While at Anime NYC, I was able to chat with a few people in the industry. The first for today is with Ben Applegate. As the Associate Publishing Director of Kodansha Comics (and also editor), he basically is the go-to-guy for Kodansha USA manga. And in this interview, we get into all of that — from the year the company has had, to why Hiro Mashima’s been super successful, to a look at some titles in 2019.
TheOASG: How would you summarize Kodansha’s 2018?
Ben Applegate: A really good year! We’ve had several new hits: Wotakoi, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card really came into its own and is doing very, very well. Wotakoi got an anime, which rocketed up into a big, new hit, which we were very happy about, especially since we published that as a 2-in-1 edition. People didn’t blink and they picked it up.
We brought the Akira box set back in print. Did a big reprint of that, which is flying out the door–
Again.
Yep, again! And this is our one and only reprint, so if you want to pick it up, pick it up now. It’s going for real cheap on Amazon right now but that’s not going to be the case forever. If you’re looking for a Christmas present, it’s a great, great thing. It’s now a two-time Eisner winner, we’ve picked up two Eisner awards for publication design, and best archival edition comic books. So not even the manga category, so we’re very, very happy about that.
Now, what should readers be looking forward to from Kodansha in 2019?
Well, we’ve started putting out the Sailor Moon Eternal Edition, which was a big thing for 2018, and that’s going to continue in 2019. That’s received really great feedback from the fans. I think the first volume’s sitting on like 4.8 stars on Amazon and it’s been flying out the door. So, we’ve been very pleased about that and those are gonna keep coming out.
As for what else is happening in 2019, we have some really big plans. We’re going to be continuing to bring more premium collector’s editions because those have been doing really well for us. I think we’ve tapped into a real hunger among readers for definitive translations, designs, and archival quality printing of these classic series.
(Note: Interview for this was on Friday. Kodansha announced at their Saturday panel that they will be releasing Princess Jellyfish as a Complete Box Set, and Cardcaptor Sakura as a Collector’s Edition.)
There’s been a concerted effort to bring over boys love and yuri titles over from Kodansha in roughly the past year. I guess the question is, what took so long?
What took so long? Well, Kodansha Comics is the US subsidiary of Kodansha, so we’re limited to what Kodansha puts out in Japan. And Kodansha doesn’t really publish that much BL.
10 Dance is one of our first BL titles. It actually runs in Young Magazine the 3rd, which is not a BL magazine. And I actually think that’s a big advantage for the series because it has a lot of the elements of BL. I think BL fans are gonna love it, but it’s also just a great gay romance manga. And the characters come together in this really believable, realistic, interesting way that makes it I think more relatable for a LGBT+ reader than the typical BL or yaoi book. I’m really excited about that.
A couple of years ago, Kodansha merged with another publisher called Ichijinsha, which publishes a lot more BL and yuri titles than Kodansha did. So part of the reason we’re starting it up now is because of that merger. Now we have access to those titles from Ichijinsha, so we have a much deeper well to tap into for BL and yuri. I expect that to keep going as we hopefully see some success with this first round, and I’m excited about that.
I mean I worked for Digital Manga back in the day, which was the American home of yaoi and so *laughs* So it feels like a homecoming for me.
So you got 10 Dance, Hitorijime my Hero, Yuri is My Job—
Yep, Hitorijime my Hero is the other BL title, and Yuri is My Job!, that’s the trifecta. Those are all coming out on the same day, January 15th. New Year, new yaoi and yuri. Hitorijime my Hero is the basis of a very popular anime, which is on Amazon and HIDIVE and has been released by Sentai Filmworks, so there’s been a lot of anticipation for that manga.
And Yuri is My Job! is my personal favorite among the 3. It is a really delightful yuri series that also has a lot in common with classic shōjo. The main character reminds me a lot of the main character in His & Her Circumstances. She’s nice to everyone and appears to be an angel, but she’s really just building this fake persona so she can become a trophy wife and marry a billionaire. And through various shenanigans and blackmail, she ends up working in a yuri-themed cafe where she really doesn’t want to be, but gradually of course she comes to have a crush on one of her co-workers, who can’t stand her. It’s got a ton of humor, a ton of great drama, and it’s one that I’m really excited for yuri and shōjo readers to get to know in English.
