They’re coming fast and furious, folks. Let’s start with Viz, which has two new shoujo titles and one big seinen one, as well as a new shonen license that surprises me.
Honey Blood is from racy shoujo manga Sho-Comi, and as you might guess by the word blood in the title, it features vampires. Normal girl is worried about the recent vampire attacks… could her neighbor be a vampire? Judging by that cover, I’m guessing this is in the ‘if you like Black Bird’ vein…
Kiss of the Rose Princess is from Kadokawa’s Asuka manga, and promises a fantasy reverse harem story. Our heroine is told bad things will happen to her if she ever takes off the rose choker her father gave her. Now it’s gone… and she’s surrounded by hot knights! This is truly terrible. This looks like a lot of fun.
The big news is another Naoki Urasawa series has been licensed. No, not Billy Bat, that’s still only in Japan. No, we aren’t getting any fashionable judo girls yet either. Instead we get Master Keaton, which Urasawa co-created (and there’s a bit of controversy behind that, apparently) and features an archaeologist/ex-Armed forces member who travels the world investigating claims for Lloyd’s. This ran in Big Comic Original for 6 years, and Viz will be doing it as a fancy signature title, with color pages and everything. The anime was also released over here about 15 years ago (so in the ancient age of North American anime).
If this does well, who knows? We might get Yawara after all! Or Happy!, Urasawa’s incredibly angsty and depressing tennis manga. Or Pineapple Army, which Viz put out one volume of waaaaaaay back in the day. The sky’s the limit!
And editing my own post, because Jump has some new announcements as well! In addition to the expected Jaco graphic novel, as it’s by the Dragon Ball creator so DUH, we have the long-awaited release of Assassination Classroom! I had assumed the basic plot of “kill your teacher” made this unlicensable, so it’s great to see Viz picking it up, particularly as I hear an anime is due soon. It’s great fun and heartwarming, GTO with an alien smiley face. Definitely highly recommended!
“GTO with an alien smiley face”? I’m sold!
Also, super psyched we’re getting Master Keaton! I believe the controversy stems from Urasawa claiming he wrote it and the other guy being too dead to say anything about it. I personally don’t think Urasawa wrote it, going based on the anime, it doesn’t seem his style imo. I’m actually lucky enough to have all the anime (was it really released that long ago? Yikes!), you should see how high some of those singles have gotten.
Cool. More Urasawa is always good. So, that probably means they’ll follow the same japanese 12-volume deluxe re-edition of Master Keaton as the current french (1/2 finished) and spanish (3/4 finished) editions do, right? Those volumes are about 320 pages each in 5,8×8,3” (which is exactly the size of the other Signature titles).
http://www.kana.fr/manga/master-keaton-tome-1,1630
http://www.planetadelibros.com/serie-master-keaton-837.html
I’m currently following the French edition. I’ll have to see if it’ll be worth double-dipping. Seeing as how there is no information up on Amazon yet, it’ll probably be fall or next spring before they start up anyways.
I’d really love it if they got Yawara! though. The spanish edition (which was only published in catalan, by the way, not in the more widely used castilian) was canceled in early 2013 after 19 of 29 volumes and my italian isn’t good enough to really enjoy the current italian edition I’m buying. Though maybe the other regions are all waiting for the new perfect edition to finish that apparently started in Japan just this January (just noticed that myself).
http://www.editoresdetebeos.com/catalogo/catala/manga-en-catala/cinturo-negre/19
http://www.paninicomics.it/web/guest/search_product?search=yawara&gaq=yawara