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Licensing | Press Releases | Release Lists

Good Things Come In Threes With New Yen Press Licenses

Übel Blatt

Yen Press managed to do the nearly-impossible yesterday by announcing three new manga licenses… via their own website! It was a triple Valentine’s Day treat:

Accel World – Reki Kawahara & Hiroyuki Aigamo
Barakamon – Satsuki Yoshino
Übel Blatt – Etorouji Shiono

We’re so used to finding out licenses via social media or retail listings, that reading the news first from a company’s RSS feed felt like a foreign experience. It’s also been a while since we’ve heard licensing news from Yen Press in general. I’ve no complaints of course, and all these licenses look great. It’s also the first time any of these creators have been published in English.

Accel World is a repeat title for Yen Press. They announced that they had licensed the original light novels last summer. The story follows students who can log into their school network to participate, and compete, in a virtual world where winning imbues the players with powers in the real world.

Baramamon – which has some adorable looking cover artwork – is about a young calligrapher who must move to a small island. There his city habits are tested as he befriends the locals and gets accustomed to his new life there. This series looks really charming – I hope the covers don’t steer me wrong!

And then there’s Übel Blatt, a series I’ve already seen compared to Berserk repeatedly. As a fan of that series, I’m certainly not adverse to another violent, fantasy epic full of elves and magic. The story follows a young swordsmen with a dark past out on a quest for revenge! Good stories can come from small plot packages. Yen Press will be releasing Übel Blatt in omnibus editions collecting two in one.

All three titles are scheduled to start in Fall of this year.


Daring Doujinshi As Seven Seas Announces Dance in Vampire Bund Anthologies

Daring Doujinshi As Seven Seas Announces Dance in Vampire Bund Anthologies

Seven Seas is joining Yen Press at bringing doujinshi to North America. While doujinshi is a word for self-published comics, the term is used primarily by English-speaking audiences for fan-works based on preexisting properties. Seven Seas simultaneously pleases fans of one of their most popular series with this week’s doujinshi license:

Dance in the Vampire Bund: Forgotten Tales – Various
Dance in the Vampire Bund: Secret Chronicles – Various

These  two collections of short stories are primarily contributed to by fans of Dance in the Vampire Bund. They’ve been compiled by Seven Seas from a variety of smaller publications previously sold in Japanese comic markets.

The series original creator, Nozomu Tamaki, also contributed new stories to these books as well. Secret Chronicles is especially notable for fans of the original series as Nozomu Tamaki oversaw all the short stories within it, giving them official capacity. They’re canon, folks!

Forgotten Tales is scheduled to be released in June 2014, while Secret Chronicles will follow behind in October.

Credit for the news goes to ICv2


Seven Seas Switches It Up With Body Swapping Manga Kokoro Connects

Kokoro Connects

One of the most entertaining manga I’ve read recently has been Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, published digitally by Crunchyroll. It begins with a young man discovering he has the ability to switch bodies with others thanks to a kiss. Naturally, plenty of body-switching hilarity ensues! But, though this post serves as a convenient chance to promote such a fun series, it’s actually about another story where there’s body-switching afoot in school:

Kokoro Connects – Sadanatsu Anda & CuteG

Seven Seas announced they’d acquired the license to Kokoro Connects on their Twitter account earlier this week. The series is scheduled to start in August 2014 with volume one, while it remains on-going in Japan with five currently compiled books so far.

“Five members of the school culture club – Taichi Yaegashi, Iori Nagase, Himeko Inaba, Yui Kiriyama, and Yoshifumi Aoki – encounter a bizarre phenomenon one day when Aoki and Yui switch personalities without warning. The same begins to happen to the other club members, throwing their daily lives into chaos. At first the five students find some amusement among the confusion, but this connection also exposes the painful scars hidden within their hearts… When their calm lives are shattered, the relationships between the five students also begin to change!” – Crunchyroll

Kokoro Connects has also been adapted into an anime, which was streamed by Crunchyroll in 2012.


Seven Seas Licenses Magical Girl Apocalypse

Magical Girl Apocalypse

Seven Seas‘ has announced its first new title of 2014, starting off the year with a creepy, creepy cover (with added blood for effect!):

Magical Girl Apocalypse – Satou Kentaro

As the image implies, Magical Girl Apocalypse is not another tale of brightly coloured frilled skirts and cute compacts. The story follows two students whose lives are thrown into chaos when a magical girl appears at their school and begins murdering their classmates.

Volume one is scheduled to come out in October 2014. The series is currently four volumes long in Japan.


Vertical Inc Helps Us Creatively Kill Time with My Neighbor Seki License

My Neighbor Seki

Now we’re really ringing in the new year – it’s new manga acquisition time! Today it was Vertical Inc, who has their first official license of 2014:

My Neighbor Seki – Takuma Morishige

Vertical’s marketing director and friend to manga-kind, Ed Chavez, announced the license during his recent appearance on the ANNCast. The timing coincides nicely with the My Neighbor Seki anime adaptation which has just started streaming on Crunchyroll, though Ed describes plans to publish the title have actually be on-going for a couple years.