You’ve talked about a few titles that have been selling well for you. Can you share a few more that have surprised sales wise?
Well Wotakoi was a big surprise. Not that it did well, but it blew our expectations out of the water. The other big surprise of the year was That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, which started more than a year ago. But the anime kicked that up to the next level. You can see we got a 10 x 20 foot space dedicated to it here at the show–
Even teaming up with Yen Press (who publishes the light novel version)–
Yep, we’re cross promoting it with Yen Press, and we got our booths next to each other which is great. The manga is just flying off the shelves. We barely can keep it in print honestly this holiday season, which is awesome. We are reprinting it–
Is it like on its 10th printing or something? *laughs*
No, I mean, it’s going out — for a while there it was going out the door faster than we could keep it in stock! Which is a great problem to have. Really excited at the way that connected with people just as a funny, fantasy series that’s really well done. I think what sets it apart from some other manga series that are based on light novels is the quality of the graphic storytelling and the art is a cut above. A lot of these light novel based manga series is just kind of a quick cash in/sketch type deal unfortunately. But this one, you can tell Taiki Kawakami really loves the series and brings that love and attention to detail that’s in the book in the backgrounds, character designs, and all that.
Does Kodansha Comics and Kodansha Advanced Media coordinate a bit when it comes to what titles can go from digital to print?
Of course, of course. We talk all the time, it’s not like we’re totally separated. We are separate companies so I don’t know what their future plans are, but we discuss all the time.
How much, if you can answer, does Kodansha JP impact whether or not a title goes from digital to print, if it gets simulpub, stuff like that?
Oh, they’re in the driver’s seat. It’s their imprint, it’s their program. They make the final calls. They’re wonderful partners with the people based in the US and we discuss together, but of course Kodansha sometimes knows a lot of things that I don’t. They know what’s doing really well in Japan before anyone else does, and they know what their plans are when it comes to anime and other adaptations.
Can you personally share as much as you can about the success of Hiro Mashima? Like we understood Fairy Tail was doing well, but it feels like it’s exploding as of late.
Fairy Tail’s doing great. I mean Fairy Tail Volume 1 is still one of our top-selling books for gods sakes *laughs* It’s amazing.
This series, which is something like 15 years old at this point, is still getting new readers, and that’s really a testament to how addictive a storyteller Hiro Mashima is. He creates these fantastic characters that pull you in and you have to see what happens to them. And he’s so wonderful at tone. He will lure you in with this character drama, but he also knows exactly where to lighten things up and have a character be like, “No, I win because I’m the best! And I’ll punch you! And I got these magic powers! Because I’m the best, and we’re friends!” Like the power of friendship. It’s this long paean to the power of friendship, and I love that.
I was talking with an American comics artist, who’s also a huge fan a Fairy Tail, and they were saying that what they love about Fairy Tail is that it has this earnest, honest dedication to camaraderie and friendship that you don’t really see that much in American comics or pop culture in general anymore. Everything has to have a certain degree of ironic detachment to it, when you’re talking about feelings that are that…pure.
But in Mashima’s work, they really are. That’s it, just camaraderie and friendship are powerful things, the end. Period. Full stop. No need for sarcastic jokes, which I think people find that refreshing honestly. Especially now, there’s a lot of stuff in the news that can get you down.
His latest work, EDENS ZERO, I believe was printed simultaneously with Japan?
Not entirely simultaneous, but as quickly as we possibly could. Which is faster than anything else we’ve brought out before and that’s really pretty incredible. I’m very proud of that.
Like how rare is that?
Very, very rare. We can only do it ever so often because it is a huge strain on our resources. But Kodansha was really helpful in making that happen and I have to say a big thank you to the localization team, editorial, and of course to Hiro Mashima’s team and the editorial at Kodansha JP. They all pulled together to make that happen.
