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Dark Horse Confirms English Gate 7 Release in October (Updated)

The Milwaukie, Oregon-based Dark Horse Comics announced today that it will publish an English-language version of the new CLAMP manga Gate 7 in North America on October 25.

The series revolves around a young man named Chikahito Takamoto who visits a legendary shrine and is transported to a fantastical alternative world. In this world, he learns that he's immune to the powers held by local inhabitants, who therefore believe he is special and conscript him into a war against elemental beasts.

The four-member manga creator group CLAMP revealed the worldwide release of the series on its website on Monday. In addition to the North American release, the series will be serialized in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong this month, and the French magazine Animeland launched a limited four-month run in March. Dark Horse's releases will be in the collected graphic novel format.

Dark Horse Comics had originally announced in 2007 that it would publish monthly 80-page books, or "mangettes," of CLAMP's newest work. The project was to have been published nearly simultaneously in North America, South Korea, and Japan. The one-shot version of the story ran in Shueisha's Jump Square magazine in Japan last November, and the full series launched in the same magazine in February.

Update: ANN spoke with Dark Horse Comics editor Michael Gombos, who said there are no plans to release the comic digitally via the newly launched Dark Horse Digital store. However, it is something the company hopes to see at some point.

Asked whether the company would eventually release the manga simultaneously with its Japanese release, as was originally planned, Gombos said that such a release would have to be digital, making it not an option at this time. He commented that "[w]e focus heavily on the quality handling of CLAMP's works here (as you might notice in our omnibus editions), and making sure that CLAMP is happy with the works is one of our foremost priorities. Naturally and understandably, these things take time — but the process of delivery can be hastened by months, and therefore offer the possibility of simultaneous release, by going to digital first."