Kodansha’s New Manga Licenses Announced
This weekend was Anime Expo, so Kodansha made a number of announcements.
They will be putting out their first yaoi (boys’ love) and yuri (girls’ love) series, with three titles coming in January.
10 Dance by Satoh Inoue is about “kings of the ballroom”, rivals attracted to each other.
Hitorijime My Hero by Memeko Arii is “a yaoi romance between a good boy who didn’t know he was waiting for a hero, and a bad boy who comes to his rescue!” The anime is currently available on Amazon Prime.
Yuri Is My Job! by Miman is a comedy about “working at a weird café where the waitresses pretend to be students at an all-girl boarding school.” A new employee has a crush on her work partner, who can’t stand her.
But first, here’s what’s coming later this year, in October, with items of interest to Fairy Tail fans and some digital titles successful enough to come to print.
The 400-page Hiro Mashima’s Playground is a collection of short stories by the creator of Fairy Tail and Rave Master, including the first appearance of the Fairy Tail guild in a prototype story.
That same month, Edens Zero, also by Hiro Mashima, comes to print after a digital-first release. It’s a high-flying space adventure that’s getting a “simultaneous global print release”.
Another digital release comes to print in October, Boarding School Juliet by Yousuke Kaneda. “Rival dorms on an extravagant island campus fight a schoolyard war, but can two star-crossed lovers keep their budding relationship a secret?”
The Quintessential Quintuplets by Negi Haruba, a high school romantic comedy where a guy has to tutor five sisters, is coming to print in January 2019. They’re cute, but they hate studying.
In March comes Gleipnir by Sun Takeda, a weird-sounding sci-fi the publisher calls “dark, disturbing, sexy, and shameful… this new science-fiction action manga stars a dominating teenage girl searching for a sister who became a monster, and a submissive boy with the strange power to turn into a ragged but powerful beast, with a zipper down his back and a compartment on the inside just big enough to hold a human body. It’s like one of those cute kid’s monster manga, but with a dose of S&M!”
Love in Focus, also in March, sounds more my speed. It’s by Yoko Nogiri, author of That Wolf-Boy Is Mine!, and it’s “a feel-good romance about a teenage girl whose passion for photography leads her to a new school, a new dorm, and a new love triangle!”
Finally, for the art-focused, Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama is also due in March. It’s “a beautifully-illustrated story about a girl who longs for magic in her life and learns that, on the inside, she already is what she wishes she could be…. voted one of the top 10 manga of the year in 2018 by the Japanese manga industry.”