The Voices of a Distant Star by Makato Shinkai and Mizu Sahara was one of my best comics of 2006, which is when Tokyopop released the translated single volume in the US. Now comes word that Vertical will be bringing the book (based on an anime) back into print. No date announced yet. The touching story of two young friends irreversibly separated when one is sent away to pilot a robot fighter is full of nostalgia, unspoken feelings, and thoughts […]

Yen Press has announced that they will be bringing Fruits Basket back to the US. The 23 volumes of Fruits Basket by Netsuke Takuya were originally published here by Tokyopop from 2004-2009. It was immensely popular, a huge bestseller in both Japan and the US, and demonstrated the potential value of the manga market in North America, particularly in bookstores. It also showed how much of a buying force female readers could be. It’s the story of an orphan who […]

The World’s Greatest First Love: The Case of Ritsu Onodera was announced last June by SuBLime, and the yaoi community was happy. (The series was announced four years ago from Tokyopop but never came out before they shut down their publishing arm.) There’s a devoted fandom for works by Shungiku Nakamura (and an associated anime), and the plan was to release all eight books in the series bimonthly, starting in February 2015. Except things didn’t work out that way. Volume […]

Now that Vinland Saga is returning, it’s about time that Makoto Yukimura’s earlier series Planetes becomes available again. (It was previously published by Tokyopop, which no longer functionally exists in this country.) Dark Horse will be putting out Planetes Omnibus volume 1 in late December of this year. According to an interview with editor Brendan Wright (link no longer available), there will be a total of two volumes with “many more color pages than the Tokyopop editions.” Also, “they’re being […]

Sgt. Frog, a humor manga about a frog-looking alien residing with a “typical” Japanese family by Mine Yoshizaki, was originally published in the US by Tokyopop, which put out 21 volumes beginning in 2004. The alien was supposed to invade, but he’s incompetent, and soon, there’s a group of his friends, all hanging out in the sitcom-like episodic structure. For readers, the chapters make fun of media and culture through their wacky situations. I enjoyed the series at first, although […]