Otakon 2012

Vertical Inc.

Vertical's Director of Marketing Ed Chavez opened his Sunday afternoon panel with a Powerpoint of recent and upcoming releases. The titles included Moyoco Anno's Sakuran, Konami Kanata's Chi's Sweet Home (Vertical's best seller, which is planned to end at Volume 10), Osamu Tezuka's Message to Adolf (in hardcover), Shūzō Oshimi's Flowers of Evil, Tohru Fujisawa's GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Keiko Suenobu's Limit (Vertical's first shoujo title), Stan Lee and Tamon Ohta's HeroMan manga adaptation, Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss (large format omnibus with color pages), a cooking and craft book called Gummi Fun: Chewy Treats for the Whole Family, and Tsutomu Nihei's Knights of Sidonia (a new bi-monthly sci-fi series with color pages).

Then came the new announcements. First, Chavez announced Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshiyuki Tomino's Gundam: The Origin manga, which will be published in a limited-edition hardcover, following the Kadokawa Collector's Edition release in Japan, and will be "chock full of color pages and extras" such as interviews. A retelling of the original Gundam story, it's currently slated to run 11 volumes in Japan (10 of which are already out).

Next is Hiroki Azuma's "General Will 2.0" prose book, which will be released simultaneously in physical and e-book form. The book examines both youth and social media in Japan in the wake of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. Azuma engages via Twitter and his criticism website GenRon. Chavez recommended following Vertical on social media for more information on Azuma's criticism and writings.

Finally, Mitsuhisa Kuji's Wolfsmund manga was announced. A retelling of the story of William Tell, the artist Kuji has previously assisted Emma artist Kaoru Mori as well as Berserk artist Kentarō Miura.

From there, Chavez opened the floor for questions.

This report has been verified by its panelist.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated, "Azuma will be teaching at Stanford and UCLA in the coming months." Although this was stated during the panel, ANN has since been informed that Azuma no longer has plans to teach at Stanford or UCLA.