“Seki is the quite type. Smart and pretty cool-headed Seki is generally your average everyday student. But when he is at his desk way at the back his homeroom, he reveals a creative side that few people get to experience. Hidden from the eyes of his teachers, Seki is often found tinkering on and around his desk, creating the most complicated of projects often stretching the imagination…mainly cause he’s got nothing better to do.”

My Neighbor Seki is scheduled to start late 2014, with a new volume out every 2-3 months. Currently the series is five volumes long in Japan.


Seven Seas Celebrates the New Year with Website Launch

Seven Seas Celebrates the New Year with Website Launch

Seven Seas went out with a strong finish in 2013. In the last couple of months, there was news every couple of weeks for new licenses.

Now the company is leaping into the new year with a fresh face for their website:

Seven Seas Entertainment

The revamped site includes a news section on the front page for their press releases, and tidied up navigation for finding info on their different series. Details on individual volumes still link off-site to MacMillan, however, which is a bit of a headache but at least it’s all there.

The site also has their book releases from now until the end of the year. 2014 looks to be a busy one indeed for Seven Seas.


Massive Bara Anthology Rescued by Fantagraphics

Massive Bara Anthology Rescued by Fantagraphics

It looks like I was mourning the bara anthology, Massive, a little prematurely.

Fantagraphics recently announced that they’ve picked up the license for the anthology, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It. It features a number of Japan’s best known bara artists, including the previously English-published creator, Gengoroh Tagame.

The late-publisher Picture Box Inc was originally slated to release the collection but announced they were shutting down as of the end of December. You can read more about the book in my original news post about the license and via an interview about it on Robot6, who originally broke this news.

The current release plan is next fall.

Credit for me reading the news first goes to AnimeNewsNetwork.


Seven Seas Dreams Bigger With New Alice in the Country of… Trilogy

Alice in the Country of Clover: Nightmare Trilogy

Seven Seas delivered some holiday cheer when they confirmed via their Twitter account that they’d licensed a new Alice in the Country of… series:

Alice in the Country of Joker: Nightmare Trilogy – QuinRose & Yobu

As the name indicates, the series will be three volumes long and star Nightmare as Alice’s romantic inclination. The first volume is scheduled for release in August 2014. Pre-orders are already available via Amazon.ca | Amazon.com.

This is the second series Seven Seas has licensed that’s dedicated to the character, Nightmare. The first was Alice in the Country of Clover: Nightmare, which will be released a few months prior in April. In all of the Alice in the Country Of… stories, Nightmare is an enigmatic figure who comes  to Alice in her dreams. While he has offered helpful hints about her time in Wonderland, he most often speaks in vagueness to confuse her and makes clear in Alice’s absence that he knows much more than he tells her.

It was already a pleasant surprise to me that Nightmare had a one-shot, so I’m especially thrilled to see he gets a trilogy as well. I’ve been crossing my fingers that a focus on him might finally reveal a few more truths about the series hanging plot threads.

Both Nightmare titles are drawn by the same artist, Yobu. Their cover artwork for Nightmare looks great but I’ll need a bit more optimism for the eye-candy after seeing how they drew Alice on volume one’s cover. Hmm…

Alice


TCAF 2014: Manga Artist est em Announced as Featured Guest

TCAF 2014: Manga Artist est em Announced as Featured Guest

One of my most anticipated yearly events – TCAF, the Toronto Comics Art Festival, has just announced their featured guests for 2014. Among them is manga artist, est em!

This is really exciting news for fans of est em. Thanks in part to several of her series being licensed in English, there are quite a few of us! Known predominantly for her boys’ love series, est em’s English-released titles include Age Called Blue, Kine In!Red Blinds the Foolish, Seduce me After The ShowTableau No. 20 and ULTRAS.

I love est em’s artwork which errs on the side of more realistic than the usual willowy boys’ love characters, and her strong characterization makes for great drama that plays out in unique scenarios. Not all of her books hit it off with me, but her work is always something I’ll pick up when it’s released. I’m currently awaiting the arrival of her most recent work, Tableau No. 20, from SuBLime.

You can read my review of Seduce Me After The Show, and Shannon Fay has reviewed Age Called Blue and ULTRAS.

est em isn’t the only talent on the list I’m excited to see there, so I encourage all comic lovers to check it out and plan their attendance! TCAF organizers will soon be announcing the 300+ other comic creators who will be exhibiting at the free event which takes place at the Toronto Reference Library in Toronto, Ontario on May 10th – 11th.


Project-H Gets A Cute Devil Girlfriend With New Hentai Title

Project-H Gets A Cute Devil Girlfriend With New Hentai Title

Twitter continues to be the cool place to announce new licenses as Project-H steps back up to bat with another new title:

Cute Devil Girlfriend – Hisasi

Cute Devil Girlfriend is a collection of short stories starring big breasted, devil-tailed cute girls that are absolutely not for the kiddies! Adults only, folks, and Project-H ensures its readers that the book will be released censorship free.

The book is scheduled for a print release in September 2014.


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