Internet-splunkage today stumbled me upon a post from user saaria on the AarinFantasy forums, that states Digital Manga has confirmed the cancellation of Yura Miyazawa’s Love Syndrome. Amazon has the book marked for a May 2009 release but the title is not present on Digital Manga’s website.
I shot out an e-mail to Digital Manga for confirmation on this, but in the meantime took to looking if there may be other unknown casualities.
Looking back, Love Syndrome was originally announced during Digital Manga’s panel at last year’s Anime Expo 2008. With nearly a year gone by since then, I went back to the announcement list and started cross-checking some of the Digital Manga titles. While a number of them have been released (many recently), the rest are no where to be seen.
The following titles, previously announced by Digital Manga at Anime Expo 2008, are currently (to my searching) not listed on their website(s) and/or on wholesale sites:
Please keep in mind that everything here is speculative until officially responded to by Digital Manga staff
1 Sakura Hill
Fujiko Kosumi
Ghost Hunt Scramble
Ototachibana
Heaven’s Smile (Yaoi)
Aki Senoo
Honey/Chocolate (Yaoi) (Amazon date: March 2009 – Claims Shipping)
Nanao Okuda
Longest Time (Yaoi)
Tohko Tateno
Love Syndrome (Yaoi) (Amazon date: May 2009)
Yura Miyazawa
Lyrical Nanoha Strikers
Maki Tsuzuki & Kōji Hasegawa
Moonlit Promises (Yaoi)
Souya Himawari
Object of my Affections (Yaoi) (Amazon date: January 2009)
Nanao Okuda
Overclock: Once in a Blue Moon
Riya Hozumi & Ryouko Seki
Planet of Earthquake (Yaoi)
Miou Takaya
Spiral of Sand (Yaoi)
Yuna Aoi
Tale of a White Night
Tooko Miyagi
Then Comes Love (Yaoi) (Amazon date: February 2009)
Riyu Yamakami
Ed Chavez over at MangaCast also made note late in 2008 that a number of these Digital Manga titles had not yet been published, and true enough to his words then, nothing has been been heard about their status since.
(On the note of that post, though generally unrelated to the rest of this write-up, the same post also mentions that the license of Akira reverted back to Kodansha in the summer of 2008, indicating that recent discoveries may not have been as big a surprise as some of us had concluded.)
Semi-related, recently The Yaoi Review posted this information from Digital Manga’s newsletter regarding one of their DMP’s light novel releases, The Lonely Egotist:
“The Lonely Egotist, a yaoi novel from Digital Manga’s June imprint, is no longer available at the wholesale level. As such, we have removed it from our online catalog and have canceled any orders we were unable to fulfill. We apologize, in advance, for any inconvenience this may cause.”
With so many licenses announced by Digital Manga at Anime Expo alone, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that not all the titles would make it through to print. However, are these titles infact cancelled or merely postponed? Are they just some of a longer list? And probably most forefront in my mind, is Digital Manga planning to make an announcement of cancellations if this is in fact the case?
In brighter, though still unofficial, news, looks like Digital Manga is joining the omnibus-route with a rerelease of Makoto Tateno’s Yellow. With this omnibus book listed as volume one, it will likely compile two of the four books together, with a later volume two omnibus finishing the collection. A little less straight-forward than that is a listing for Yellow 2: Episode 1. To my knowledge Yellow doesn’t have a sequel (though of course I could be wrong!). Either that or it’s an incorrect listing or just there to confuse us wholesale site diggers.
I asked Digital Manga about both these listings in April but haven’t recieved a reply on it yet, so I release it to the masses and the Yellow fans (or would-be fans) hopeful for another shot at Makoto Tateno’s first boys’ love story to hit North American shores.
New information regarding the Digital Manga titles mentioned here will be in follow-up posts.
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Well, it is sad to hear so many titles are in limbo over at DMP, but they have so many titles under their belt that it comes as no surprise that they need to be a little more selective of what makes it to the printer. I'm sure there are people out there that want these books (I had one or two in my "wish" list as well), so hopefully this is a delay instead of a cancelation . Thanks for the update, I'll check back.
I contacted DMP some time back about Knights vol. 2. Originally to be released back in October of 2008 they told me it would be late 2009 but did not have a specific date.
http://www.dmpbooks.com/books/268/
[…] Lissa Pattillo finds books that haven’t been announced yet, but in this post, she notes some that aren’t there—possibly cancelled books from Digital Manga. All is […]
I wonder if these titles are either being held or let go due to the economic downturn we are currently experiencing. As you already know 801 used to publish 2 books a month and are now only doing 1 a month. Plus it seems that last year June was publishing 12 titles a month. Now we get half that number. When they made the announcement last year things were still semi-ok. Who knows?
I must give you props on your diligence on digging up this info. Me, I'm too lazy. I just go by what info the publisher gives me and go from there!
[…] a weird listing for something called Yellow 2: Episode 1 that originally popped up on Amazon.ca earlier this month. The listing has been tweaked slightly, including to my memory, the additional information that the […]