Some note-worthy new listings popped up on Amazon over the week and this time one of them even comes with a confirmation from the company.
Two new Digital Manga listings of interest: one is for another omnibus edition of a previously released series of theirs, this time Hinako Takanaga’s fantastically charming Little Butterfly (big recommendations from me on this one!). This joins the already confirmed omnibus for Makoto Tateno’s Yellow.
Speaking of whom, Makoto Tateno’s boys’ love series Yokan is now listed on Amazon from Digital Manga under the name Preminition. Some yaoi fans may recall this title as having been previously licensed by the now defunk DramaQueen (under the title Omen). Word is that several of DQ’s licenses have begun to expire after years of no releases, which means there’s a likely possibility for more license rescues in the coming future. Preminition, along with a couple other newer licenses, are now listed on Digital Manga’s website.
Other Amazon finds of interest includes two editions of Yen Press’s upcoming first volume release of Soul Eater, one of which apparently coming with a presumably-snazzy slipcover. Extra attention for a series with a big fan base? Speaking of big fan-base (which should be bigger still!), Yen Press will be releasing not one, not two but six volumes of Yotsuba&! this September!
And lastly, though my Twitter followers heard this from me a couple days ago, listings for Akira by Kodansha Comics (previously reported as one of the most solid pieces of Kodansa-related news the English manga world has gotten so far) are now all being listed as the following: Akira Volume # (Akira (del Rey)).
This isn’t the first time I’ve noted overlap in publishing credits between Kodansha Comics and Del Rey, who already has a close connection with the company and releases their titles predominantly. Of course this could just be a slip-up on Amazon’s part, though some other retail sites have the publisher for Kodansha Comic’s rereleases of Akira and Ghost in the Shell listed as Random House (of which Del Rey is an imprint of). Is Del Rey merely helping Kodansha find footing in North America? Or could Kodansha Comics show up as another Random House imprint as a more all-inclusive joint agreement for manga releases? Time will (we hope) tell for sure!
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I speculated the same thing about Del Rey "helping" Kodansha in my article on this a while back, but my personal conclusion is that Kodansha has actually been publishing books in North America for quite some time, including some manga…I doubt they really need help, at least on the level of submitting things to Amazon.
The only reason I can think of for having Del Rey help with that kind of thing is if they want to keep quiet about their plans for Kodansha publishing directly for the time being…but surely they've noticed that we all like to speculate, so I don't know how likely that is.
[…] the title Premonition. This was first spotted by Lissa Pattillo at Kuriousity, who also spotted more new and reformatted titles at […]
You just made my day! I absolutely adore Makoto Tateno's work. I had all but given up on Yokan but my thanks goes out to DMP for rescuing this work. Now excuse me while I do my happy dance!
With Digital Manga already having so many of Makoto Tateno's work, and bringing her to Yaoi Con this year as their guest, I'm sure this won't be the last of her manga series we hear about being licensed either ^^