Sakuracon License Roundup

6 Replies

Well, we’ve had another con, and this time three big publishers were there to say things about manga: Viz, Yen, and Dark Horse. What did they say?

worldtrigger1

Not much from Viz, which usually saves its big announcements for the summer. They did indicate that one of their recent Weekly Jump digital series, World Trigger, would be getting a physical release this fall. With a plot that features high school students with superpowers taking on invaders from another dimension, it’s hard for me to think of it as anything but ‘Precure for guys’, but I will be interested to see what it’s like – Jump’s really been hitting its stride lately.

The big announcements were from Yen Press, and not just in the manga department. Let’s start with manga, though, as I have a feeling that most of the fandom will be focusing on one particular license, so I’ll save that for the end. King of Eden is by the author best known for collaborating with Naoki Urasawa on Billy Bat and others Takashi Nagasaki (aka Richard Woo). Well, Billy Bat is still unlicensed, but we do have King of Eden, a new horror series with art by SangCheol Lee, who I am totally unfamiliar with. This one looks to be worldwide digital, so my guess is it’s starting in Japan at the same time it does here.

Pandora Hearts is getting an artbook, Odds and Ends, which will be hardcover and have a slipcase, like many Japanese artbooks these days. Everything’s going upscale.

Gou-dere Sora Nagihara is the ecchi title of the con. It’s by Suu Minazuki, creator of Sora no Otoshimono. Our hero is an otaku in love with a fictional character. One day she comes to life before him, but her personality is not quite what he was expecting. She apparently decides to get her new master a harem, or at least help him get some action. This is from Hakusensha’s Young Animal Arashi, as if the description didn’t already tell you that (it was either that or Champion Red). We shall see.

14-sai

Also from Hakusensha, from their sort of unclassifiable magazine Rakuen Le Paradis (think of it along the lines of Manga Erotics F), we get 14-sai no Koi, which I have been reliably informed is ‘excruciatingly adorable’. It features two 14-year-olds who are very wise and mature for their years… but they’re still 14, and falling in love with each other is going to bring all the awkward that this entails. The author, Fuka Mizutani, is best known here for several yuri stories in various anthologies. This isn’t yuri, but I feel her fans will want to seek it out anyway. It certainly sounds great to me.

Lastly on the manga front, we have a new title by Aki, whose Olympos Yen had previously brought over here, and perhaps best known for Utahime. Elhanburg no Tenshi ran in Shodensha’s Haruca, one of their more obscure josei magazines. Two childhood friends take over a castle supposedly haunted by an angel, but things quickly turn south when a woman becomes involved. Given my experience with Olympos, my hope is to have a better handle on what’s going on with this plot.

And then there’s light novels. Yen has had more success with this genre than any other publisher, something that they did not hesitate to bring up at the con. They’re putting out an omnibus hardcover of the Another novel, which had been released digitally a year or so ago, and whose manga they also released. However, they’re also creating a new imprint just for light noels, Yen On! What will debut from it this fall?

It wouldn’t be a light novel imprint without an awkward, long title that ends in a question mark, so let’s introduce ourselves to Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?, aka DanMachi, which Yen is releasing over here as ‘Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?’. This seems to be another fantasy series along the lines of Zero’s Familiar, with a boy who wants to be an adventurer meeting a goddess who has trouble getting worshippers. I’ll bet you two to one it’s zany.

However, this was all a prelude to the big announcement.

IndexLN1

Yes, you’re not seeing things. To Aru Majutsu no Index, aka A Certain Magical Index. I’m not sure if Yen has licensed all 32+ novels right at the moment… my guess is about 6 with an option for more. But it’s certainly been one of the most requested titles of the last several years, and its spinoff series, A Certain Scientific Railgun, is selling quite well for Seven Seas. (As for the Index manga… trust me, read the books, it’s better.) I’m very interested to see how this sells. The lead male, Touma, is a divisive figure who acquires a harem yet makes no moves on any of them, and also has a story-breaker power he uses at least once per book. The heroine, Index… well, even that’s arguable, as Index may not actually be the series heroine so much as the series mascot. She also has a personality that Western fans have not exactly taken to their bosoms. That said, I really hope that everyone who demanded this series be licensed actually goes out and buys it, because this is a big investment, and kudos to Yen for going for it. Also, it has lots of cool things happening.

Lastly, we have Dark Horse, who added quite a bit of manga, to my surprise. Their continued re-release of CLAMP continues with the Legal Drug series coming out as an omnibus this fall. They’ve also licensed the sequel, Drug & Drop. Both series are published whenever CLAMP feels like it, so it should be easy to catch up with Japan. They’re also starting to digitize the bigger CLAMP titles, such as Card Captor Sakura and Chobits, later this spring.

There’s also the OreImo spinoff Ore no Kouhai ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (My Kouhai Can’t Be This Cute), which Dark Horse is sensibly retitling OreImo: Kuroneko. This ASCII Mediaworks series runs in Dengeki G’s, and is, as you might guess, focused on Kuroneko’s storyline in this series. Given the way the light novel series recently ended, I will be interested to see if its fandom is still around to get this, but hey, it’s cute and moe as heck.

opus

And we have not one, but TWO titles from Satoshi Kon, whose Tropic of the Sea was released by Vertical recently. Opus came out in the mid-90s right before the author directed Perfect Blue, and was never finished in Tankobon form, though Tokuma Shoten published the ending in in the volume collection, which we’ll be seeing here. There is also Seraphim: 266613336 Wings, which was written by Mamoru Oshii, a creator that I have a lot of issues with. It’s also a mid-90s manga, from Animage magazine, and may I just note that that is an awful lot of wings in the title. If I were an angel, I’d want to cut back to maybe 4, or even less.

So that’a a lot of new stuff. What appeals to you the most?

