SEAN: Christmas is over! At least for Manga the Week of. We’re looking beyond that to Boxing Day. Is there manga? There is!
ASH: Hooray!
SEAN: And there are also light novels. J-Novel Club has a 5th volume of Infinite Stratos and the 3rd Kokoro Connect.
Kodansha has, for print, a 13th Fire Force and a 16th Missions of Love (still not over, but coming out so rarely that it seems like it is.)
ASH: It does seem like it has been a while.
SEAN: Digitally there’s a lot more, as we see Ace of the Diamond 18, Ao-chan Can’t Study! 3, Defying Kurosaki-kun 6, Forest of Piano 9, Liar x Liar 9, and Mikami-sensei’s Way of Love 2.
MICHELLE: Most of that is shoujo that doesn’t appeal to me, but at least there’s Ace of the Diamond and Forest of Piano!
SEAN: The rest of the list is Seven Seas. The new title is Ojojojo, the latest in the “Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was such a huge hit that we’ll license everything else by the same author” series. It’s coming out in an omnibus of the first two books, and does look pretty cute. It’s about two different types of outcasts who bond at school.
There’s also the 2nd manga volume of Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average?!, the 3rd and final Dragon Half omnibus, a 3rd Giant Spider & Me (also a final volume), the 6th (and, yes, final) volume of NTR – Netsuzou Trap, and the 2nd volume of Slumbering Beauty, which is – try to contain your surprise – the final volume.
MICHELLE: One of these days I really will read Giant Spider & Me.
ASH: I’ve been delighted by it! Dragon Half is fun, too, and I liked the first volume of Slumbering Beauty as well.
SEAN: Has all the manga ended? Or was this merely Seven Seas’ CLEVER PLAN? Also, what are you buying?
ASH: Looks like it will be a Seven Seas sort of week for me!
MJ: Okay, so I’m probably not into any of this, but I just wanted to keep you all company. Hi.
I have to say, I’m really torn about Seven Seas. Although it still feels niche (perhaps assisted by the fact that they routinely put a call out for translation requests and infrequently actually even license something based on said requests), the bigger it gets, the less distinguishable it is. I wish I was more into Vertical’s style of storytelling as the curation feels so much more intentional and academic.