EDENS ZERO is basically the ideal first volume of a shōnen manga in my opinion. He took all of his experiences as a manga artist and poured them into crafting this beautifully structured introductory volume to a shōnen series, and I’m super excited to see where he goes with it.
And it’s a space opera! When’s the last time you saw a shōnen space opera? It’s been a while!
…Probably mostly seinen type of manga nowadays.
Yeah, there’s plenty of space manga in seinen magazines. But there’s a lot of callbacks to the good old days of shōnen space opera, back when Leiji Matsumoto was writing. That’s really the heyday of these things, like Space Battleship Yamato, Queen Emeraldas, and Captain Harlock. You can tell Hiro Mashima has a lot of love for these things, and in one of his afterwords, he talks about wanting to reinvigorate science fiction shōnen manga.
So I’m really excited to see it connect with people — and it has been connecting with people. It’s been on sale for about 10 days and the first volume is already doing great.
Can you say if you will continue to publish this about as close to the Japanese release as possible or…?
I don’t know. Like I said we pulled out all the stops with the first volume to get it out, particularly because it’s the holiday season and we wanted to get it out into the market. I don’t know about the subsequent volumes yet, we’ll have to decide that later on.
Going to end going over a few Kodansha titles for 2019: You guys normally don’t license manga that have to be shrink wrapped, but Gleipnir will be. What about this one was worth it?
Well, Gleipnir’s difficult to describe honestly. It’s got a cutesy, horror aesthetic that I found really interesting and will appeal to a lot of fans of stuff like Prison School. It knows what it’s doing when it comes to fanservice and sexuality of its characters.
I mean, page 1 is a shot of panties. Page 1. But all of this is intentional and is part of the story, and the characters. There is not a fanservice shot in there that feels gratuitous because it’s integral to the story that Sun Takeda is telling about these characters. It makes you feel shame and awkwardness and all these different ranges of emotions.
But that’s what growing up kinda feels like to a lot of people. Like all great fantasy manga it metaphorically engages with those feelings through a fantastical setting. In this case, an alien who comes to Earth gives people powers and this boy gets the power to turn into this cutesy, stitched together dog monster with a giant oversized gun who has a zipper down his back. He rescues a girl from a fire, and it turns out her sister also turned into one of these monsters and killed her parents. So she’s desperate to find her sister and kill her in vengeance, and so they team up to find this girl’s older sister. And she discovers that she can unzip his back, strip down, and climb inside him and control him from the inside. It makes him stronger when she does that.
…And it’s just as gross as you’re imagining it *laughs*
Well I do know people who are looking forward to that! I think a couple people are looking out for Witch Hat Atelier as well.
Aw, man! That was the one thing I didn’t talk about when discussing 2019! There’s a bunch of great all-ages titles that are coming in 2019. Witch Hat Atelier is a beautiful, beautiful comic from Kamome Shirahama who has done a bunch of variant covers from Marvel and DC, so her art is already known to American readers. It’s just this great, female-led wizarding story that reminds a lot of people of Ghibli, Kiki’s Delivery Service. The plot line is very Harry Potter-esque, and I’m excited for people to find out about that one.
Magus of the Library is great too. It’s about a world in which reading and books are literally magical, and a kid who gets taken out of his life of being bullied and ostracized in his rural village by one of these librarian magi from the big city takes him on the adventures he’s always dreamed of, so that’s another beautifully illustrated all-ages comic.
And about Magus of the Library, I’m curious about this one. I don’t even think there’s that many volumes out of that in Japan! What are your publishing plans with this? It’s coming out in the summer, but after that…?
We really wanted to have a stable of all-ages titles that we could bring to libraries, to educational, to B&N, to readers with families because there’s been a generational shift in manga readership. Those of us who were reading in the year 2000, some of us now have kids of our own and are looking for comics that we can read with them. That’s been a big driver in the sales of the Sailor Moon Eternal Edition. It’s been a big driver in some of the Little Golden Book adaptations of comic titles.
So we wanted to have more all-ages titles, and our free Comic Book Day sampler in 2019 for the first time will be an all-ages free CBD sampler. That’s going to include Magus of the Library, Witch Hat Atelier, and a third title.