So AX 2015 has come and gone, and everyone remembers it as the con where everyone’s dreams came true. Each company had a title that made everyone’s jaw drop, down the line. The ‘impossible’ titles. And there were lots of others as well. Particularly from Yen Press, who dropped 22 titles on us.

I will start with Tokyopop, who had a panel to announce they were back, sort of, and might be getting back into manga, sort of, but had no titles to actually announce. As for its attempting to get creators to sign up with them again, see this.

Let’s move on to Viz Media. The big, BIG announcement here was from Haikasoru, Viz’s science-fiction novel imprint, who announced the acquisition of the first three Legend of Galactic Heroes novels, with more coming if sales are good. It’s possible that this may be too old a property for many readers, but for anime fans of a certain age, this is HUGE. One of the most famous space operas out of Japan. Oh yes, and the anime was licensed as well.

Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint also had two licenses, by some of its more famous mangaka. Bisco Hatori’s Urakata!! is her newest LaLa series, about a drama club. And Matsuri Hino has Shuriken to Pleats, about a young ninja girl who has to start over as a normal high school student, also running in LaLa. Neither of these is particularly surprising, but both are welcome returns for best-selling authors.

Seven Seas was not at AX, but took the weekend to announce a new title of their own. Angel Beats: Heaven’s Door is a prequel to the anime series, and is apparently by the folks behind Air, Kanon, and Clannad, so I expect it might be depressing. It runs in Dengeki G’s magazine, and is ongoing with 8 volumes in Japan.

Vertical was next, and I will admit that their big surprise was possibly the least shocking of the big con surprises. But still made me very happy. Nichijou is a gag manga famous for being wonderfully strange, and inspired an equally strange yet adorable anime. It runs in various Kadokawa magazines, including Shonen Ace, and is 9+ volumes. It is worth the purchase, especially if you enjoy My Neighbor Seki.

There’s also Fuku Fuku Nya~n, which is the latest in a series of Nya~n titles about an old woman and her cat that technically is a josei title, but really is more of a cat lover’s title. It’s by the author of Chi’s Sweet Home. Lastly, Vertical announced a new Attack on Titan novel, Lost girls, which has short stories focusing on, among others, Mikasa and Annie, who also get the cover.

Mangagamer is not a manga company, but I would feel remiss if I did not mention that they have licensed the Umineko When They Cry visual novels, which will be released arc by arc on Steam. They’re working with Witch Hunt, the Umineko fan translators, to refine and improve translation, and will, again, have an option of updated sprites. No release date set yet that I saw. Umineko is more cynical and difficult to read than Higurashi, but also has more depth and better writing.

Kodansha Comics had three announcements. In the non-earth-shattering ones, Real Account is a Weekly Shonen Magazine series combining the increasingly popular survival game genre with social media. Maga-Tsuki is a harem comedy from shonen Sirius that will likely fulfill every fan’s fanservice needs. And oh yes, one more thing, Kuragehime.

Kuragehime, aka Princess Jellyfish, has been one of THE most demanded josei series of the last few years. It runs in Kodansha’s KISS magazine, and involves a shy girl who loves jellyfish and her meeting with a beautiful young… woman? It inspired a popular anime, and everyone assumed it would not be licensed here as a) it’s josei and b) it’s 15 volumes and counting. Kodansha is doing it in 2-in-1 omnibuses, with a larger trim size. And Crunchyroll Manga also announced it will have it digitally, starting July 15.

That’s a lot of stuff. What could be left? Oh right, Yen. Let’s break this down into three waves.

First, digital-only series. There’s supernatural/horror titles (Aphorism, Corpse Princess, Renaissance Eve), another survival game series (Seishun x Kikanjuu), harem comedies (the popular yet polarizing Sekirei), straight-up mysteries (Black Detective), and even gambling manga (Kakegurui). There’s also series where I have no idea at all: Ore no Kanojo ni Nani ka Youkai is by the Working! author, and Manzen Maou Shoujo Ena-sama… I don’t even know. The big one here, though, even if it is only in digital format, is Saki. This long-running mahjong manga with yuri subtext has been an underground favorite ever since the anime came out, and it’s nice to see it getting a NA release.

In actual print, we’ll start with Handa-kun, the prequel to Barakamon. It had been previously announced as digital only, but I guess is popular enough that it’s now getting a regular release. For Log Horizon fans, the popular spinoff West Wind Brigade has been licensed. Sword Art Online’s manga continuations have been licensed – both Phantom Bullet and Mother’s Rosario, which run concurrently in Japan. Phantom Bullet’s artist also does Sacred Blacksmith.

