20 Apr, 2008

What manga will you be reading one year from now? Viz, Del Rey, Yen Press, DMP, Dark Horse, and CMX unveiled the titles they hope you’ll purchase, from adaptations of popular anime series to works by established masters. Below is a run-down of the day’s big licensing news.

VIZ MEDIA
If I were to sum up the Viz panel in a sentence, I’d say simply, “More Naruto, more Bleach, more Takehiko Inoue.” Viz announced plans to release two Naruto movies straight to DVD, as well as plans for a theatrical release of the Bleach movie. The Naruto DVDs arrive in July and October, respectively, while Bleach: Memories of Nobody will be screened in theaters on June 11th and 12th. (Sign up for the Shonen Jump newsletter and you’ll be able to purchase advanced tickets.) Viz will then release Memories of Nobody on DVD in October, the same month that two other Bleach tie-ins debut: Bleach: All Color But the Black, a full-color artbook, and Souls: The Rain Drags Black Sun Down, a set of character profiles. (Were these titles generated in Babelfish?!). For those of us who are less enamored with Naruto and Bleach, you’ll be happy to learn that the Takehiko Inoue assault begins in July with the release of Real, followed by the first VIZBIG edition of Vagabond (700+ pages retailing for $19.99), the first Slam Dunk tankubon, and two art books, Sumi and Water, in September.

The other exciting announcement at today’s panel was the return of Rumiko Takahashi’s One Pound Gospel, a quirky romance about a boxer who loves two things: food and Sister Angela, a pretty young noviate. Viz will reissue the first three volumes in a new, unflipped format beginning in June 2008. The final volume, which was recently released in Japan, will hit store shelves in December 2008. Other titles that Viz will be releasing this year:

• Black Lagoon (Rei Hiroe): A seinen series featuring guns, girls, and plenty of “Quentin Tarantino-esque” action. (Viz’s words, not mine.) Title will carry a Mature rating. August 2008.
• Cat-Eyed Boy (Kazuo Umezu): A horror title from the creator of The Drifting Classroom. Viz will release it in an omnibus format. July 2008.
• COWA! (Akira Toriyama): A single volume comedy-adventure that’s kid-friendly… and in color. From the creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump. July 2008.
• Short-Tempered Melancholic (Arina Tanemura). Shojo title. August 2008.
• Solanin (Asano Inio): A rock-n-roll drama aimed at 17-to-34 year old readers; part of the Viz Signature line. October 2008.
• Time Stranger Kyoko (Arina Tanemura): A one-shot shojo drama. July 2008.

Though Viz acknowledged the acquisition of the 100+ volume Oishinibo, they didn’t divulge any details of the release.

DEL REY MANGA
Del Rey’s panel focused primarily on upcoming releases, many of which were announced at NY Anime Fest. They did unveil four new acquisitions, however:

• Gakuen Prince (Jun Yuzuki): A comedy/drama about an elite girls’ boarding school that goes co-ed, but only admits a few boys—all of them squee-worthy. April 2009.
• Samurai 7 (Mizutaka Zuhou): A manga adaptation of Kurosawa’s classic 1954 film, by way of the recent Gonzo anime. April 2009.
• Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking (Koji Kumeta): A black comedy about a depressed teacher and his eccentric students. This licensing announcement elicited the biggest cheers from the audience. March 2008.
• The Case of the Dragon Slayer (Kadano Kouhei): A light fantasy/mystery novel from the author of the Boogiepop series. February 2009.

Dallas Middaugh also confirmed the talent working on their Wolverine manga project, scheduled for a 2009 release. As announced in December, Antony Johnston will pen the script, while artist Wilson Tortosa will provide the artwork. Middaugh then unveiled preliminary character designs from both Marvel manga projects, including a super-bishonen treatment of Night Crawler (who’ll appear in the shojo X-Men series) and a furry, fabulous take on Beast that made him look like a bad-ass Totoro.

The panel concluded with a brief review of Del Rey’s 2008-09 line-up, with special emphasis placed on its growing line of Original English Manga. This summer will see the release of In Odd We Trust (June), Queenie Chan’s adaptation of the popular Dean Koontz series, and The Reformed (June), a vampire drama illustrated by X-Men mangaka Anzu. In the fall, Del Rey will release Nina Matsumoto’s Yokaiden! (November), which Middaugh described as “a hilarious revenge drama” with supernatural elements. Excerpts from all three are featured in the Del Rey sampler.

YEN PRESS
Yen already tipped its hand on Friday with a press release announcing the acquisition of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The manga will debut in October 2008, followed by the novels in April 2009. The novels will be a joint venture with Little Brown Books for Young Readers, the publishers of such young adult bestsellers as Gossip Girl, Maximum Ride, and Twilight. By collaborating with Little Brown, Yen hopes to reach a much wider audience for this popular franchise.

