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Yen Press' Light Novel Imprint Adds Log Horizon, No Game No Life, Devil is a Part-timer!
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
North American publisher Yen Press' publishing director Kurt Hassler told Publisher's Weekly that the company's Yen On light novel imprint will release Mamare Touno and Kazuhiro Hara's Log Horizon, Yuu Kamiya's No Game, No Life, Satoshi Wagahara and Oniku's The Devil is a Part-Timer (Hataraku Maou-sama), and Shinobu Wakamiya and Jun Mochizuki's Pandora Hearts: Caucus Race series.
Log Horizon is scheduled to debut in March 2015. The novels begin when 30,000 Japanese gamers are trapped in the fantasy online game world Elder Tale. What was once a "sword-and-sorcery world" is now the "real world." Shiroe, Naotsugu, and Akasuki join together to survive.
Touno debuted his novel on the user-generated content site Shōsetsuka ni Narō in 2010. Motoya Matsu then launched his Log Horizon Gaiden Honey Moon Logs manga adaptation in ASCII Media Works' Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh magazine that same year and it wrapped up in June. Kazuhiro Hara began serializing the main manga adaptation on Enterbrain's Famitsu Comic Clear website in 2012 also, and Koyuki began drawing another manga called Log Horizon ~Nishikaze no Ryodan~ in Fujimi Shobo's Age Premium website in 2012. The seventh light novel was released in Japan in December 2013.
A second anime television season based on the novels will premiere this fall.
The story of Kamiya's No Game, No Life light novel series centers around Sora and Shiro, a brother and sister whose reputations as brilliant NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) hikikomori (shut-in) gamers have spawned urban legends all over the Internet. These two gamers even consider the real world as just another "crappy game." One day, they are summoned by a boy named "God" to an alternate world. There, God has prohibited war and declared this to be a world where "everything is decided by games" — even national borders. Humanity has been driven back into one remaining city by the other races. Will Sora and Shiro, the good-for-nothing brother and sister, become the "Saviors of Humanity" on this alternate world? "Well, let's start playing."
Kamiya launched the light novel series in 2012 with his own art after illustrating another light novel series that spawned an anime, A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives (Itsuka Tenma no Kuro-Usagi). Hiiragi launched the manga adaptation in Media Factory's Comic Alive magazine last year, and Media Factory published the first compiled volume last November. Seven Seas licensed the manga adaptation for release in North America and the first volume will be released in October. The light novel series inspired a television anime series that premiered in April and Sentai Film works licensed the anime series.
Yen Press will release the first volume of the light novel series in April 2015. The sixth volume was released in Japan on April 25.
In Wagahara's The Devil is a Part-Timer series' story, a demon king named Satan is one step away from conquering his alternate world when he is transported to Tokyo of our world. He ends up having to work part-time at a fast food restaurant to make ends meet. In order to conquer Japan, he has to first move up from a freelancer to an actual employee. Meanwhile, the heroine Emilia has arrived in Japan also, in pursuit of Satan.
Wagahara launched the light novel series in 2011 as his debut work, and Kadokawa Group Publishing will release the 12th volume on September 10. The series has already won the Silver Prize in the 17th Dengeki Novel Awards. Akio launched a manga adaptation in ASCII Dengeki Works' Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh magazine in December 2011. Kurone Mishima draws still another manga spinoff called Hataraku Maou-sama! High School! in ASCII Dengeki Works' Dengeki Maoh magazine.
Funimation licensed and released the anime adaptation in North America in July. Yen Press will release the first volume of the light novel series in April 2015.
Pandora Hearts: Caucus Race is a series of short story collections based on the manga series by Jun Mochizuki. The third volume was released in Japan in May 2013.
Yen Press also releases Mochizuki's original manga series:
The air of celebration surrounding fifteen-year-old Oz Vessalius's coming-of-age ceremony quickly turns to horror when he is condemned for a sin about which he knows nothing. He is thrown into an eternal, inescapable prison known as the Abyss from which there is no escape. There, he meets a young girl named Alice, who is not what she seems. Now that the relentless cogs of fate have begun to turn, do they lead only to crushing despair for Oz, or is there some shred of hope for him to grasp on to?
Mochizuki launched the series in Square Enix's Monthly G Fantasy magazine in 2006. The manga inspired a television anime by Xebec in 2009, and NIS America released it on DVD.
The Yen-On imprint is scheduled to launch this fall. Yen Press aimed to publish about 24 books next year, but Hassler stated that due to the company's success so far, more than 24 books will be released. He said that the Sword Art Online: Aincrad light novel has sold over 30,000 copies since it was published in North America in April.