There are a few Dragon Age titles, which usually are a bit more fanservicey than most. Kamigoroshihime Zilch seems to be about a teen who’s told he’s secretly incredibly powerful. And Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata, better known as Saekano, is based on a light novel, though Yen have only announced the manga, which is an odd combination of harem manga and visual novel creation. Fans of Genshiken might like this. Lastly, as it wouldn’t be a con without something from Comic Alive being licensed, Taboo-Tattoo seems to be a manga with lots of girls fighting – indeed, I can’t really find much else about it except that.

But Sean, you’re thinking, where is the jaw-dropping Yen Press title? Well, for that, let’s turn to the light nvoel imprint, Yen On. First, there’s a sequel to the horror novel Another, called Episode S. The second one, Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabu Kome wa Machigatteiru, is very surprising for two reasons. First, it’s owned by Shogakukan, who usually do not let their books fall outside Viz’s purview, even if Viz isn’t actually doing novels at the moment. Secondly, it’s the first Yen On title to be announced that does not involve some element of fantasy or supernatural – it’s a straight up romantic comedy. It also sells like hotcakes in Japan, and has a very popular anime, which likely explains why Yen moved past 1 and 2 above. They’ve also licensed the manga.

But there is also Baccano!. From the author of Durarara!!, this is actually Narita’s first series, about a group of mobsters in 1930s New York who get caught up with a group of immortals. Baccano! is one of those series whose anime was FAR more popular in the West than in Japan, where it bombed. It has a huge online fandom in areas such as Tumblr, and fans had been begging Yen for the novels. I was not expecting this at all – I love Baccano!, particularly the characters of Isaac and Miria, who are very… themselves. Everyone is flipping out over this, and I really hope it sells incredibly well.

Lastly, there is Crunchyroll manga. In addition to the Princess Jellyfish release I mentioned above, we have Fukigen na Mononokean (another supernatural title), Takahashi-san ga Kiite Iru (a gag comedy about an eavesdropping girl), Kuzu no Honkai (a romantic drama seinen series about pretend lovers), and Amaama to Inazuma (a child-rearing manga which should interest those who enjoyed Bunny Drop but disliked the road it went down). I like the variety of series they’re getting, and will definitely be checking these out.

There’s also SDCC next week, but I expect, while there will certainly be some titles announced there, it will be quieter than this week. AX has let everyone exhausted but happy, even those who didn’t attend it.

There were a pile of announcements made yesterday in regards to manga (no, no light novels. Admit it, they have enough on their plate now). But let’s not fool ourselves, there is one announcement that is head and shoulders above everything else. The excited fan in me is warring with the pedant who says I should cover Kodansha first as their licenses were announced earlier. Sadly, it says a lot about me that the pedant wins.

The Kodansha license that most interests me is Itou Junji no Neko Nikki: Yon & Mu, which is a cute slice-of-life cat manga from the author of famed horror manga. The mangaka also stars, and if you wonder what his style would be like when he’s not drawing terrifying things, this is what you need to read. It’s only one volume, and ran in Magazine Z.

Devil Survivor runs in Shonen Sirius, and is based on the Shin Megami Tensei video game. Expect action, fantasy, and demons.

Speaking of based on the video game, we not only get Persona Q – Shadow of the Labyrinth – Side: P3 (which runs in Bessatsu Shonen), but also Persona Q – Shadow of the Labyrinth – Side: P4 (which runs in Shonen Sirius). Crunchyroll is doing both of these digitally, but Kodansha has been the publisher most likely to pick up the print license anyway, so that’s fine. As for the manga, haven’t played Persona 3 or 4, so no idea.

Lastly, we have Ninja Slayer Setsu, which is the second Ninja Slayer license in the last couple of months. It ran in the obscure Suiyoubi no Sirius, which I think may have just died, so I’m not sure how many volumes it will be. It looks like it takes its ninjas very seriously indeed.

On to Yen Press, which had a giant pile of licenses (Sakuracon is one of their biggies), the surprise being that several of them are digital only. Let’s run through those first.

Handa-Kun is a prequel to Barakamon, following our hero when he was in high school. It runs in Shonen Gangan.

Kyou no Cerberus is also in Shonen Gangan, and looks to be somewhat silly. One day a boy meets a dog-like girl with three different personalities, who resolves to keep him from harm.

