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Elex Media Licenses Bestiarius, Livingstone Manga

Indonesian publisher Elex Media Komputindo announced on Sunday that it has licensed Masasumi Kakizaki's Bestiarius manga, as well as Tomohiro Maekawa and Jinsei Kataoka's Livingstone manga. It will release the first volumes of both manga on August 31.

Bestiarius is set in Imperial Rome in 70 AD, and centers on Fin, a bestiarius; a man who fought with beasts in the fighting pits of Rome, and Durandal, the last living wyvern. Durandal, defends the shores of Albion against the Roman invaders, but is eventually captured and condemned to the fighting pits. Before this, he makes a pact with a Roman soldier to tell his son that his father died with honor should Durandal ever meet him. When Durandal meets the soldier's son Fin in the pits, he decides to train him.

Kakizaki published the original story in two parts in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine in 2011. He later started the story as a four-part miniseries, with the original story as the first part, and with multiple chapters for each part. The second part ran in the same magazine from August to September 2013. The third part ran from October 2014 to March 2015. The fourth and last part launched in Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday S last December, and is currently ongoing. Shogakukan published the manga's third compiled book volume in December 2014.

Kakizaki's Rainbow - Nisha Rokubō no Shichinin manga received a television anime adaptation in 2010.

Livingstone is a fantasy-adventure manga about two men named Sakurai and Amano who attempt to recover "livingstones," the receptacles of lost souls. Maekawa and Kataoka launched the manga in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 2009, and ended it in February 2015. Kodansha shipped the manga's fourth and final compiled volume in April 2015.

Kataoka also wrote and drew the Deadman Wonderland manga as well as the manga adaptation of the Eureka Seven anime series. Studio Manglobe adapted Deadman Wonderland into a television anime series in 2011