News

Viz Adds Rocket Girls, Harmony Novels & Bleach Guide (Updated)

The book distributor Simon & Schuster is listing the following new titles from the North American manga and novel publisher Viz Media:

Rocket Girls (novel)
Housuke Nojiri
July 20, 2010
Description: "Yukari Morita is a high school girl on a quest to find her missing father. While searching for him on the Solomon Islands, she receives the offer of a lifetime—she'll get the help she needs to find her father, and all she need do in return is become the world's youngest, lightest astronaut. Yukari and her teen friends, all petite, are the perfect crew and cargo for the Solomon Space Association's launches, or will be once they complete their rigorous and sometimes dangerous training."

This novel inspired the Rocket Girls science-fiction comedy anime, which Bandai Entertainment released last year. Nojiri also wrote the Usurper of the Sun novel which Viz Media's new Haikasoru imprint released earlier this year.



Harmony (novel)
Project Itoh
July 20, 2010
Description: "In a Perfect World, there is no escape. In the future, Utopia has finally been achieved thanks to medical nanotechnology and a powerful ethic of social welfare and mutual consideration. This Perfect World isn't that perfect though, and three young girls stand up to totalitarian kindness and super-medicine by attempting suicide via starvation. It doesn't work, but one of the girls--Tuan Kirie--grows up to be a member of the World Health Organization. As a crisis threatens the Harmony of the new world, Tuan rediscovers another member of her suicide pact, and together they must help save the planet...from itself."

The Harmony novel won this year's 30th Nihon SF Taishō Awards from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of Japan in December, just months after the author Project Itoh (Itō Keikaku) passed away in March.



Color Bleach+: The Bleach Official Bootleg
Tite Kubo
July 20, 2010
Description: "An indispensable guidebook to the Soul Society, Color Bleach+: The Bleach Official Bootleg takes you behind the scenes in the shadowy world of the Soul Reapers. All Thirteen Court Guard Companies are covered in great detail and even popular how-to columns are reprinted inside, making this an essential manual for any Bleach fan. The book includes 72 pages of full-color manga."

Shueisha published this book under the title Bleach Official Bootleg: Kara-Buri+ (Color Bleach +) in Japan in August of 2007.

Thanks to kel aka gandy for the news tip.

Update: The Haikasoru catalog for next summer states that the "stand-alone Rocket Girls sequel will be released in Fall 2010." Nojiri wrote four Rocket Girls novel volumes between 1995 and 2007. Thanks, kel aka gandy.