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Viz Licenses Little Battlers eXperience Manga for North America

North American publisher Viz Media has confirmed with ANN that it has licensed Hideaki Fujii's Little Battlers eXperience (Danbōru Senki) manga. Viz Media will release the first two volumes of the manga as part of its Perfect Square imprint on November 4. Little Battlers eXperience ran in Shogakukan's CoroCoro Comic magazine for 26 chapters and six compiled volumes from 2011-2013.

Viz Media is also offering a preview of the manga for free at Diamond Comic Distributors' Halloween ComicFest on October 25. Those interested can go to a participating comic book retailer on that day to pick up the free preview.

Level-5 premiered the Little Battlers eXperience (LBX) video games in 2011, eventually releasing six games on multiple platforms. The games inspired the manga, a line of toys, and three animated series.

The anime adaptation will premiere on Nicktoons later this year. Dentsu Entertainment USA announced the plans for U.S. release in 2011. Namco Bandai debuted the toys in the U.S. this past February. Viz describes the story:

Welcome to the world of Little Battlers eXperience! In the near future, a boy named Van Yamano owns Achilles, a miniaturized robot made of a new super-strong industrial cardboard. But Achilles is no ordinary LBX. Hidden inside him is secret data that Van must keep out of the hands of evil at all costs!

Van Yamano loves Little Battlers eXperience, also known as LBXs, the hot toy of the future in present day 2050. And it's kind of cool that his dad invented them! But when the plane his dad is on goes down, everything goes wrong for Van. Until he starts getting hints that his dad may be still alive...and that a secret organization is coming after Van to procure the secrets that might be hidden inside his own LBX robot, Achilles!

LBX manga author Hideaki Fujii also worked on titles such as Battle Spirits, Shin Megamitensei DEVIL CHILDREN, and Kukul to Nagi Change the World.