Monthly Archives: April 2012

New Manga Licenses from Sakura Con and Anime Boston

8 Replies

Been a while since I did a licenses post, but this weekend had two conventions bringing us three publishers announcing a whole bunch of titles. So what exactly is coming soon?

First off, from Vertical, a redone, re-translated, deluxe omnibus version of Ai Yazawa’s fashion romance Paradise Kiss, which first came out, not in Shodensha’s josei magazine Feel Young, but in a fashion magazine for young women, Zipper. I’ve reviewed it before for the Manga Moveable Feast, and it’s a great pick up. Yazawa went on to the even more popular Nana, of course, and fans of that series should like this as well.

Dark Horse announced several licenses that seemed obvious for them, but the one that stood out was the one that didn’t. Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (better known as OreImo, and translated as My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute) started life as a light novel, then (as with most moe light novels) quickly became a franchise, spawning two manga series, two anime series, a web animation series, two games… In any case, Dark Horse has licensed the first manga series, which is four volumes and ran in ASCII Mediaworks’s Dengeki G’s magazine. The series is best described as ‘not quite incest’, and is staggeringly popular among fans of ‘moe’ and ‘little sister’ type anime/games.

The rest of Dark Horse’s announcements look more like something we’d expect from them. Blood-C is a manga adaptation of the anime of the same name, from the Blood the Last Vampire/Blood+ series also licensed by Dark Horse. This current incarnation runs in Kadokawa Shoten’s Shonen Ace. Evangelion: Comic Tribute is a one-volume doujinshi collection featuring popular mangaka doing takes on Evangelion (I imagine it’s similar to Bandai’s Code Geass Knight and Queen anthologies). Emerald and Other Stories is a collection of several short stories written by Blade of the Immortal author Hiroaki Samura, most of which I believe ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine, home of BotI. Lastly, Yoshitaka Amano is doing a new illustrated novel, Deva Zan, which like much of Amano’s recent work seems to be written for the Western market, i.e. Dark Horse will publish it first.

Then there’s Yen Press, who made several announcements as well, and like Dark Horse it was a mix of surprising and obvious. The surprise was the announcement of Thermae Romae, an award-winning manga from Enterbrain’s Comic Beam about a Roman bath designer who time-travels to various places to see what modern bathing is like. The very definition of ‘better than it sounds’, it will be coming out in omnibus hardcover editions.

Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story has done pretty well for Yen, so they’ve decided to license Anything and Something, a collection of short stories that only just came out in Japan a couple of months ago from Enterbrain. Again, hardcover.

Also in an oversized omnibus is a license that many fans had been begging for. Umineko no Naku Koro ni is not so much a direct sequel to Higurashi as it is a thematic one. A group of people gather on a secluded island, and bad things start to happen. Generally thought to be deeper than Higurashi, it’s also more cynical and bittersweet. (For those who missed it, the final two ‘arcs’ of the main Higurashi series, which were 6 and 8 volumes in Japan, will be coming out in omnibus format here as well, starting in September with the Massacre Arc.)

Blood Lad comes from Kadokawa’s Young Ace, and is 5+ volumes. It’s a comedic take on vampires, demons and werewolves, which makes it an obvious choice for licensing over here in the West, where the mere word vampire grants a certain number of sales.

Yen is re-releasing Alice In The Country Of Hearts this June, and they’re picking up the sequels that Tokyopop originally had before they went under. My Fanatic Rabbit ran in Mag Garden’s shoujo magazine Comic Blade Avarus, and seems to focus on Elliot, the “March Hare” of the series.

Another Haruhi spinoff, The Misfortune of Kyon and Koizumi, seems to be another ‘doujinshi anthology’ similar to Dark Horse’s Evangelion one. Needless to say, Kyon and Koizumi will feature. It also seems to be another ‘alternate universe’, similar to that of the also licensed Disappearance of Nagato Yuki.

Lastly, the author of High School of the Dead also has another title, Triage X. It runs in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Age (meaning it’s another Kadokawa title), and is filled with high school assassins, violence, and fanservice. But fewer zombies.

So, what has you the most excited? (Also, anyone else noticing that 2-volume omnibuses are the new 1-volume paperback?)

Manga the Week of 4/11

4 Replies

THERE IS ONLY ONE MANGA OUT THIS WEEK. BUY EXCEL SAGA 23. THAT IS ALL.

…OK, there are a *few* other manga besides Excel Saga. Hrmph.

