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Archive for the Licensing Category

NBM Confirms Publication of Araki’s Rohan at the Louvre

By Lissa Pattillo on Wednesday, December 28, 2011

NBM Publishing has confirmed on their website that they’ll be releasing a one-shot from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures’ creator, Hirohiko Araki – Rohan at the Louvre. The title originally popped up on Amazon early this past Autumn.

The book will be hardcover and full-colour, clocking in at 128 pages. It’s due for release in April 2012 and will cost $19.99 (both US and CAN). It’s great to see newer titles are coming out with equal pricing across North America!

“Rohan, a young mangaka, meets a beautiful mysterious young woman with a dramatic story. Seeing him draw, she tells him of a cursed 200 year old painting using the blackest ink ever known from a 1000 year old tree the painter had brought down without approval from the Emperor who had him executed for doing so. The painting meanwhile had been saved from destruction by a curator of the Louvre. Rohan forgets this story as he becomes famous but ten years later, visiting Paris, he takes the occasion to try and locate the painting. Little does he know how violently powerful the curse of it is until he has the museum unearth it from deep within its archival bowels…”

Rohan at the Louvre is also available to purchase online at Amazon.ca. It was listed in this month’s Diamond Previews for ordering into your local comic store. The title is also available to purchase in French and you can see interior preview pages on the Amazon product webpage.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Manga

Digital Manga Gifts With New License – Secretary’s Job

By Lissa Pattillo on Monday, December 26, 2011

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Digital Manga announced a new title license for their print line earlier this week, just in time to head off for holiday vacation – Miki Araya’s Secretary’s Job. It’s a one-shot title by the creator of Digital Manga’s previously released I’ll Be Your Slave. There are no further details on the imprint or release date, but it’ll likely be under the June line based on Miki Araya’s previous title.

Secretary’s Job is about a “legendary secretary” who is assigned to the son of a company’s president. An office romance springs from a sudden kiss. Also included in the book is another short story titled ‘Fried Rice’. The book was originally published in Japan this past September.

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Categories: Licensing
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, June

SuBLimeManga.com Launches Website and Adds a New Title

By Lissa Pattillo on Thursday, December 22, 2011

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Just as promised when news of their existence was announced, SuBLime has launched their website this week. No titles are yet available to purchase but they have release dates listed for their first four titles due out January 31, 2011.

I really like the website’s design – simple, fast-loading and quite visually cute while simultaneously rather classy. There’s a newsletter you can sign up for, as well as registration for the site itself which will allow you to comment and purchase and download the digital editions when they’re available. The forum is currently marked as ‘Coming Soon’.

Tonight SuBLime also announced a new title – Iwamoto Kaoru and Fuwa Shinri’s Yebisu Celebrities. The first volume was originally released by BeBeautiful back in 2007. SuBLime will be releasing this five volume series digital-only, starting in March 2012. The story takes places at a design firm, one where only the talented and attractive are allowed, as the new part-timer catches his boss’s eye. As part of the new license, SuBLime will be doing some related giveaways in January when the staff returns from holiday vacation.

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Categories: Licensing, Misc, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, Manga, SuBLime

Fallen Words Picked Up By Drawn & Quarterly

By Lissa Pattillo on Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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AnimeNewsNetwork has confirmed with Drawn & Quarterly that the company will be releasing a new Yoshihiro Tatsumi collection of short stories titled Fallen Words. A listing for the book originally popped up on Amazon.ca, followed shortly there-after by Amazon.com.

“In Fallen Words, Yoshihiro Tatsumi takes up the oral tradition of rakugo and breathes new life into it by shifting the format from spoken word to manga. Each of the eight stories in the collection is lifted from the Edo-era Japanese storytelling form. As Tatsumi notes in the afterword, the world of rakugo, filled with mystery, emotion, revenge, hope, and, of course, love, overlaps perfectly with the world of Gekiga that he has spent the better part of his life developing.”

News of a fresh Yoshihiro Tatsumi license comes with perfect timing for me – I just finished his one-shot Black Blizzard and revisited his sprawling and wonderful, A Drifting Life. Both are different kinds of stories but each left me wanting more of the creator’s work. You can expect I’ll be picking up this new book when it’s released this Spring.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Drawn and Quarterly, Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Digital Manga Imprint Shifts with Starry☆Sky to DMP

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, December 11, 2011

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Following up on recent news of Digital Manga licensing Starry☆Sky, the company’s website has now been updated to show the series is being released under their Digital Manga Publishing line. Originally the site’s listing had the title being published in their boys’ love imprint, June.

