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Rose of Versailles Gets 2-Chapter 'Oscar Volume' Manga Starting in December
posted on by Karen Ressler
This year's 24th issue of Shueisha's Margaret magazine announced on November 20 that it will serialize a "new episode" of Riyoko Ikeda's The Rose of Versailles manga beginning with its second 2016 issue on December 19. The new "large volume" two-chapter manga will be a fan-anticipated "Oscar-hen" (Oscar Volume).
This year's "Huis Ten Bosch Special Rose of Versailles Oscar-hen Bara wa Utsukushiku Moe" exhibit also featured an "Oscar Volume" manga in April-July.
Ikeda launched the original manga in Shueisha's Weekly Margaret magazine in 1972. The story is set in the intrigue-filled court of Queen Marie Antoinette before and during the upheavals of the French Revolution. Lady Oscar is a young woman raised as a man to serve in the palace guards.
Ikeda published a 16-page one-shot, "Rose of Versailles Episode," in Shueisha's Margaret magazine in 2013, 40 years after the end of the original series. She has since continued penning The Rose of Versailles short stories for Margaret, the most recent of which, "Episode 6," ran in two parts on March 20 and April 4.
Sheuisha published The Rose of Versailles volume 11, the first in four decades, in August 2014. The volume included the first four "Rose of Versailles Episode" one-shots. The 12th volume, with the fifth and sixth Episode one-shots, shipped in July.
Udon Entertainment announced in July that it has licensed the series and plans to release the first two-in-one omnibus volume in the second quarter of 2016.
The manga inspired a 40-episode anime in 1979-1980 that Right Stuf released in North America in 2013 in two DVD sets and that Viki is streaming online. In addition to the television anime series, the manga inspired a 1990 animated film, a long-promised but unreleased animated film remake, perennial musicals by the all-female Takarazuka Revue since 1974, and even a live-action 1978 French/Japanese film.