I have no idea what Kominami Shoutarou, Ie o Deru o Hajimemashita is about, but with the NA title Shut-In Shoutarou Kominami Takes on the World, it sounds like it will be awesome. It runs in Big Gangan, a seinen magazine.

Speaking of Big Gangan, Servant x Service runs there as well. It’s from the creator of Working!, one of those ‘why was this never licensed’ manga with 83 seasons of anime. It seems to be a 4-koma about office life, and also has an anime.

Unknown runs in Shonen Gangan, and yes, that is its title. It’s complete in four volumes, and I’m told reminded many folks of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Mahou Tsukai no Deshi ga Warau Toki is complete in 3 volumes, ran in Shonen Gangan, and looks depressing as hell, to be honest.

Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine runs in GFantasy, and I can’t really tell how fantastical it is, but there’s royalty and things in it, as you may have gathered. The mangaka is better known for the series Sougiya Riddle.

Koukoku no Hiiro is also GFantasy, and may be the most interesting of this whole bunch. Samurai, kendo, time travel… cool things indeed.

So, to reiterate, all those above seem to be Digital Only, with no print plans at this time. What did they license for print? Well…

I can’t hold back anymore. They have finally licensed, as we’ve been begging them to, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun! This amazingly funny 4-koma from Gangan Online is by Izumi Tsubaki, author of Oresama Teacher and The Magic Touch. If you love the facial expressions in Oresama, these are even better. It also mocks every single cliche in the book. It’s basically fantastic, and the convention room exploded when it was announced.

The other major surprise has to be Yowamushi Pedal, an Akita Shoten title from Weekly Shonen Champion. A cycling manga (so technically sports… more myths busted!), it’s at 39+ volumes in Japan. Needless to say, expect this in omnibuses. Between this and Index, I wonder how much Kurt is enjoying seeing what we say is impossible to license, and then just doing it. (The creator, by the way, also adapted one of the many Train Man manga… the CMX one, I believe.)

Hakusensha is not forgotten either, as we get Sakura no Himegoto, a 2-volume LaLa series. I note warily that this involves a girl with debt being “owned” by a rich high school boy, but I’m told it’s not as skeezy as it sounds.

Dragon’s Rioting also makes me wary, mostly as it runs in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Age, and thus I expect the breasts to be more important than the plot. It seems to involve a boy who will die if he gets sexually aroused, and surrounding him with women who will no doubt do that very thing.

Lastly, Aldnoah Zero has an anime as well, and runs in Houbunsha’s Manga Time Kirara Forward. It’s a sci-fi mecha series, so I’m fairly sure will end with the entire cast dead. If not the entire Earth.

Aside from Nozaki-kun, which everyone will be buying of course, what license here most interests you?

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but every time I prepared to write up the new licenses, some other publisher would announce that they were going to make new announcements in a few days and I’d decide to put it off again. But they’re really piling up now, and what with the con season starting soon I thought I’d best just get in what I have right now. Let me know if I missed anything. If nothing else, we can safely assume that the manga market ‘recovery’ is in full swing.

Two new Shonen Jump licenses. The first is Kagamigami, by the author of Psyren. It’s a supernatural detective series, and thus fits nicely into the rest of what’s currently popular in Shueisha’s shonen titles. It just debuted.

The other license is very unsurprising, as it’s the new breakout Jump hit. Boku no Hero Academia is from the author of Barrage, if anyone remembers Barrage. No? Right, moving on… it’s about a world of superheroes, and a young man who’s one of the select few who DOESN’T have them. Is he bullied? Take a wild guess. There’s a lot of over-the-top hot-blooded shouting, and the whole thing is a pile of fun.

There’s also four new Shojo Beat licenses. QQ Sweeper is a Shogakukan title from Betsucomi, by the author of Dengeki Daisy. I don’t know much about it, but the mere fact that it’s by the creator of Dengeki Daisy makes it a must buy.

Another title is from a very familiar author, it’s the latest from Arina Tanemura. 31 Ai Dream (Idol Dreams for NA) is about a woman who, regretting her choices in life and seeing her high school crush at their reunion with another woman, considers suicide. But then she gets a second chance (as one inevitably does). This is actually running in Hakusensha’s Melody (a shoujo/josei hybrid magazine) rather than her usual Ribon or Margaret stuff for Shueisha, so I suspect it may be a bit darker or more mature.