Attack on Titan, Vol. 12

1 Reply

By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

We’ve had a lot of revelations in the last few volumes of Attack on Titan, revelations that the group really haven’t had time to take in what with the kidnappings, fleeing and screaming at each other. And we get one more big one at the end of this volume, as we discover the reason why Eren is so important to the Titan cause (and no, it’s not his temper). Mostly what this volume does, though, is strengthen and reinforce the themes of the series in a ‘battle to the death’ context: friendship vs. duty, love vs. safety, and what it means to be a human.

titan12

Let’s start with Ymir, who gets the largest picture on the cover, even if it’s in her titan form. Ymir’s devotion to Historia has been apparent almost from her first appearance, and this volume pretty much spells out how much Historia means to her – she’s willing to side with the rest of the Survey Corps unless Reiner and Bertolt can meet her demands. (This does lead to two of the only pieces of humor in the entire volume – first, when Historia delightedly spots Ymir’s titan only to go ‘eh?’ as she’s promptly swallowed in her mouth; and 2nd, Ymir’s defense of titans, where ‘eating people’ gets a Some Like It Hot response – nobody’s perfect!) Once Ymir and Historia are reunited, they spend no time in trying to out self-sacrifice one another, and Historia shows that the obsession is not merely a we-way street. (I’ll be using Historia, by the way, in the future, as this is the name she now wants to use for herself – Krista is a pseudonym.) In the end, though, they simply CAN’T be together, not right now.

As for Reiner and Bertolt, they’re still guilt ridden over what they had to do, and Bertolt screams out how they don’t enjoy killing anyone and that no one would choose to do this. This doesn’t stop them from needing to take Eren and Historia to the Titans. Armin, who is getting craftier (and more morally grey) with each volume, starts needling them about their comrade Annie, who Armin says is currently being tortured by the scientists back home. I’m not entirely sure this is true – in fact, I highly suspect it is false – but that doesn’t matter. Armin can see how torn the two of them are by what they’re doing, and uses it to his best advantage. God help us all if that boy turns evil.

Mikasa mostly spends this volume screaming and beating the crap out of people, but her most telling moment comes when she’s too injured to protect Eren anymore, and a Titan is upon them… the same Titan that ate Eren’s mother so many years ago. Mikasa tends to show her softer side only to Eren, and even then only when she senses one of them is near death. Here she wants to show Eren the depths of the familial love (I refuse to ship them, shut up) that she has for him. Speaking of familial love, they are both promptly rescued by the sacrifice of Hannes, who was important at the very beginning of this manga but has since fallen out of focus. It makes thematic sense that, after losing Eren’s mother, we would now see a father figure fall to the same titan. This does not make it any less depressing, though.

And so the long battle is over, and arguably our heroes won. Eren and Historia are back with the Survey Corps. Erwin lost an arm, but is alive. Reiner, Bertolt and Ymir got away to an uncertain future (it’s hinted Ymir may be walking to her death, something that she’s surprisingly OK with – Historia’s ‘goddess’ habit is rubbing off). Where do we go from here? I’m not sure, but this volume certainly will give readers more of what they like to see in this series. Still recommended. (Needs more Sasha, dammit. Where is she, anyway?)

xxxHOLIC Rei, Vol. 1

1 Reply

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

(This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher.)

There is a genre of fanfiction that is quite popular these days called ‘fix fic”. This is when you have a beloved series that then does something horrid to your favorite character or pairing, and moves in a direction you hate. You then write something to resolve this dilemma, either bringing the character back, breaking up the hated pairing, etc. You could also try simply ignoring that anything happened after a certain point. Tara fans who watched Buffy like doing this, saying their fanfic ignored everything from Seeing Red onwards. And now we have CLAMP, returning to their own work only a couple of years after wrapping it up with a contested ending. And we have what seems at first to be a bizarre case of the creators writing their own fix fic.

xxxholic

If you enjoyed the early volumes of xxxHOLIC, boy, is this the volume for you. We see the return of the entire cast. Yuko is getting drunk, harrassing Watanuki, and acting mysterious. Watanuki is angry at absolutely everything, and tends to have supernatural events drawn to him. Doumeki continues to be the stoic not-boyfriend (the BL tease is through the roof here, something noted by Yuko). Himawari is there to, well, bounce plot ideas off of – for some reason Watanuki’s crush on her isn’t focused on quite so much, possibly as CLAMP know their audience. And there are some nice moments of existential horror, such as when we see what’s been following Watanuki around and asking him questions. I also loved the customers of the volume, which continues a theme of xxxHOLIC of supposedly mild, pretty women hiding amazingly petty depths.

And yet anyone who read the original series is left to ask “what the hell is going on here?”. Doumeki still has his egg, so this isn’t a total reboot. And there are little hints that this is not really a reset but something of a continuation after all. Is Watanuki trapped in some sort of fantasy where he goes about the early manga shenanigans? Is this the world we’d be seeing if the dreaded name “Li Syaoran” had never crossed anyone’s lips? I suspect this is the case, even though I don’t want it to be, because I really did not like xxxHOLIC’s ending at all, and would really like to avoid ending up back in that place. And so you’re left with the ambiguity, which of course is what CLAMP revels in with this series.

Nevertheless, even if I worry about the endgame, this is a terrific volume to pick up for those who dropped the series around the 30,000th Tsubasa crossover. The art is terrific, still one of the main selling points (just look at that cover!). There’s some examination of human nature that’s cringeworthy – in a good way. And there is Watanuki, still the best creation CLAMP has come up with in the past ten years, back to trying to come to terms with his life and not simply accepting that he has to live in Yuko’s shop for the next 100 years. That alone is worth the price of the book. Let’s see how long it keeps up before the illusion is ripped away.