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Manga Widget Investigates: Wolfmund

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When you are a manga reader always looking forward to the next big license, summer is one of the best times of the year. This is the time of San Diego Comic Con and Otakon, big events in the manga and anime world. Many licenses are announced (or sometimes confirmed, depending on if Amazon gets too frisky) and this oftentimes has readers searching for information on the latest announcements. With that in mind, this week’s post is in regards to one of Vertical Inc.‘s latest announcements - Wolfsmund, a seinen series written by Kuji Mitsuhisa.

Wolfsmund (狼の口: ヴォルフスムント or Ookami no Kuchi: Wolfsmund) is a seinen series set in 14th century Switzerland and centered around a massive checkpoint between one land and the next. The gate, Wolfsmund (the wolf’s maw) is the location of most of the action in the series, and guards St. Gotthard’s Pass, a key travel site in the Dark Ages – it connected two regions of Switzerland, Uri and Ticino, and was also one of the most direct routes to the Germanic states or to Italy.

The entire story appears to be about rebels fighting against some invading force- possibly Austrian or Germanic. In this manga, chapters seem to be centered around commoners or knights attempting to seek refuge or escape capture through St. Gotthard’s Pass as they try to move towards Italy; but the antagonist of this series, Governor Wolfram, seems to capture all who would attempt to evade him.

From what I can tell, Wolfsmund is a fairly dark manga – brutal and unflinching in the face of what admittedly was a dark period of human history. There is nudity and decapitation; there is violence and plenty of sword fighting. The series is not a warm and fuzzy read by any stretch of the imagination.

Some of the sword fighting action of Wolfsmund, Vol. 1. Vertical has announced this title as a future license.

Wolfsmund is currently being published in Enterbrain‘s Fellows! anthology, of which there is not a whole lot of data that I can find published – it appears that this month’s release marks their 24th volume of the anthology, so potentially about 2 years old at this point. What is more well known is that Wolfsmund is currently at 3 collected volumes and is currently ongoing. While I think this is a great license for Vertical, I continue to be surprised by the lack of licensure of Vinland Saga, another historic seinen manga – this license may be a concession by Vertical that this type of manga is in demand by the fan base, but seems alltogether more dark and sinister than Vinland Saga, a title published by Kodansha. (Vinland Saga’s length, ongoing at 11 volumes, may also have something to do with it).

There were plenty of other announcements this summer that I hope to explore at some point – if you have favorites, let me know, and I will see what I can find!

 

 

Manga Widget Investigates: 3 AM Dangerous Zone

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While I am not back to full speed on the blog, I wanted to bring back a few of the long-running series that I have worked on in the past – the most popular of these is Manga Widget Investigates, and so we are back for more license requests and grovelling.

I have complained about the lack of josei manga published in the USA again and again, and to be honest, there still isn’t a lot published in the USA. We can call Bunny Drop josei, and there is plenty of BL, but there isn’t a whole lot of material besides that, and it’s a pretty big shame.

I’ve campaigned for other josei series in the past - so my bias for the content is pretty clear. Those other josei titles at least had a running chance at being licensed. However, the title I’m focusing on today is more of a long shot – not because it isn’t potentially a good series, but because it focuses on two things that are a little foreign to the US reader – salary-manga, and pachinko.

3 AM Dangerous Zone (午前3時の無法地帯 or Gozen 3 Ji no Muhouchitai) by Nemu Youko is a story about a girl recently graduated from college intending to become an illustrator, who ends up working for a design firm that does nothing but designs for pachinko machines, a popular form of gambling in Japan. These games are somewhat like the game of Plinko in the United States, and they revolve around acquiring metallic balls from machines. While Japanese law prevents exchanging the balls directly for cash, they are generally exchanged for some nominal token prize which is then “sold” to a handler for cash.

In 3 AM Dangerous Zone, the main character, Momoko, ends up getting sucked into the life of the firm and works like crazy to get experience and to get some sleep (she is constantly working all ends of the night). The series supposedly deals with her dislike for her working environment, her relationship with her boyfriend and other men in the department, and the comedy/drama that ensues from working at such a crazy company. Also, look at that haircut! And these covers!

Published in Shodensha‘s Feel Young josei anthology, this series seems like it has a mix of exuberance and romantic drama that would make it a fun read. It clocks in at a scant three volumes, however it also has two separate sequels, 3 AM Terrible Zone and 3 AM Dissonance Zone.

