After years of serialized shojo and josei manga being tested sporadically on the English in the English language comics market we seem to have reached a point where publishers are showing a genuine interest in serializing general audience marketed shojo and josei manga for the first time in many years. Notable efforts which have launched thus far or have been announced are Amucomi (available through Amazon Kindle), Digital Manga Publishing which has is set to launch their first BL manga magazine E-Choco, Coolmic, and Shobunkan which has very recently quietly started publishing through Manga Club.
The first part of Shufu no Seikatsu’s OL Visual Kei is presently listed on Bookwalker among other retailers with second part listed on the Kobo bookstore in Canada. Hakusensha continues their Love Silky and Love Jossie manga magazines’ chapter rollouts on Bookwalker. What is interesting about Shufu no Seikatsu’s publishing method is Futabasha’s and North Star Pictures’ English language launches are listed as graphic novels, as was the case for Baki and Creature from Akita Shoten. OL Visual Kei is listed as being published specifically in parts with no full graphic novel release for the title listed from retailers at launch at the time this is being written. New chapters from both Frontierworks and Hakusensha are notably not listed among this week’s Renta releases. In other Renta related news it has been announced through Twitter that Renta has started publishing BL manga originally localized by Digital Manga Publishing.
Comicedy 