The other big story was Yen Plus magazine, which premieres on July 29, 2008. Some of the details had been announced at NY Anime Fest, such as the price point ($8.99/issue) and length (460 pages for issue one). The magazine will read from both sides, featuring a mixture of Japanese, English, and Korean comics. The otaku contingent rejoiced lustily at the news that the Japanese titles would be provide by Square Ennix, which signed an exclusive two-year agreement to feature their manga in Yen Plus. Among the titles you’ll be seeing in the inaugural issue:

• Soul Eater (Atsushi Ohkubo): A story about a scythe-smith and her transforming sword.
• Nabari No On (Yuhki Kamatani): Yet another tale about a slacker who discovers that he possesses a power so devastating it might just destroy the world.
• Sumimomo Momomo (Shinobu Ohtaka): A romantic comedy about ninjas from rival factions.
• Bamboo Blade (Matsahiro Totsuka, story; Aguri Igarashi, art): A martial arts comedy.
• Higurashi: When They Cry (7th Expansion, story; Karin Suzuragi, art): A murder-mystery based on a popular videogame/anime franchise.

In the final minutes of the presentation, Yen announced several acquisitions from China, including Wild Animals (Song Yang), a love story set during the Cultural Revolution, and An Ideal World (Chen Weidong and Peng Chao), a full-color comic about a factory worker who leaves his job to roam the countryside.

DMP AND DARK HORSE
Got Tezuka? Apparently DMP does. Their big licensing announcement was the acquisition of Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth, a more obscure title that first appeared in Big Comic Magazine in 1968. According to TezukaWorld, the series is “is a suspense comedy depicting modern male-dominated society with a sarcastic touch”:

In 1942, amidst the Pacific war on the Guadalcanal Island in the South Pacific, Japanese soldiers Adachigahara Kitaro and Seki Ichimatsu hear about a beautiful woman named Zefilth from a captured American soldier. He says that everybody falls in love with her at first sight.

Twenty years after the end of the war, Kitaro and Ichimatsu, who have already returned to Japan but have never forgotten the woman, meet again. Knowing the woman named Zefilth is now in Japan, they decide to find out more about her. Seki’s son, Gohonmatsu, stays at her hotel and approaches her. Then the truth is disclosed: there are seven Zefilths who are all sisters. They have spread out all around the world to take revenge on men and civilization for destroying their mother’s life.

The other big news to emerge from the afternoon panels is that Dark Horse will be publishing CLAMP’s Clover in a deluxe omnibus edition featuring color artwork from the original Japanese edition. In a word: hooray!

CMX
After last year’s comically awful pairing of CMX and Wildstorm, DC had the good sense to give CMX its own panel. The discussion was dominated by Crayon Shinchan fans, who peppered Jim Chadwick and Asako Suzuki with questions about their favorite rude, crude five-year-old. There was also some talk of the four-issue Batman: Deathmask series, a joint venture between DC and CMX. The art and story are the work of Togari creator Yoshinori Natsume, and will be released in two formats: American-style floppies and a one-volume tankubon edition.

Among the new titles highlighted at the panel:

• Astral Project: A noir tale with a sci-fi twist. From the author of Old Boy. October 2008.
• Ballad of a Shinigami: A three-volume manga adaptation of a popular anime/light novel franchise about a melancholy soul reaper. Spring 2009.
• Classical Medley: A fantasy-adventure with button-cute artwork. The gimmick? The characters’ names all correspond to musical terms, i.e. Soprano, Mezzo, Alto.
• Fire Investigator Nanase: A rookie female fire investigator teams up with an arsonist to solve crimes. January 2009.
• Go West!: An action-comedy by Yu Yagami, the creator of Doikkoida and Hikkatsu!. Set in a fictionalized version of the American West.
• Jihai: A three-volume sci-fi drama from the creator of The Flat Earth Exchange. February 2009.
• Suihelibe!: An all-ages title about an alien girl who enlists a school’s biology club to help her retrieve her missing pets. October 2008.
• Venus Capriccio: A shojo drama about a young woman and her piano teacher, who just so happens to be a sensitive, handsome young man.

The other welcome news at the CMX panel: Emma will return in March 2009 with three more volumes. Most of the stories will focus on other characters, though Chadwick promised a final William-and-Emma tale in volume ten. If you just can’t wait another year to get your Kaoru Mori fix, CMX will be releasing Shirley in July, a single volume anthology of (wait for it) maid stories.

So that’s the 411 on Saturday’s panels. The only big manga panel scheduled for today is Tokyopop; brain cells willing, I’ll have a wrap-up on Tokyopop tonight, followed by a more reflective post summarizing the con’s biggest news stories on Monday or Tuesday.

- Katherine Dacey