From what I understand, TokyoPop previously did work with Shodensha, including their line of books from Erica Sakurazawa and Happy Mania from the author of Sakuran, Moyoko Anno, but it is unclear what their current relationship with that company is; my assumption is that it is like most other relationships that Tokyopop has with publishers – broken.

Of note, critically acclaimed (and as of yet unfinished) Suppli is also from Feel Young. Still waiting to hear back on when I am going to get more volumes of Suppli.

I doubt that this manga has much of a life in the world of print manga, so my assumption is that the biggest target for a request here is JManga, which has already published Shodensha‘s COUSIN and Love My Life through their online platform. This book may add to JManga‘s growing josei presence on the internet, and seems like a small and fun license. At 3 volumes, it’s not a huge risk, and if it turns out to be very successful, we can also get all the sequels associated with it. A win-win for josei fans and JManga!

One thing of note here – most publishers are listening, especially JManga and Vertical. These publishers take great steps to connect with fans via social media, and I think that’s a great way to express your wants and desires. So JManga, you are officially on notice – I want more josei, and I want it to be like this. Pretty please?

Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita

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It’s been a while since I’ve gone snooping around the internet for license requests, but it’s a new year, and a time to get back into the business of blogging.

The recently passed Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and New Year seasons are a time of celebration for many people in the United States, and a large part of these celebrations is spending time with family. Having spent a lot of time with family this past holiday, I started to think about manga that focuses on the relationships between family members. Some of my favorite manga published in English focus on family dynamics (Cross Game and Bunny Drop come to mind) and while these books are probably not the most monetarily successful, these series have been critically acclaimed, and are always series that I make sure to have copies of at my home (and promote tirelessly!).

After a bit of digging, I came across what looks like a real gem – Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita (つづきはまた明日, To Be Continued Tomorrow) a manga about the Fujisawa family, which consists of a 5th grade boy, a 1st grade girl, and a salary-man father. The mother in the family has recently passed away, and so the Fujisawas gets by with the help of the father’s younger sister. The story starts off as a new family moves into the home next door, and the neighbors look remarkably similar to the Fujisawas. It seems like a very remarkable story, and having recently dealt with the pain of losing a family member, the idea hits close to home.

Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita is written by Kita Konno and published by Gentosha. The series is currently at 3 volumes and counting, and is currently published on Gentosha‘s Web Spica, which honestly, I’m going to have to learn some Japanese to understand exactly what’s going on here, but it looks like an digital platform similar to www.sigikki.com. I’ve been pulled to this site before on the account of beautiful watercolors and other artwork, but I still haven’t explored enough to know exactly what is going on. More reasons to become bilingual, I suppose.

Kita Konno is not a widely known writer in the USA, but has written a mix of josei, shojo, yaoi, and yuri manga in a mix of anthologies. This mixed pedigree makes a me even more interested in her work, as some of my favorite authors (Natsume Ono, Fumi Yoshinaga) have the same type of mixed pedigree.

As far as publishers go, I am not sure if any of the publishers have a direct relationship with Gentosha, so perhaps someone like Yen Press might go for this title, or perhaps this might be a great candidate for Digital Manga’s Kickstarter crowdsourced publishing. (I believe that TOKYOPOP had a licensing relationship with Gentosha, but unfortunately, TOKYOPOP is no longer publishing manga. Probably.) It appears that the parent publishing company has done some work with digital comics, so that might be a good home for Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita, so either JManga or NetComics take note.

While manga about families suffering hardship and coming out of it together may not sell a lot of comics to the Naruto crowd, it has the appeal of a more independent, adult comics-reading audience, and as the manga-reading population ages, this sort of content may be a good step in that direction. I would love to see manga like this in the United States, and I challenge publishers to redefine the meaning of manga with titles like Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita.

Manga Widget Investigates, MMF-Edition: Katsu!

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Hey folks! We are postponing this week’s Rescue Me! post in lieu of a MMF license request. Please check back in next week for more Rescue Me! content.

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As hopefully you know, this week is the Cross Game Manga Moveable Feast, a monthly celebration of manga that lasts an entire week. For May, we are celebrating Mitsuru Adachi’s critically-acclaimed Cross Game, a Shonen Sunday manga published from May of 2005 until February of 2010. Derik Badman is hosting the MMF at The Panelists website, so check back there every day this week for more Cross Game content. Cross Game is 17 volumes long, and is being published in an omnibus format in the USA – seven of the 17 volumes have been released so far, the first translated omnibus volume consisting of the first three volumes, while the second two omnibuses are two volumes long apiece.

