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Angel Heart Manga to be Offered in English From SMAC! Web Magazine
posted on by Karen Ressler
SMAC! Web Magazine announced on Friday that it will begin offering Tsukasa Hōjō's Angel Heart manga. This will be the first official English release for the series.
The website also announced that it is planning to release more titles "in the near future."
Japanese publisher Coamix and The Silent Manga Audition Committee launched the "ZENON International" section of its website this year with three Monthly Comic Zenon manga titles in English. The choice of translated manga is based on reader votes, and the manga is available for free.
Angel Heart is a "what-if" story set in a parallel world with Ryō Saeba and other characters and concepts from Hojo's signature detective comedy action manga City Hunter. In this spinoff, Ryō lost his partner Kaori Makimura in a sudden accident, and he meets a girl who receives Kaori's transplanted heart.
Hojo began the manga in 2001 in Shinchosha's Comic Bunch. The manga relaunched with Angel Heart 2nd Season in Tokuma Shoten's Monthly Comic Zenon after Comic Bunch ceased publication in 2010. The manga is ongoing.
The Angel Heart manga inspired a television anime in 2005 and a currently-airing live-action drama that premiered in October.
The original City Hunter manga is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The 1985 manga inspired four television anime series, one anime film, and several video and television specials. ADV Films released most of these anime projects in North America. Jackie Chan also starred in a 1992 live-action film that very loosely adapts the original manga. Actor Lee Min-Ho starred in a 2011 live-action Korean television series of City Hunter, and that version streamed with English subtitles on Hulu. "Ryō no Propose" (Ryō's Proposal), the new original anime DVD for the manga, reunited four of the main cast members from the earlier City Hunter television anime.
Gutsoon! Entertainment's Raijin Comics published part of the first City Hunter manga in English.
