NYCC: Viz panel

I’m elated and exhausted but wanted to post a bit of news before I hit the sack.

The Viz panel included a number of new title announcements. I’m not sure how many are truly new (i.e. haven’t been announced somewhere) so I’ll just throw ’em all out for you to sort out. They announced the titles by imprint so I’ll do the same.

Editor Urian Brown calls the Signature imprint “manga for smart people,” which makes me feel good because I like so many of these titles. The new Signature titles are both horror manga from Junji Ito: Gyo and Uzumaki.

If you’re getting a deja vu feeling, it’s because Viz has already published Gyo. “It was so dang good we said let’s do it again with new formula,” said Brown, who described it as “mind-blowing.” It’s something to do with fish with mechanical legs coming up on shore and smelling bad… You don’t have to take his word for it, though, as Viz still has a preview up, probably of the older version.

Uzumaki, Brown says, is “the kind of manga that infects your brain. It’s about spirals and how different people in this cursed town become infected by this spiral disease… by the time you’re done with the book you’re seeing spirals everywhere, you’re looking at your cinnamon buns in the morning going ‘What’s in that thing?'”

So yeah, that makes me want to read that.

In the Viz Media imprint, which sounds like a catchall for books that don’t fit into any of the other imprints, the titles were Togari and Portus.

The Shonen Jump title was Hoshin Engi, which Brown described as “sort of a mixture of Chinese mythology with a shonen action story.”

There were two SJ Advanced titles, Gin Tana, which has already been previewed in Shonen Jump, and Pretty Face, about a guy whose face is reconstructed to look like the girl he loves, and who ends up living with her as a long-lost twin. As Brown says, “Imagine the hijinks.”

In the Shojo Beat imprint we have Millennium Snow, a new title from Ouran Host Club manga-ka Bisco Hatori about a vampire and a dying girl; Yurara, about a girl who can see ghosts, and Love*Com.

OK, my eyes are glazing over, more tomorrow.

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Comments

  1. Hoshin Engi is a beautiful manga. I recall trying to read it when I was studying Japanese. There was A LOT of kanji… very hard to read for my low level.

  2. Viz has published Uzumaki, too, but it’s been out of print for a while, so a new volume would be a very good thing. It’s not my favorite Ito (which is probably leaner, meaner Tomie), but it’s gorgeous stuff.

  3. I think I saw all of those elsewhere except for the Gyo and Uzumaki reprints. I was really hoping for new stuff for the signature line. Those are two of my favorites though, so maybe more people will read them and Viz will license more Ito.

  4. I take that back, Portus I hadn’t heard of before, and it looks awesome.

  5. I remember passing on Gyo when it was first published based on the preview Viz was using to promote it, though in hindsight I realize I didn’t care for my first taste of Uzumaki either.

    All I remember at this point of Gyo was a woman in the shower screaming “I smell fish!” which, considering that (IIRC) it was set in a fishing village didn’t seem so creepy to me.

    Still, Ito’s a good fit for the Signature line even if there’s not much for me to discover.

  6. Pedro Bouça says

    What I DO want to know is: Will they ever finish “Even a monkey can draw manga”?

    Best,
    Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

Trackbacks

  1. […] NYCC’s Greg Topalian The Beat: What happened Friday Pop Candy: Live from Comic-Con, Day 1 MangaBlog: Viz panel MangaBlog: Manga ratings panel Comic Book Resources: Mike Norton exclusive to DC CBR: Whiteout […]

  2. […] Then: Meetings! All of my friends in the industry know that I’m a blogger, and to be honest I’ve been wearing a Press Badge, rather than a retailer/speaker badge, to remind them of that. So pretty-much every conversation I had yesterday began with “Now, this is off the record, but…” so I can’t really talk about 90% of my day. I’m sorry. I will say that Viz’s TOTALLY AWESOME ANNOUNCEMENT that they’ll be bringing both Uzumaki and Gyo back into print in the new digest format precipitates another, even more awesome announcement down the road. But for the first bit of news, check out Brigid’s Mangablog. […]

  3. […] of interesting news items following her trip to the NYCC. Top on the list for me is the fact that Viz is going to be reprinting Junji Ito’s “Gyo” and “Uzumaki” under their Signature […]