So Right Stuf has updated their site with Kodansha Comics releases for September 2011. The big reason to do this, obviously, is to start getting those preorders rolling in for Sailor Moon, and I know that readers of my blog will be doing that. It did have some new information, however, and I thought it best to go over it, as talking about things with only one source and no confirmation or press releases is, well, what I do best. :)

It’s a pretty packed schedule, in fact, with 13 volumes due for release that month. In terms of stuff we either already knew about or aren’t surprised to see, there’s new volumes of Arisa (4), Deltora Quest (2), Fairy Tail (15), Negima (31), Ninja Girls (7), Shugo Chara! (12), Until the Full Moon (2), and The Wallflower (26). 12 is the final volume of Shugo Chara, and the Until the Full Moon reprint should end here with the final volume. Also, the Wallfower has now ‘caught up’ with Japan, so I imagine ongoing releases may be more spaced out.

Next we have new things that we already knew about from Friday, i.e. the release dates for Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V. Pleased to see the latter keeping its full title. They’re both due out 9/13/11.

Lastly, we have three omnibus releases. We already knew about Negima, and this month sees the 2nd of those, which will re-release Volumes 4-6 with a new translation. This will contain the ‘Kyoto arc’, which, much like Rurouni Kenshin, is considered a great place to start by fans who know the beginning of Negima is… not as good as it gets later on.

We also see ‘Love Hina omnibus 1’, which will presumably contain Vols. 1-3 of that Shonen Magazine series, bringing it back into print. I’m uncertain whether that will have a new translation/editing the way Negima is, or whether it will be similar to Kodansha’s re-release of Akira – i.e. slap the publisher’s name on the old volumes – but I’m sure we’ll find out soon. In any case, this classic Akamatsu story in many ways is considered *the* harem comedy by many people who are too young to remember Tenchi Muyo, and is another good example of a series that shows the artist refining his art as it goes on. Plus it has Mutsumi. Who doesn’t love Mutsumi?

Lastly, we have ‘Tokyo Mew Mew Omnibus 1’, again presumably containing Vols. 1-3 of this classic magical girl series from the magazine Nakayoshi. This is another release to get an out of print Tokyopop series from the mid-00s back into print, and it’s also quite welcome, as the series was very popular in its day. It’s also been hard done by, as the anime got one of those dubs that edits and reconstructs everything to make it less Japanese, and Tokyopop’s own translation also took many liberties. If Kodansha gives this one a new translation (and again, no idea if they will or not), it could take off with fans of the magical girl genre.

For those lamenting the lack of (insert title here), I note this is merely one month of releases from a company still dipping its toe into the water. Hence, we have a lot of re-releases of very popular titles that are now out of print, quite a sensible business decision. What will October bring?

I was quite pleased with yesterday’s announcements by Kodansha USA, insofar as they had some. The lag time is actually a bit less than I anticipated (only 6 months, not bad considering the publishing world), and they even announced some new titles. They did not announce anything really different or unique – the Morning manga site was not mentioned, for example, and the one new seinen title they mentioned is a tie-in to a Nintendo DS game – but they do have a full slate of releases at last, rather than just reprints of old Dark Horse editions.

It struck me, as I was looking over the list of new licenses, that this is very much Del Rey’s Winter/Spring 2011 catalog, ported over to Kodansha. There is nothing here that doesn’t suggest all this would have been announced by Dallas at NYAF for Del Rey had Del Rey remained in the manga business. Which is both reassuring, in that it’s good to see business-as-usual from a publisher, and a bit disquieting, in that I sensed the last 1-2 years that Del Rey wasn’t sure what to do with any title that wasn’t in Shonen Magazine or Nakayoshi.

The old titles getting new volumes this summer seem to consist of DR’s heavy hitters – Negima, Fairy Tail – and their more popular mid-range titles, such as Zetsubou-sensei and Air Gear. Air Gear and The Wallflower seem to be back to single volume releases (the Wallflower has caught up with Japan, so that may be by necessity), and they were sure to tell fans that any titles not mentioned are merely not coming out this summer. Nothing is cancelled, and I remind my readers that these days, announcing a title is cancelled due to low sales does few publishers any good and only serves to anger a base. So you’ll never hear anything about, say, Nodame Cantabile beyond ‘we’re still looking into getting that back on the schedule’.

As for the new titles, two of them are popular Shonen Magazine series, still running in Japan (though one has ended and then started a ‘2nd season’). Bloody Monday and Cage of Eden are both very much in the Code: Breaker vein, i.e. dark psychological thrillers with a lot of mystery and a high body count. Provided you don’t mind gore, I think both should do pretty well here. Monster Hunter Orage is from the author of Fairy Tail. Deltora Quest has an anime currently running, and is based on the novels by Emily Rodda. Mardock Scramble also features an anime. Animal Land is from the creator of Zatch Bell, the first title created by him after the lawsuit against Shogakukan that led to Zatch Bell’s end. And Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (which ran in Monthly Young Magazine, making it technically the one seinen title) is based on the games, but will feature an actual plot, unlike the previous doujinshi anthologies.

There were a couple of license rescues as well. Gon surprised me, as CMX had released it here only a couple of years ago (this is now its 2nd license rescue). But then Kodansha mentioned they’re shopping it for a movie, so it made more sense. More surprising was Until The Full Moon, a shoujo title with yaoi overtones that ran in Magazine Be x Boy back in the 1990s. Broccoli Books put this out over here in 2005, but Kodansha bought the rights from Libre Shuppan and reissued it in Japan in 2009. Seeing Kodansha edge into the yaoi market, even if Until the Full Moon isn’t quite yaoi, is intriguing. And the Rave Master ending omnibus, which had been scheduled but then cut when Del Rey folded, is back on the schedule.

Lastly, in an effort to clean up its bestselling title and make it more fluid to readers taking it all in, Negima will get an omnibus release with a new translation/adaptation. Del Rey had made big news in 2004 when they hired Peter David to adapt the series, but his adaptation, while not quite at Keith Giffen levels, still took a lot of liberties with the material that read oddly to fans these days. (Yes, I’m thinking of “Can I have a cookie?”). I’m presuming this new version will be by the Nibley twins, who are doing the current run of Negima books.

So there you have it. Kodansha USA: back in business. And if it looks a lot like Del Rey with the name crossed out, that’s likely a very deliberate choice. More to the point, supporting them again encourages sales, which will encourage both the return of things like Nodame Cantabile and Moyashimon, and the licensing of more ‘difficult’ titles.