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NYCC 2018: Kodansha Announces new Printing of Akira Plus New Titles for 2019

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At New York Comic Con 2018, Kodansha Comics announced the return of the top-selling manga release of 2017, the Akira 35th Anniversary Box Set, along with an exciting slate of new series for release in the coming fall and 2019.

Since becoming one of the top-ticket comics releases during last year’s holiday shopping and winning two Eisner Awards at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, the new box set release of Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal Akira had become widely unavailable. But the publisher announced that, as of this week, the set is back in stock and available for purchase again, just in time for this year’s gift-buying season. December 2017 marked the 35th anniversary of the debut of the manga, while this year is the 30th anniversary of the influential anime film.

One of the largest English-language graphic novel publishers in the world, Kodansha also presented some of its new releases for 2019, starting with O Maidens in Your Savage Season, the manga debut of the award-winning screenwriter and director Mari Okada (anohana, Maquia, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans). In collaboration with acclaimed manga artist and illustrator Nao Emoto (Forget Me Not), Okada crafts a funny, dramatic, and deeply resonant coming-of-age story about a girls’ high school literature club confronting the terrifying specter of puberty.

The imprint also announced the print release of I’m Standing on a Million Lives, which had been a digital-first release. Ninth-grader Yusuke Yotsuya is a loner and he likes it that way. But one day, he and two female classmates are suddenly sent to another world, where they must work together to battle for their lives. But he’s been reincarnated as a farmer! How is someone who’s only ever wanted to be left alone supposed to be a hero? This original fantasy manga features a story by Naoki Yamakawa and art by Akinari Nao.

The publisher then presented several manga that tie into current or upcoming anime series.Boarding School Juliet by Yousuke Kaneda, an action romance about star-crossed lovers from two boarding schools that are bitter rivals, will see its first volume released in print this month, the same month its anime adaptation will premiere. It was previously released in digital formats. The Seven Deadly Sins: Seven Days, a two-volume prequel to the manga that became a Netflix Original Series, saw its first volume released this month and will conclude with Vol. 2 in November.

Joining these anime tie-ins is a broad variety of strong standalone titles. From Yoko Nogiri, the author of the bestselling shojo That Wolf-Boy Is Mine!, comes Love in Focus, about a teenage girl who moves away to a high school where she can nurture her talent for photography, learn to grow past personal loss, and build new relationships in her dorm. Like Wolf-Boy, the series is four volumes long, with the first debuting in March 2019.

The harem comedy Quintessential Quintuplets, about a super-smart student called upon to tutor five rambunctious, identical quintuplets, will debut in print in January 2019 after an initial digital release.

Finally, Kodansha Comics also previewed Gleipnir, the debut series by artist Sun Takeda, a compelling, sexy, and brutal action sci-fi series about a teenage girl searching for a sister who became a monster, and a boy with the strange power to turn into a ragged beast with a zipper down his back and a compartment on the inside just big enough for her body. With devilishly incongruous cute and violent art, Gleipnir will appeal to fans of the cute horror aesthetic of Five Nights at Freddy’s and the work of Jhonen Vasquez. Vol. 1 is coming March 2019.

Kodansha Debuts 5 New Digital Manga Series in April

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Continuing its aggressive “digital-first” release schedule—debuting at least one new digital manga series every week—Kodansha Comics announced it will kick off 5 new manga series in April, with a decided bent toward high-school-set shoujo manga.

Kodansha Comics’s digital-first manga releases are part of an exciting new initiative begun last year to put a greater diversity of manga series into the market. Starting with Azusa Mase’s high-school drama You Got Me, Sempai! on April 3, April’s series debuts will be available at all of Kodansha Comics’s partner digital platforms:
You Got Me, Sempai! (debuting April 3), a breezy, beautifully rendered high-school romance about a freshman and her frosty (or is he just awkward?) sempai (Japanese title: Mairimashita, Sempai);

A.I.C.O. Incarnation (debuting April 10), the manga adaptation of the new biotech science-fiction anime produced by Studio BONES and currently streaming on Netflix;

Boarding School Juliet (also debuting April 10), another high-school romance, set against a background of a fierce dormitory rivalry—yep, it’s Romeo and Juliet set in modern-day Japanese high school (Japanese title: Kisyuku gakkou no Juliet);

Peach Mermaid (debuting April 17), a goofy, and somewhat off-color, comedy about a mermaid who makes the decision to walk amongst us in the human world—which goes perfectly well …  if she didn’t have one little problem … (Japanese title:Momoiro ningyo);

Defying Kurosaki-kun (debuting April 24), the last of this month’s high-school shoujo romances, involving one girl and the two guys she must choose between—including the mean, domineering Kurosaki-kun (Japanese title: Kurosaki-kun no iinari ninante naranai);

In addition to the 5 digital-first debuts, Kodansha Comics is also debuting Volume 1 of Fujita’s awkward otaku romantic comedy, Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku—which has recently been adapted into a new television anime series. Wotakoi debuts in both print and digital on April 17. There’s a lot of new manga coming from Kodansha Comics in April!