Mitsuru Adachi is a sports writer, primarily. He has worked in other genres, such as history and fantasy, but his major area of expertise is sports manga, which is why we haven’t seen too much of him the USA until now. Being a sports manga writer is sort of a kiss of death in the publishing industry in the USA – manga like Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield 21 are not popular in the USA, even though they do very well in Japan. This difference comes from the  audience differences between the two nations – in Japan, manga is for everyone, and caters to people of wide tastes and hobbies. Shonen Sunday and Shonen Jump target kids in junior high and high school, and manga in Japan has a much higher penetration rate than here in the USA. And, to be blunt, many of the people who read manga in the USA are not sports-oriented, and don’t enjoy reading about sports.

Cross Game has shown us that even when an author focuses on a sport, they can still manage to tell other stories. Adachi is especially adept at de-emphasizing action and the very meat-and-potatoes scenes that make most other sports manga tick – instead, he focuses on character interaction and emotion, and lets the reader fill in the blanks when it comes to action. It’s a very slick presentation that features a sport, but does not emphasize it above all other things.

Despite his perceived limited scope, it is my opinion that Mitsuru Adachi is one of greatest mangaka in Japan, rivaling Rumiko Takahashi in skill and popularity. His work is allegoric yet heartfelt, and maintains a pace and scope of storytelling unmatched by other mangaka. It seems like a tragedy that more of his writing has not yet made it to the USA, and I think that this is a problem that Viz Media and its parent companies need to rectify, so I’m making a suggestion for Viz Media‘s next Adachi release – Adachi’s 2001-2005 series Katsu!.

Katsu! is a boxing manga about a young man, Katsuki Satoyama, who joins a boxing gym to meet a girl Katsuki Mitzutani that is in his freshman class. After training a bit and sparring, he finds out that he has a latent talent for the game – and comes to discover that he is the son of a pro-boxer. The series features Adachi’s signature every-man main character and the feisty female co-lead who gives him headaches, but this time framed around the sport of boxing.

I’m sure that other people interested in Adachi would like to see his other major baseball series, H2, released in the USA, but I think that Katsu! is a much more reasonable series – like Cross Game, the series does not break 20 volumes (Katsu! is 16 volumes, Cross Game is 17). Both are more modern than H2, which ran for 34 volumes from 1992 to 1999, which isn’t necessarily a problem in art style, since Adachi has been pretty consistent with his art for the past 25 years, but I doubt that many publishers would want to start printing a 34-volume baseball epic that started print almost 20 years ago. Katsu! is a fine compromise and showcases Adachi’s ability to write about more than just baseball.

Part of what we doing an MMF is celebrate not only the story being told, but also the writer telling it. I think it is high time we let Adachi loose on American soil and get more of his manga translated into English. The stories are riveting, wonderful examples of how excellent comics can be, and Cross Game is only a taste of what he can offer to English-reading fans. Katsu! is a fine next step, and it is my hope that Cross Game does well enough to make other Adachi series viable for print in the US.

Manga Widget Investigates: Oishii Kankei

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One of the series I’ve really been enjoying lately is DMP’s Itazura na Kiss, which is one of the manga I associate with the beginning of shojo as we know it in the USA. The series, although only recently licensed for release, has flavored and influenced multiple series released in the US, and forms part of a background of almost “required reading” if you are interested in the progression of shojo as a genre. It also happens to be a wonderful series, so it isn’t a drag or a purely academic read either.

One of the things that sets Itazura na Kiss apart from most shojo that is being published currently is its art style, which some might say is dated or old-fashioned. The art is fully set in the 1990′s, with all of its clothing and hair trends, but it also has a sort of angular quality that looks very different from something like, say Fruits Basket. While some readers dislike this style, I find it quite attractive. 1990′s manga like Itazura na Kiss, and Boys Over Flowers are some of my favorite series; it comes as no surprise then that I’m interested in another 90′s manga – Oishii Kankei (A Delicious Relationship) written by Satoru Makimura and originally published in Shueisha‘s Young You anthology. The series is 16 volumes long, and began its run in 1993.

Oishii Kankei is a story about a college age woman who loves gourmet food named Fujiwara Momoe. Her father, a wealthy businessman, loves to indulge his tastes for classy cooking, and she has spent her entire life eating the most delectable meals prepared by the best chefs in Japan. On the day of the celebration of Fujiwara’s graduation, her father dies of a heart attack, presumably due to his overeating. In one moment, Fujiwara’s life is forever changed. Now she and her mother are alone, and must now make a living. Fujiwara manages to walk into a small French restaurant and impress the manager and head chef, Oda-san, to hire her.