Dark Horse has the sequel to Magic Knight Rayearth, with our heroines returning to a Cephiro much changes. Expect ship wars between Ascot and Clef fans, lots of cute fluffy romance between Fuu and Ferio, and one of the few workable threesomes in all of manga with Hikaru. Guaranteed to be good CLAMP-y fun! In the genuine way, not the postmodern ironic CLAMP fun way

DMP seems to finally be releasing the 8th volume of Itazura na Kiss, with … did Vol. 7 ever come out via Diamond? They skipped it, didn’t they? God. Anyway, enjoy your favorite shoujo couple be prickly and worried at each other. There’s also another mini-manga of Moon and Blood. And for yaoi fans, Vol. 2 of Countdown 7 Days and Vol. 2 of Replica.

Kodansha has the 7th volume of shoujo thriller Arisa, and the 14th – and possibly final – volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Please don’t Gintama this series on me, Kodansha. I will nag you hard.

NBM is releasing a single volume manga called Rohan at the Louvre, which I know nothing about but which I hear has some amazing art.

Udon is releasing the first volume of Sengoku Basara Samurai Legends, which sounds like it’s related to the series of video games based around feudal Japan.

Aside from EXCEL SAGA 23, Viz is releasing a bunch of other stuff. We get the penultimate volume of Cross Game, which I understand may have some baseball in it. A new Case Closed, a new Itsuwaribito, a new Kekkaishi. The final volume of Maoh: Juvenile remix (this last volume remixed by Junior Vasquez) (hey, if you’re going to tell a joke, tell it all). Vol. 8 of Nura, which did not ship last week for some weird reason. And Vol. 20 of 20th Century Boys, which no doubt will confuse some bookstores.

So, yeah, some other stuff. But mostly EXCEL SAGA 23.

The Drops of God, Vol. 3

1 Reply

By Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto. Released in Japan as “Kami no Shizuku” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Morning. Released in North America by Vertical.

The third omnibus of Drops of God sees the first major plot advancement in the series. After spending so long trying to guess which wine was described in the will, one of our heroes finally gets it right. Of course, that does leave eleven more. And there’s still a few other problems to solve along the way…

(Incidentally, my cover for V. 3 is different from the one above. Last minute change? Or multiple designs?)

Once again, we have a plotline about how wine is far more than just an alcoholic beverage. We left off at the end of the last volume with an amnesiac woman who only had a description of wine to link her to her forgotten past. The trouble is, she’s now married – and both she and her husband are worried that if she recovers her memories, she’ll remember she was in love with someone else. Even though it relied on a contrived coincidence (two car accidents in the past leading to tragedy?), I really enjoy the way the authors used this, showing that it doesn’t necessarily take amnesia to avoid the past. And indeed, that the future can also shape the past – when Kaori recovers her memories and discovers her old love, we see that she and her husband are not the only ones whose lives are shaped by the tragedy. Throughout this plot, wine comes into play, acting almost as a mnemonic in order to be a gateway to prior events.

We then get the battle for the first apostle, which comes down to a very interesting point: these are not ‘the 12 best wines’ that Shizuku’s father has been describing, but 12 wines that he wanted to describe. This means that the first apostle revealed here depends on it not being an outstanding wine, but rather a wine that you have to work at to enjoy. Not only can I empathize with this, but of course it opens the playing field of wine even more to the cast. As with previous volumes, we get lovingly detailed depictions of the scene they’re imagining (and that his father described), which allow you to see the similarities and differences between the two wines picked, which differ only in the year made. It’s a good scene.

Characterization of the regulars continues to be the weak part of the series, but to be fair this is a manga about wine, not about Shizuku and Miyabi. We do get a little more development of her character here, showing her first love from high school returning and shocking her by being a cold businessman, but honestly I thought the best part of the manga for her was her superdeformed jealousy of Shizuku having lunch with Sara. Any love story that happens in this series will take even longer than Oishinbo’s did (and that took 47 volumes!), mostly as when it comes to love Shizuku seems to be thick as a brick. Something lampshaded by the other cast members. Speaking of the rest of the cast, the Italian wine snob, Chosuke, gets a rather sweet little backstory showing why he dislikes French wine so much.

The volume ends with the first half of the story I mentioned above with Miyabi’s old love. It involves trying to show that brand name doesn’t always mean quality, but to do that they have to note that in terms of wine, it frequently does. Lafite and Rothschild aren’t the top names in wine just due to marketing and publicity. They’re the cream of the crop, and I liked the scenes where Shizuku and Miyabi realize what a big hurdle they have to overcome. In the meantime, they’re also searching for the second apostle. Given this is a manga series, I have a sneaking suspicion Shizuku is going to fail hard at finding it, but we shall see.

This continues to be a good solid foodie manga. The broad points (p;lot, characters) are cliched, but the writing is what makes them stand out, and shows the work of two long-standing professionals. Definitely one for your shelves… though maybe the drinks cabinet instead?