Romance is in the air as Valentine’s Day approaches, and Kodansha has set three very different digital manga titles for release on February 14th: Tokyo Tarareba Girls – a tale of dystopic dating habits; Chihayafuru (which inspired the hit Crunchyroll anime) – the story of adolescent lives and emotions playing out against the high drama of karuta—traditional Japanese card-playing, and A Springtime with Ninjas – a shojo romantic comedy about one strong-willed rich girl and her “smoking-hot” ninja bodyguard.
All three titles are available for pre-order across all Kodansha Comics digital book channels.
Kodansha Comics’s latest digital manga debut is Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Akiko Higashimura’s hilarious dystopian dating follow-up to Princess Jellyfish, launching on Valentine’s Day, of course if you’re looking for a more traditional gift you could get some intention bracelets to complement the gift for you and your loved one.
Also releasing February 14: Yuki Suetsugu’s Chihayafuru, which inspired the hit Crunchyroll anime, and Narumi Hasegaki’s rich-girl/ninja-bodyguard rom-com A Springtime with Ninjas
San Francisco, Calif. (February 8, 2017)—Kodansha Comics continues its ramp-up of digital manga debuts for 2017 on February 14th with Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Akiko Higashimura’s hilarious follow-up to her best-selling Princess Jellyfish. Along with being one of the most requested titles in Kodansha Comics’s history, Princess Jellyfish was a regular on The New York Times Manga Best Seller list and was named by the New York Public Library as one of its “50 Best Books for Teens” and by Amazon as one of the “Best Comics and Graphic Novels of 2016.”
With Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Higashimura continues to sharpen her razor wit on the lives of young women in the big city, this time honing in on one single thirtysomething and her dystopian dating problems—”One day I woke up and I was 33”—just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Also going on sale February 14th is the long-awaited debut of Yuki Suetsugu’s Chiyahafuru, the story of adolescent lives and emotions playing out against the high drama of karuta—traditional Japanese card-playing. Chihayafuru, a long-running bestseller in Japan, was the basis of the surprise-hit anime of the same name that streamed on Crunchyroll.
Rounding out the trio of debuts on the 14th will be Narumi Hasegaki’s A Springtime with Ninjas, a shojo romantic comedy about one strong-willed rich girl and her “smoking-hot” ninja bodyguard!
The Valentine’s Day digital debuts round out Kodansha Comics’s entire month’s focus on shojo manga, with ongoing sales on select shojo titles every week throughout the month of February.
Volume 1s of Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Chihayafuru, and A Springtime with Ninjas are available for pre-order across all Kodansha Comics digital book channels: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, and nook.
More information and Chapter 1 previews of the aforementioned series can be found at kodanshacomics.com.
About Akiko Higashimura
Born in Kushima, Miyagi Prefecture, Akiko Higashimura made her debut as a mangaka with Fruits Koumori. In 2001, she started her first series, Kisekai Yuka-chan in Cookie (a shojo manga anthology magazine) and followed with Mama wa Temparist, Himawari: Kenichi Legend, and Kakukaku Shikajika. In 2015, Kakukaku Shikajika won the 8th Annual Manga Award and also the 19th Annual Japan Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival Manga Award. The 2016 English publication of Princess Jellyfish appeared regularly on The New York Times Manga Best Seller list and was named by the New York Public Library as one of its “50 Best Books for Teens” and by Amazon as one of the “Best Comics and Graphic Novels of 2016.”
About Kodansha
Founded in 1909, Kodansha Ltd. is Japan’s leading publishing house, based in Tokyo, Japan. Under the leadership of Yoshinobu Noma, company president since 2011, Kodansha continues to play a dominant role in the media world, producing books and magazines in a wide variety of genres including literature, fiction, nonfiction, children’s, business, lifestyle, art, manga, fashion, and journalism. Recently, the company has focused on creating and developing a wide range of digital businesses. Company profile can be viewed here.
Kodansha Comics is the manga-publishing imprint of Kodansha USA Publishing (KUP), established in New York in 2008. Kodansha Comics’s first works were Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Shirow Masamune’s The Ghost in the Shell. Kodansha Advanced Media is a digital-content distributor and producer established in San Francisco in 2015. More at http://www.kodanshacomics.com