I’ve been away the last few days, as you can tell by the lack of content. Naturally, whenever I go away, tons of news and announcements happen. Yen and Vertical are our culprits this time, so let’s see what’s new with them.
Yen had already announced the Accel World light novels last August, so it’s no big surprise that the manga will be coming to our shores as well. It runs in ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki Bunko, and is 4+ volumes. In case you missed the novel license, think ‘protagonist falls into RPG world’ plot.
The biggest license of the week in terms of total volumes is Übel Blatt, a 14+ volume fantasy title from Square Enix’s Big Gangan. It seems to be a dark fantasy sword-and-sorcery type story, and has some fanservice judging from that cover. The author, Etorouji Shiono, is best known over here for Brocken Blood, a JManga license that got 3 volumes out.
And from SE’s Gangan Online site we have Barakamon, a slice-of-life comedy by Yoshino Satsuki. This seems to be a fish-out-of-water type plot, as a city boy has to move to an island and finds life is totally different around these parts. It’s 8+ volumes so far, and has an anime coming soon.
As for Vertical, I’ll start with Witch Craft Works, which Random House sort of spoiled by throwing it on their site a couple of weeks ago. This is a Kodansha title from good! Afternoon, a spinoff of the main Afternoon magazine, and is 7+ volumes. The description seems to indicate ‘average boy, exceptional girl’, and as you’d guess from the title, also has a fantasy aspect to it. The anime is currently running.
Also from good! Afternoon is Ajin, which seems to be a horror/thriller title, 3+ volumes. The co-author, Tsuina Miura, is currently writing High-Rise Invasion from Mangabox. Hopefully this series will have a bit less survival game to it.
Lastly, from regular old Afternoon comes The Garden of Words, an adaptation of the anime film which is complete in one volume. The author also wrote 5 Centimeters Per Second, which did better for Vertical than they expected, I believe, so this new license makes sense. I hope for a happy ending, but given the author’s prior works (he also did Voices of a Distant Star), suspect ‘deeply bittersweet’ will be what I get.
Which of these are you most looking forward to?
Witchcraft Works and Barakamon are the only ones I’m really hype for.
And speaking of licenses Crunchyroll have added a bunch of good manga in the past month.
Hmmmm. I really liked Brocken Blood; I appreciated its bizarre non-sequitur sense of humor, random shout-outs to not-so-current events, and of course the bevy of cute crossdressing boys. The cover for Übel Blatt, however, is really making me not want to even try to read it. At all.
Barakamon, on the other hand, I’m quite looking forwards to. It sounds cute.