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Seven Seas Licenses No Game, No Life Manga
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
North American manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment announced on Monday that it has licensed Yuu Kamiya and Mashiro Hiiragi's No Game, No Life manga. The company will release the first volume in October.
The story of Kamiya's original light novel series centers around Sora and Shiro, a brother and sister whose reputations as brilliant NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) hikikomori (shut-in) gamers have spawned urban legends all over the Internet. These two gamers even consider the real world as just another "crappy game." One day, they are summoned by a boy named "God" to an alternate world. There, God has prohibited war and declared this to be a world where "everything is decided by games" — even national borders. Humanity has been driven back into one remaining city by the other races. Will Sora and Shiro, the good-for-nothing brother and sister, become the "Saviors of Humanity" on this alternate world? "Well, let's start playing."
Kamiya launched the light novel series in 2012 with his own art after illustrating another light novel series that spawned an anime, A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives (Itsuka Tenma no Kuro-Usagi). Hiiragi launched the manga adaptation in Media Factory's Comic Alive magazine last year, and Media Factory published the first compiled volume last November.
Kamiya's original light novel series is inspiring a television anime series that will premiere next month.
Seven Seas also confirmed on Monday that it no longer has the rights to Masayuki Takano's Blood Alone manga series. The company noted that after the manga switched publishers, it was unable to get the rights.
Blood Alone began originally as a dojinshi by Takano, and then ASCII Media Works' Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh magazine began publishing the series in 2004. The manga then moved to Kodansha's Evening magazine in 2010, and it is ending prematurely in Evening this spring. Takano noted that he will finish the series through selling dojinshi (self-published books) and digital books.
Infinity Studios licensed the manga in North America, and then Seven Seas began publishing the manga once again after obtaining the license in 2010. Seven Seas released the sixth compiled volume in 2012.
