stop for a couple of months at least, as they’ve now filled their 2013 calendar. (Except they say ACen will have 2014 licenses. Can anyone stop Vertical, those mad licensing fools?) So, what do we have this time?
Shin Sekai Yori, aka From the New World, is an adaptation of a 2003 novel that’s been running in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, which these days is getting far more licenses over here than its parent weekly magazine. Seems to be a future utopia that may not be as utopian as the lead characters would like to think, and also has BL and yuri elements. It’s 2+ volumes, though I imagine that Vertical got an assurance from Kodansha that it wouldn’t go over 10 volumes before they picked it up.
Meanwhile, for those who saw Vertical’s license of Helter Skelter and wondered if that meant they might get more Kyoko Okazaki josei titles, wonder no more! Pink is a late 80s title from the publisher Magazine House, and is a heartwarming, touching story about a girl and her pet. Sort of. Anyone who says there’s not enough josei out there should love this complete-in-one title.
Yay! One cover that screams “Not for you!” and another that says “Just for you!” :)
I was looking at the cover for pink and thinking it was vaguely familiar, and then I remembered that one of my favorite obscure academic publications, the US – Japan Women’s Journal, had an article on this manga many years back; it never sounded like anything I particularly wanted to read (from the article, it comes off as rather weird and cynical), but I’ll probably buy it anyway in the hopes of encouraging more josei. I must say the new cover makes it look much more cute and harmless than the original cover (which ANN has a link to); I kind of wonder if Bill 156 is responsible for axing the nude version, or if it just looks too dated. It certainly doesn’t get across the blunt sexuality of the story like the old one did.
If Shin Sekai Yori is as pandering with its BL elements as it is with that cover, I might take a chance on it, but I suspect it will be more of something to snark than to truly enjoy.
An old josei manga that was reprinted in Japan 20 years after its initial publication and has been licensed in English? Sign me up. Its story also sounds kind of bizarre (and possibly allegorical?), so I’m curious about how it’ll resolve.
Hmm, I’d like to know more about these BL elements in Shin Sekai Yori, I seem to recall that Vertical has explicitly mentioned they won’t license BL. so I’d be (pleasantly!) surprised to see any.
“Hmm, I’d like to know more about these BL elements in Shin Sekai Yori, I seem to recall that Vertical has explicitly mentioned they won’t license BL. so I’d be (pleasantly!) surprised to see any.”
I thought Vertical’s restriction was on explicit BL, not BL in general? They did do Lychee Light Club, which, come to think of it, was pretty explicit.
In any case, looking into the manga adaptation of FTNW, it looks like the BL elements of the novels have been dropped in favor of extra ecchi-ness, so I retract any expression of interest I may have made. But the fans of blatantly pandering yuri fanservice apparently have a treat in store.
Ah well if it’s just ecchi and yuri then I’m not interested tbh.
I may have misunderstood where Vertical stands on BL, I think I just picked up something from a tweet so I probably missed the details. I somehow missed Lychee Light Club too so… *goes off to explore*
This is a bit shallow of me, but I want to get Pink solely based on the cover. It looks so simple and gorgeous… Plus, I need as much josei as I can get.