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Seven Seas Licenses Haganai, Mayo Chiki! Manga

The North American manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment announced on Wednesday that it licensed Yomi Hirasaka and Itachi's Haganai: I Have No Friends manga and Hajime Asano and Niito's Mayo Chiki! manga from Media Factory. The first two volumes of Haganai will ship in November 2012 and February 2013, while the first two volumes of Mayo Chiki! will arrive in December 2012 and March 2013.

The Haganai manga launched in Media Factory's Monthly Comic Alive magazine last March and adapts Hirasaka and Buriki's Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai comedy light novel series. The story follows Kodaka — a half-Japanese/half-British transfer student whose delinquent-like blonde hair and unpleasant, fierce gaze scares people — and a seemingly perpetually sullen girl named Yozorai. The two decide to form "The Neighbor's Club" ("Rinjinbu"), a club for misfits with hardly any friends.

The original light novels inspired an anime last fall. North America's Funimation and the video-streaming service Niconico announced in October that they would stream the anime as it aired in Japan, and Funimation later announced that it acquired the rights to release the anime on home video.

Niito has also been drawing a manga adaptation of Asano's Mayo Chiki! light novel series in Monthly Comic Alive magazine since 2010. In the school romantic comedy, Subaru Konoe is a beautiful boy who serves the principal's cruel and domineering daughter, Kanade Suzutsuki. However, Kinjirō Sakamachi, a "normal" boy with an abnormal fear of women, accidentally discovers Subaru's secret — Subaru is really a girl. The original light novel series inspired an anime last summer.