Starry☆Sky now joins Digital Manga’s other series such as Itazura na Kiss and The Beautiful Skies of Houou High, which seem much more suiting company to this series about a girl pined after by a group of attractive young men in private school. The book’s cover image has also been replaced with a new look sporting the recent DMPBooks cover design instead of the ‘Yaoi Manga’ sidebar it was posted with previously.

Fans of the series were confused over what seemed like Digital Manga’s original decision to release the title as a boys’ love series. Whether a mistake or a change of heart, this switch-up looks like a much better fit and should appease Starry☆Sky‘s fans and those who like having faith they’ll get boys’ love in their BL.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, DMP, Manga

Where’s the (Boys) Love – Digital Manga Licenses Starry Sky

By Lissa Pattillo on Friday, November 25, 2011

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Digital Manga’s newsletter came out yesterday, re-confirming their license of My Cute Crossdresser and listing another title, Starry☆Sky. The first volume of the series is due out in April 2012.

Starry☆Sky is a manga series based on a visual novel game of the same name published in Japan. It’s one of several manga adaptations of the story which follows a girl entering a private school that was until recently an all boys’ school. Over time she makes friends with a group of boys who’re based on the Western zodiac and romance ensues.

Starry☆Sky seems like an odd choice for releasing as a June book, similar to what I thought when I first saw My Cute Crossdresser licensed for Project-H. My confusion wasn’t helped by the genre listing of ‘shonen’ on Digital Manga’s website. This manga series was originally released in a magazine, Comic B’s-Log Kyun, that publishes shoujo series. Some of them look to have some BL-implication – such as a version of Togainu no Chi – but none implicitly boys’ love in nature. With that in mind, plus that it’s based on a shoujo girl-is-surrounded-by-a-harem-of-young-men-who-could-love-her game, is Starry☆Sky being published under their June line for actual BL content or just having a high pretty boy count?

Update (11/12/2011): Digital Manga has switched Starry☆Sky‘s imprint to DMP.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, DMP, June, Manga

Project-H Teases with Traps with New License

By Lissa Pattillo on Wednesday, November 23, 2011

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Digital Manga added some new books to their website this week. Among them was a new one-shot book they’ve named My Cute Crossdresser. It’s a hentai title being released under their Project-H imprint. The book is scheduled for release in April 2012 at $17.95/US and 19.99/CAN.

My Cute Crossdresser is a collection of four one-shot stories plus one longer story that lasts three chapters. As the name and cover suggests, the book contains some cute teenage boys dressing in cute little school uniforms, among other things. It’s a trap! Just the kind you’ve been warned about in advance.

I was surprised at first to see this kind of hentai title released under Project-H with the previous three books having the more ‘typical’ hentai look to them. You know, girls and boobs. I’m certainly not denying the diversity in the hentai genre (porn for everybody!) but didn’t expect to see a cross dressing story like this out in English. Then again with Digital Manga’s Doki Doki “the gateway between shojo to yaoi”, this new license seems like it could be an entertaining gateway between their hentai and yaoi imprints. As a buyer of both genres, you can bet I’ll be ordering it!

You can get a bit more info about My Cute Crossdresser and view interior preview pages at its Amazon.jp purchase page. The English edition isn’t yet available to pre-order. My thanks to J.R. Brown for finding the Amazon Japan listing.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Boys' Love/Yaoi, DMP, Manga, Project-H

Seven Seas Goes Omnibus With Some Genre Favourites

By Lissa Pattillo on Tuesday, November 22, 2011

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Seven Seas has announced two new manga licenses today, both of which should please many a manga reader.

Girl Friends – Milk Morinaga
I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! – Kusano Kouichi

Girl Friends is a five-volume yuri series by one of the genre’s most well known creators, Milk Morinaga. This is Morinaga’s first title to be released in English.

“When it comes to grades, bookish high school student Mariko Kumakura is at the top of her class. Socially, however, she is shy and lonely, typically eating lunch by herself. Enter the charismatic and beautiful Akko Oohashi, whose mission is to befriend Mariko and burst her out of her introverted shell. In the process of transforming Plain Jane Mariko into one of the cutest, most popular girls in school, deep feelings begin to emerge that suggest something deeper than friendship.”

Seven Seas has previously put out several yuri titles – which are stories with a focus on romantic relationships between women – including The Last Uniform and Strawberry Panic. Girl Friends will be released as two omnibus volumes, each $17.99/US for 496 pages. The first will be on sale October 2012 with the second out in January 2013.

