Seven Seas Acquires 3 New Manga
Seven Seas Entertainment didn't have a panel at Comic-Con this weekend, but nonetheless had some exciting new licenses to announce. In fact they decided to have some fun & provide clues on their Twitter page all week long leading up to the geek convention. Each clue consisted of an anagram & another hint to help you figure out what the licenses are. See if you can figure them out for yourself:
1. "Toad Roar"
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
2. "Inhabit Manslayer"
In what kind of maze are you in a daze? Forget where you're going? You're stuck here.
3. "Incise Fanatical Recruiting"
On a scale from 0 to 5, this series' protagonist is a 5...and there’s only a few of them.
The answers? ToraDora, Amnesia Labyrinth, & a Certain Scientific Railgun! All three are pretty big titles in their own right. ToraDora is one of the most renowned series of the 2008-2009 season, & is highly regarded as one of the greatest romantic comedies in recent memory. & of course the anime starred tsundere queen Rie Kugimiya as the lead character Taiga, who won the Saimoe Tournament last year. That being said, the original source of the story comes from the light novel series, & I'd much rather have that translated & released in the US than the manga. The manga is merely just another adaptation like the anime, & I've never really been into non-original manga stories. Unless the manga is the original source, I don't really care to read it.
Similarly, Scientific Railgun was regarded as one of the top anime of the 2009-2010 season, & was just recently licensed by FUNimation. & for those of you saying "What about Magical Index?", that series is actually a light novel series. Railgun, however, spun-off as a manga.
Finally, Amnesia Labyrinth is a manga that's written by the author of Haruhi Suzumiya, Nagaru Tanigawa. When I blogged about that a series a year ago, I mentioned it might be one of the reasons that the next Haruhi novel has been so heavily delayed. So this thing better be worth it!
It's a bit weird to see none other than Seven Seas be the licensee for such three high profile manga. They're a small company & have been especially quite for awhile now with very little coming out. They're perhaps most famous for a manga they never actually released- Nymphet/Kodomo no Jikan. Besides that though, "Dance in the Vampire Bund" is also one of their most infamous titles.
Press Release: http://gomanga.com/news/press_047.php