New York Anime Festival and ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga

Del Rey Manga

Del Rey Manga Associate Publisher Dallas Middaugh opened his company's main panel by going over the rest of Del Rey's panel lineup at the convention. They will include a feature panel on the Japanese literary magazine Faust, and the announcement of a new exclusive project in collaboration with Marvel Entertainment. He then talked about two of Del Rey's most anticipated releases of 2008.

On March 25, Del Rey will take a page from Viz Media's book by simultaneously publishing the first and second volumes of Fairy Tale. This will be followed by the summer release of the first volume of Faust: Fiction and Manga from the Cutting Edge of Japanese Pop Culture, a "best of" compilation of short stories and manga from several different volumes of the Japanese magazine. The featured creators will include CLAMP and Takeshi Obata. Unfortunately, although the first volume was originally also going to include a comic by American artist Fred Gallagher, that has now been delayed until the second volume. Del Rey's other Spring 2008 launches will include Hell Girl, Yozakura Quartet, Minima!, Toto! The Wonderful Adventure, and the novel Dark Wars: A Tale of Meiji Dracula. Dark Wars, Vampire Hunter D creator Hideyuki Kikuchi's sequel to the Bram Stoker classic Dracula, asks the question of what would happen if Count Dracula survived at the end of the original and then traveled to Japan. The original Psychobusters novel (the source of the manga of the same name), the novel Maid Machinegun, and the Dark Wraith of Shannara comic will also ship in the spring of 2008.

Throughout 2008, Del Rey will ramp up the number of new fiction books it will be publishing. The first of these will be xxxHOLiC: Another xxxHOLiC, a collection of three short stories set in the world of CLAMP's xxxHOLiC manga. It is written by NisiOisin, who is also the author of the Death Note spinoff novel Death Note: Another Note. Another xxxHOLiC will be published as a hardcover with original illustrations by CLAMP. Del Rey will also begin releasing NisiOisin's Zaregoto, a series of nine novels. The Kubikiri Cycle, the initial volume, is scheduled for the fall, and a NisiOisin short story will run in the first volume of Faust with illustrations by Yun Kouga, creator of Loveless.

September will see the manga adaptation of Mao-chan, which is based on an original concept by Love Hina and Negima author Ken Akamatsu. This story is about an Japanese Self Defense Force general's eight-year-old daughter who defends Japan against aliens that overwhelm the traditional military with their unbearable cuteness. The manga is the basis of a 2002 anime series. Mao-chan is written and illustrated by RAN.

This will be followed by Koge Donbo's Kamichama Karin -chu-, the sequel to the first Kamichama Karin manga that is available in the United Staes from Tokyopop. A manga adaptation of Gonzo's Gankutsuoh: The Count Of Monte Cristo anime series is next on the schedule, along with Papillon, from Miwa Ueda (Peach Girl). Del Rey's final new announcement was Kasumi, a collaboration between American writer Surt Lim and Japanese artist Hirofumi Sugimoto. The pair worked on this story independently and then offered the completed project to Del Rey. Throughout the year, Del Rey will move away from scheduling all of its titles for the same day of each month. Releases will be staggered so that two to four new volumes will come out every week.