Vertical Manga made new announcements at Katsucon XX this weekend in regards to new acquisitions that brings about some smaller material, some anime tie-in material and an intriguing dark series. First on the list is Ajin, which comes from Tsuina Miura and Gamon Sakurai that began in 2012 and has three published volumes to its name that’s currently being serialized in good! Afternoon magazine. On the anime tie-in side, they picked up the 2010 manga series that has an adaptation running this season with Witch Craft Works from Ryu Mizunagai. That’s also being serialized in good! Afternoon and has six volumes out with a seventh due shortly. And finally, they’ve also picked up the single volume adaptation of Makoto Shinkai’s anime feature Garden of Words that was serialized in 2013 that was done by Midori Motohashi as appeared in Monthly Afternoon magazine.
All three titles are expected to debut this fall, though no formal dates or months have been set yet.
Ajin: Ajin are humans that cannot die. Seventeen years ago, they first appeared on a battlefield in Africa. From then on, more of their kind are discovered within the human society. Their rarity in appearance means that, for experimental purposes, the government will generously reward anyone who captures one. In the present day, for what a certain high school student expects to be a typical summer holiday, his life is about to turn unexpected…
Witch Craft Works: Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school’s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school’s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it’s Kagari that comes to his rescue. Only… she’s dressed as a witch, carrying him in her arms and floating on a broom?! Kagari tells him it is her mission to protect him and that now she can finally protect him openly rather than undercover.
Garden of Words: Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches…
