News
Mardock Scramble Book Listed by Viz's Distributor
posted on by Egan Loo
The North American book distributor Simon & Schuster is listing a Mardock Scramble book by Tow Ubukata for a January 2011 release by Viz Media. Simon & Schuster's listings do not necessarily indicate definite release plans or dates. Hayakawa Publishing released three volumes of Ubukata's Mardock Scramble science fiction novel series in Japan in 2003, along with three more volumes in his Mardock Velocity prequel in 2006.
Simon & Schuster describes the plot of the book as the following:
Why me? It was to be the last thought a young prostitute, Balot, would ever have…as a human anyway. Taken in by a devious gambler named Shell, she became a slave to his cruel desires and would have been killed by his hand if not for a private investigator and his self-aware Universal Tool, Oefcoque. Now a cyborg, Balot has not only physical powers, but the ability to disrupt social environments. She chases after Shell, his partner-in-crime Boiled, and faces down a variety of insane villains in this pulse-pounding cyberpunk noir adventure.
The anime studio GoHands is producing an anime film trilogy which will launch this fall with Mardock Scramble: The First Compression. Susumu Kudo (Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de, Mirage of Blaze) is directing, and Megumi Hayashibara will play the role of Balot. Another anime studio, Gonzo, had planned an original video anime (OVA) project of Mardock Scramble in 2005, but then cancelled the project in 2006 for "various reasons."
Besides Mardock Scramble, Ubukata created the stories behind the Sōkyū no Fafner: Dead Aggressor, Le Chevalier D'Eon, Heroic Age, and Pilgrim Jäger anime and manga projects. Viz Media has already translated and published other books from Hayakawa Publishing, including The Next Continent and Yukikaze.
[Via Tanbishugi]
