Christmas Wishes: Manga and Light Novel Licenses

I’ll kiss anyone with or without mistletoe if any of these get licensed.

Sorry, work is killing me, so I’m having a bit of a slowdown here at GGS. Its the Christmas season, so retail’s a bit of a mega-bitch. Expect a massive post about the recent manga bill in Tokyo within the next week or so. I’d be in angst-mode already if I weren’t so run off my damn feet.

Last week was anime licenses; this time, we’ll have manga. Expect some repeat customers here!

Shiki

Manga and light novels for this one. Especially the light novels – the manga is at least being scanlated, but I don’t think anyone is working on translating the novels. However, light novels just don’t seem to get licensed these days (with some exceptions, of course – June is still making some stabs at it, and Tokyopop is still publishing the Twelve Kingdoms novels – also by Fuyumi Ono, I might add), so… yeah. One day, when I’m rich (HA), I’ll just have to license the damn things myself!

Anyway, in all seriousness, I am a total Shiki addict and would shell out for official releases of the manga and light novels. I just like being able to read things anywhere, so I’d truly prefer a physical release over scanlations.

Aoi Hana

Hmm, this list does look a lot like that last one, huh? I absolutely adore Aoi Hana, and I would read it on the train ALL THE TIME if it got licensed for an American release. I would also tell all my fellow passengers that they, too, should read it ALL THE TIME ON THE TRAIN. We could have train parties. It’d be the best commute ever. And then I would take a picture, mail it to the licensing company, and hopefully they’d send me some free manga or something.

Normally I’d say this is a totally unlikely license, but Hourou Musuko’s manga got licensed, so… hell, if that got licensed, I’d say 90% of all manga has at least a small chance of landing a license. Even if they do keep pushing the release date back…

Maria-sama ga Miteru

Light novels. The manga is ok, but I don’t think it really adds anything to the overall mythos, and I find both the TV series and novels to be vastly superior. Or so I say, my only experience with the novels being the summaries/translations (transummaries?) that used to be on Okazu. But the anime is incredibly engrossing, and it leaves a lot out given runtime restrictions, so I’d really love to be able to read all the other stuff that didn’t manage to make the cut.

Oshaka-sama ga Miteru

Well, hey, speaking of MariMite…!

If I’m going to hope for a MariMite light novel release, then as a right proper BL fan, I must also hope for OshaMite to get licensed as well. In all seriousness, though, since I enjoyed MariMite so much I could hardly pass up a chance to experience more of Oyuki Konno’s efforts. There are very few authors/creators who can manage to make such enthralling relationship dynamics… and who also manage to simultaneously have their characters actually act their age.

Other reasons: OshaMite has more kissing than MariMite. LEGIT.

Spiral Alive

This is more of a when rather than if, honestly, given that Yen is currently putting out Spiral and it is apparently selling fairly decently. This is also more of a desire on my part to be a completist than anything – I’ve been following the published volumes as they’ve come out, and I’ve bene enjoying them. So I’d like to be able to read the prequel, too, even if the plot doesn’t sound terribly interesting.

Kaguya Hime

Kaguya Hime is very 90’s. And I mean that in a very good way – we’re talking that 90’s shoujo-art and heaps of angst. The plot, in a nutshell: ten kids escape from an island and think they’ve escaped their fate, which was to be used as sacrificed. However, ten years later the kids start dying in order of when they were supposed to be sacrificed, and they realize that they can only save themselves if they get together and find – you guessed it! Kaguya-hime.

Seriously, there isn’t anything to not like on the face of it. Having loved angstfests like X and Angel Sanctuary, I think this is a series I would truly enjoy. Its also fairly long itself (27 volumes), so certainly enough to keep me entertained for a long while.

Might I add that it has tons of violence, sex, incest, yuri, BL, and general weirdness? Oh, and clones. Surely that’s a selling point.

The Constellation Shines in the Sky

I’d be pretty excited at any of Sakae Kusama’s work being licensed, as she does the salarymen-in-love thing I love so much, but my favorite of her work remains the title story from this anthology. I can’t say exactly why – its a bit confusing in spots, and it isn’t really amazing in any way. But it just somehow… I really like it. Its short, its about adults, and its totally cute right at the end. Its salarymen-in-love for people who don’t just want it to be a total porn-fest.

I also think that once one property gets licensed, it makes it more likely that other properties from that same author have a better chance of getting licensed as well. Look at Lily Hoshino or Hyouta Fujiyama or even DUO BRAND, for instance (for BL) – all were originally single-license authors, but now they’ve got a lot of their works out in America.