I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! is a multi-volume manga series about a girl with a severe brother complex:

“Junior High School student Takanashi Nao has a problem: she has a crush on her dreamy older brother, Shuusuke. Fortunately, when Nao discovers that she was adopted as a child and they’re not related by blood, it seems like the coast is clear–but Shuusuke just doesn’t see it that way.”

To be honest, this is the kind of series I’d actively avoid (incest, no thank you) but I know it has a decent-sized fan following so many will be very glad for this news! The series will be released as 2-in-1 omnibus books at )$16.99/US)/($19.50/CAN) with the first scheduled for release in August 2012 with a 320 page count.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Manga, Seven Seas, Yuri

Victorian Halloween: Seven Seas Schedules Print for 2012

By Lissa Pattillo on Tuesday, November 15, 2011

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The end of 2011 is creeping up and companies are continuing to give us lots of manga-loving reasons to look forward to 2012. Seven Seas has listed print information for three new manhwa titles up on their website this week, all you can expect to be released this coming year. Two were announced back in August but fell under the radar as footnotes in a post about their online comics initiative.

Alongside their recent news about acquiring Young Miss Holmes, the company is starting a trend of mystery-solving, Victorian-era titles. Very neat! I really look forward to reading them and it’s fantastic seeing another publisher is still actively looking into the vast Korean market of comics.

Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries – Jeon Hye-Jin
First Volume (Omnibus, 1-2): August 2012

“Lizzie Newton, a young upper crust lady with a budding career as a mystery writer, is expected to know her place in Victorian society. …While the headstrong Lizzie tolerates earnest Edwin, she is not yet ready to accept him as her fiance. Besides, Lizzie is distracted by something far more important: an apparent suicide has occurred in the manor, and Lizzie is ready to solve her first real life murder case!” – Seven Seas

Witch Hunter – Cho Jung-Man
First Volume (Omnibus, 1-2): June 2012 | Second Volume (Omnibus, 3-4): October 2012

“Tasha Godspell, also known as the “Magic Marksman,” is one of the best Witch Hunters there is. Along with his sword-wielding Jack-o’-Lantern partner known as Halloween, Tasha puts his magical training and weaponry to good use, in his constant battles against witches. And yet, he cannot bring himself to fully hate the very witches he is tasked to destroy.” – Seven Seas

Jack the Ripper: Hell Blade – Jetae Yoo
First Volume: July 2012 | Second Volume: October 2012 | Third Volume: January 2013

“Jack the Ripper is not what he seems –but the truth may be more terrible than anyone imagined. A young police detective from Scotland Yard struggles to unravel the mystery behind the brutal slayings that grip 19th Century London. What he learns will turn his world upside down, and pit him face to face against the Ripper himself. But is Jack his savior or destroyer?” – Seven Seas

Witch Hunter and Lizzie Newton were originally announced as part of Seven Seas web-comic collection, Zoom Comics. The website is currently offering free online editions to read several of Seven Seas’ original properties, including the recently published Dracula Everlasting and Vampire Cheerleaders. It will be running the first volume of Witch Hunter starting in January.

With more titles on the horizon that’ll excite quite a few fans, Seven Seas is making an impressive come back into the licensed comic publishing market. With a bunch of new titles, strong digital initiatives and comics from sources few publishers are looking to these days, they’re a company you’ll want to keep an eye on.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Global Manga, Lizzie Newton, Manhwa, Seven Seas

Digital Manga Acquires, Hires and Seeks More Fans’ Help

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, November 12, 2011

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Digital Manga‘s newsletter came out yesterday and had an assortment of interesting news to share – some great, some neat and some that just left me scratching my head in confusion.

The company has licensed a new boys’ love title – Docchi mo Docchi by Nozomu Hiiragi. It’s a one-shot title about two men employed at the same company. Both are well known with the ladies and rivals at their jobs. When the two somehow end up in bed together, the big question becomes who’s meant to be on top?

Digital Manga also noted that they’ve acquired the license to the third volume of Dog x Cat. Neither title has a release date yet.

The newsletter also reminded readers of job listings posted on Digital Manga’s website. Those currently listed as new and ‘permanent’ there are: Manga-Comic Editor/ Production Associate, PHP Developer, Accountant, Production Associate, Graphic Designer/Marketing Assistant and E-commerce Sales Associates.

The weird news of the week from Digital Manga though is that they’ve launched a Kickstarter program to fund a second-printing of Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth. Kickstarter is a site where individuals or groups can start up a funding project where they look to the community to pledge money to support it. I’ve seen this work successfully for independent creators who don’t have the initial means to afford print runs but a company size of Digital Manga doing it?