And recently they announced two more. From Kadokawa’s shoujo magazine Asuka we have Bloody Mary, which, well, vampires.

More interesting to me is Honey So Sweet, despite seeing ‘meek girl, gruff seemingly scary boy’ as the premise. It runs in Bessatsu Margaret.

Crunchyroll has a new digital license, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. I assume this is based on the Persona series of video games, about which I know very little except that many of my friends and acquaintances are obsessed with it. There seem to be two versions, one for P3 and one for P4, that run in Shueisha’s Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and Shonen Sirius, respectively.

Seven Seas had a tabletop game announcement, and good luck to them. Moving on: they also announced some manga. Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha (The Testament of Sister New Devil) is based on the light novel of the same name (no, they haven’t licensed that – you do know this company, right?), it features a young man who finds his father has remarried and he has two new sisters – only they’re a demon lord and a succubus. It runs in Kadokawa Shoten’s Shonen Ace, and will definitely appeal to those who read that description and did not roll their eyes.

Jitsu wa Watashi wa roughly translates as “Actually, I’m a…” and the cover features various characters all holding fingers to their mouths in the standard Ssssh! gesture. It apparently features a young man who is known for being unable to lie, and his run-in with various girls who all have secrets to keep, mostly supernatural. If you guessed that a harem ensues, you’re right. Hijinks also ensue. The art is very popular as well, though be warned those are some big mouths. This runs in Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shonen Champion, which rarely gets much attention over here.

Vertical had some new stuff to talk about. Ninja Slayer is a novel series supposedly created by two Americans, though many suspect this is just a cute marketing gimmick on Enterbrain’s part. In any case, it also has several spinoff manga, one of which, Ninja Slayer: Machine of Vengeance, ran in Kadokawa’s Comp Ace magazine. I believe it’s complete in one volume.

Seraph of the End is a manga series that Viz has licensed, which features, you guessed it, vampires. But it’s based on a novel series that Kodansha puts out, and Vertical have licensed the original novels. I wasn’t wild about the manga, but might give the books a try.

Lastly, and most importantly, we have Kizumonogatari, part of the long-running Monogatari series by Nisioisin, creator of Medaka Box, which you may have heard me banging on about once or twice, and Zaregoto, a series I deeply loved that did very poorly indeed over here. This is actually the third of the series, but takes place before any of the others, and the agent recommended starting with it. I absolutely cannot wait for it. By the way, Vertical have said they’ve ONLY licensed this book – they may license more if it sells well. Ergo, please buy this book. I will be pushing it hard. (And we all know how much my opinion drives sales.) I’d give you a cover image, but it’s part of the ‘Kodansha Box’ line, so the covers are all boxed art.

And Yen Press also has a few new things. To my delight, we have a new manga based off of Ryukishi07’s sound novels. This time it’s Rose Guns Days, which is not connected to the same universe as Higurashi or Umineko. Telling an alternate history of post-war Japan, Yen has licensed ‘Season One’, which ran in Gangan Joker. The artist is Soichiro, who also did Alliance of the Golden Witch in the Umineko series.

Final Fantasy Type-0 Gaiden: Hyōken no Shinigami could possibly be a part of the massive Final Fantasy universe. Something about the name suggests that to me. It ran in Shonen Gangan.

Horimiya has an intriguing history. There was a webcomic called Hori-san to Miyamura-kun which GFantasy picked up and released 10 volumes of, and it also spawned an anime. Now it’s getting an official manga with a different (most say better) artist, and that’s 6 volumes and counting and also running in GFantasy. The plot seems to be a sweet and sometimes angsty romantic comedy, and it has the usual ‘is this shonen or shoujo?’ feel you see in many GFantasy titles.

Lastly, Yen On had a new announcement, one many of us have been expecting for some time: The Irregular at Magic High School. This was the #1 light novel franchise over the past year, even managing to beat out Sword Art Online and Kagerou Daze. Its male lead seems to be the emotionless stoic badass, which I suspect may be part of its appeal after years of average schlubs starring in these sorts of vehicles. It’s got quite a few volumes… but honestly, after Index, nothing surprises me anymore. It has a couple of manga spinoffs… oddly, Yen haven’t licensed the Square Enix one, but have instead opted for the Dengeki Daioh version, The Honor Student at Magic High School, retelling the story from a different perspective. This might work out well – I’ve dropped a few manga adaptations that just tell the novel straight up.

That should do it for now. Which of these has you most excited?