This is, just like Itazura na Kiss, a shojo tale of grumpy, handsome love interest vs. spunky, relentless lead, but it is complicated and embellished with food and cooking. I’m not shy about asking for cooking manga, and the list of cooking manga we have licensed in English is woefully short. To take cooking and add the irresistible strengths of Itazura na Kiss just seems like a winning combination to me.

The rest of the world seems to agree. Oishii Kankei has been made into an 11-part drama show as well as a 20-part Taiwanese drama titled Sweet Relationship which ran from Fall 2007 to Winter 2008.

Of particular note, Satoru Makimura is an author we haven’t seen anything from in the US, but she produces some seemingly spectacular dance, clothing, and sport-related josei and shojo manga. She made her debut in 1973 with “Shiroi Tsuioku,” and her latest series, Real Clothes, serialized in YOU, has made it to the BookScan comic lists for Japan on multiple occasions.

Do I think that Oishii Kankei is a good license? Probably not. The series’ “outdated” artwork is probably a limiting factor for its publication because of the tastes of the current US manga reading population, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Certainly though, it is a possible license – books like Boys over Flowers and Oishinbo have been published, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Regardless of discussions of financial viability though, I can’t think of a series that meets more of my “squee” criteria besides perhaps The Drops of God (coming soon from Vertical Inc.!!!) so I guess a guy can dream.

Manga Widget Investigates: I Am A Hero

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(This post has imagery that may be NSFW.)

Last week I finished up looking at Kodansha’s initial list of releases and found them to be… boring. Now that I’m finished looking over what is actually going to get published in the US, it’s time to daydream about manga that hasn’t been licensed yet. Since I am a sucker for manga award winners, and since they generally are less formulaic, more unique pieces, I’ve been daydreaming about the list of Manga Taisho nominees that was announced in January. My first delve into the Manga Taisho awards explored the world of Un Chocolatier de L’Amour Perdu, a josei manga about a pâtissier and his unrequited love, which sounded absolutely delicious. Going back to the Manga Taisho list (of which you can find a very nice synopsis here), we are going to look at one of the darker pieces of work that was nominated this year – I Am a Hero, by Kengo Hanazawa.

The Manga Taisho awards are sort of the odd man of awards given to manga in Japan. Unlike most manga awards, which are generally chosen by editors and mangaka, the Manga Taisho awards are chosen by booksellers who are in charge of selling manga in their specific stores. The Manga Taisho awards are also limited to works published in the year that the award is given, and can only be given to a series that has eight or less volumes. This means that the Manga Taisho awards generally promote newer work, and keep industry behemoths like One Piece and other shonen giants away from the limelight. The Manga Taisho panel also has the tendency to skew towards manga that are more eclectic and mature than normal manga, so you tend to see more seinen and josei series than shojo or shonen (although Bakuman did get nominated for the 3rd Taisho awards last year).

I Am a Hero is a psychological thriller/horror manga that features a 30+ year-old man who is working as a mangaka’s assistant and is trying to make it big with his own series. The author has some severe psychological problems, but he tries to overcome them and live a regular life. Things take a nosedive when a rampant virus which initially looks like the flu starts turning people into crazed zombies, and the world starts collapsing… maybe. From what I can tell, it seems fairly contentious whether or not the zombies are real, or if they’re part of the main character’s overarching psychosis.

The author of I Am a Hero, Kengo Hanazawa, has published a total of four series. His longest running, Boys on the Run, was a 10-volume series published in Big Comic Spirits, and seems like a mix up of Rocky and I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow. Likewise, I Am a Hero is currently in print in Shogakukan‘s Big Comic Spirits, which is a weekly seinen magazine that is/was also the home of Oishinbo, Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, and Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. That’s quite a bit of variety, and the series currently being published in Big Comic Spirits seem to relish that.

I Am a Hero is reminiscent of some of the much darker work of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service illustrator Housui Yamazaki. Both Mail and MPD Psycho published by Dark Horse in the USA immediately come to mind for their dark, disturbing horror. While I Am a Hero is published in Shogakukan‘s Big Comic Spirits, I have a feeling that a series like I Am a Hero could only gain traction in Viz Media‘s Signature line (which does feature Biomega, a sci-fi horror manga) or in Dark Horse‘s excellently curated manga line.