News

Elex Media Licenses Parasyte, Gon Manga

Indonesian publisher Elex Media Komputindo announced on Thursday that it has licensed Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte (Kiseijū) manga and Masashi Tanaka's Gon manga. The publisher will release the first volumes of both series on June 22.

Parasyte takes place in the modern world where alien beings called Parasites come to Earth and secretly start taking over humans by entering in through their noses and ears and attaching themselves to their brains. One alien called Migi is only able to take over high school student Shinichi Izumi's right arm, and is unable to control Shinichi completely. Migi and Shinichi learn to co-exist, and the two battle other Parasites who see humans only as food.

Iwaaki serialized the manga in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine from 1990 to 1995. The 10-volume series (later reprinted in an eight-volume version) has more than 11 million copies in print. The manga was adapted into a 24-episode television anime that premiered in October 2014. Animax Asia aired the anime in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines simultaneously as it aired in Japan. The manga also received two live-action film adaptations in 2014 and 2015.

Gon is a comedy manga that follows a plucky little dinosaur as it makes its way through the great wilderness with other animals. The manga contains no dialogue.

Tanaka serialized the manga in Kodansha's Weekly Morning magazine from 1991 to 2002. Tanaka continued the manga in Monthly Morning magazine in 2012, and ended the run again in 2013. Kodansha published seven compiled book volumes for the series. The series received a 3D CG anime adaptation in 2012, which ran for 76 episodes. The manga has also spawned multiple video game adaptations, and notably the titular character appeared in Namco's Tekken 3 game.