Dark Horse announced on Monday that it has licensed the following manga for release this fall and winter:
Image courtesy of Dark Horse
© Kouji Mori
Title: Suicide Island (Jisatsutou)
Creator: Kouji Mori
Release: December 8
Summary: In a story evoking both Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale, a young Japanese man, Sei, is transported to the mysterious, remote Suicide Island after a failed suicide attempt—where he must live the rest of his days or figure out how to die! With society turning its back on many suicidal citizens, the island fills up with haunted, driven characters, often in conflict with each other and sometimes barely holding onto sanity!
Mori debuted the manga in Hakusensha’s Young Animal magazine in November 2008, and ended it in 2016.
Image courtesy of Dark Horse
© Hiromasa Okujima
Title: Babanba Banban Vampire
Creator: Hiromasa Okujima
Release: November 10
Summary: An unassuming worker in a long-established public bathhouse is really the lustful 450-year-old vampire Ranmaru Mori! The heir to this esteemed Koi No Yu Bathhouse, Rihito Tatsuno, is a fifteen-year-old virgin—who is about to fall in love for the first time with a girl in his class! Ranmaru begins to weave a desperate plan to prevent Rihito from losing his virginity and to make him fall for Ranmaru instead, so the bloodsucker can eventually have pure, eighteen-year-old virgin blood for his own vampiric self!
Okujima launched the manga in Akita Shoten’s Bessatsu Shōnen Champion magazine in October 2021. Akita Shoten published the manga’s 11th compiled book volume on June 26.
The Baban Baban Ban Vampire anime adaptation premiered in Japan on January 11. The anime is streaming on Netflix.
Image courtesy of Dark Horse
© Rin Suzukawa
Title: Asobi Asobase
Creator: Rin Suzukawa
Release: November 17
Summary: Hanako, Olivia, and Kasumi are three Japanese schoolgirls who love to play games—so they create a special club for themselves to challenge each other to intense, over-the-top games and dares! As they struggle with their own unique personalities, they also struggle to make their group an official club in the eyes of the student council.
Suzukawa launched the Asobi Asobase (Play and Let Play) manga on Hakusensha’s Young Animal Densi manga website in 2015, but moved it to the main Young Animal magazine in November 2016. The manga ended in November 2022. U.S.-based localization company Comikey Media Inc. began digitally publishing the manga in English in September 2021.
The manga’s anime adaptation premiered in July 2018 and ran for 12 episodes. A separate anime on DVD shipped with the manga’s seventh volume in December 2018.
Image courtesy of Dark Horse
© Kenji Tsuruta
Title: Forget-Me-Not
Creator: Kenji Tsuruta
Release: January 5, 2027
Summary: Stroll along the banks of the canals in beautiful Venice, Italy, and you’ll see the slacker—a young woman noodling on her guitar, pecking a bit at her laptop, and maybe getting a little reading in. But watch your step in this ancient town, because some of the other people you might run into—the ragged derelict, the drunken streetwalker, even that clean-cut gondolier—they’re all her, too! She’s Mariel Imari, of Italian and Japanese descent, whose skill at disguise comes from being part of a famous dynasty of detectives.
But Mariel hasn’t yet cracked the one case that would allow her to inherit her grandfather’s estate—Forget-me-not, the painting stolen from the mansion 22 years ago, which she needs to recover as a condition of his will. You see, Mariel is brilliant, but Mariel is also a bit lazy and slovenly and bored…and about to be a bit embarrassed, too, when her sisters show up from Japan, under the impression that Mariel is rich! Will Mariel ever catch the master thief standing between her and an aristocratic lifestyle? Does she really want to?
Nao Emoto’s Forget Me Not (Soredemo Boku wa Kimi ga Suki) manga adapts Mag Hsu’s Taiwanese novel Mǎzimen. Emoto launched the manga in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine in December 2013, and then switched the series to Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine in 2014. Kodansha USA Publishing previously licensed the manga for English release.
The manga inspred a live-action television series. Crunchyroll streamed the series.
Source: Email correspondence
