Yen Press Announces Highschool of the Dead Color Omnibus 2

At this year's New York Comic Con, Yen Press announced a second Highschool of the Dead Color Omnibus. I'm not sure if they gave a release date, but Amazon has it coming out on July 30 of 2013. This second omnibus will include Volumes 5-7 (I assume in full color) as well as the art book.

This is a surprising move, and I'm not too enthusiastic about it. As far as I know, there has been no announcement about Japanese color editions of these volumes. I suppose it's possible the announcement will be in the next issue of Dragon Age, but NYCC was almost two months ago. It doesn't seem like Fujimi Shobo would approve of Yen Press making the announcement that long before them. They could have said something at the various Japanese anime conventions, but then I think there would've been something on their site or in the magazine if they had. While I think more Japanese color volumes are very likely in the future, I can only guess that Yen Press is jumping the shark and publishing more color volumes without waiting for the Japanese versions.

What worries me is that it seems Yen Press will be coloring the manga themselves this time. In the first omnibus, they really only reprinted the Japanese versions. I never bought the English version and thus can't say much about the quality, but I've heard good things, including a positive review by Shouji Sato himself in a rare site update. I have very little faith, however, that they can produce the same quality if they don't have a Japanese version to work with. I sincerely hope they are at least in communication with Shouji Sato or getting some sort of instructions. If they work independently, I fear we will get the same poor quality they gave us in the regular volumes. The fans of the series don't deserve that again.

Perhaps there will be an announcement in the next Dragon Age, and this will just be a case of Yen Press being too eager to announce their English version. We'll just have to see in a couple of weeks.

Maken-Ki! Chapter 54 Raw

Based on the end of the last chapter, I thought Ouken would get right back up, but I guess he's going to be down for a while. It looks like his grandson will be more than enough for Himegami, though.

http://www.mediafire.com/?novx57c21xf465u

Our next release will probably be a proper release. That is, it won't be a raw chapter or a scanlation using another group's translations. It's something we've been working on for a while. I'm not giving you a date yet, I'm just saying that will probably be the next thing you see here.

Triage X Chapter 31 Raw

The pseudo-zombie corpses are on page 18. You can look and see if you agree with me that they bear an uncanny likeness to the HOTD zombies. There's also a new bad guy in this chapter who fights with a spear like Rei's mother. Perhaps Shouji Sato wanted to show off some spear fighting he never got to include in HOTD before it went on hiatus. On the other hand, maybe I'm just looking too far into this, and it's all just coincidental.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2i1d7a2mojj747f

Maken-Ki! is coming soon.

Monthly Dragon Age - December (11/9/2012)

No HOTD next month, but it looks like Shouji Sato is missing it a little. In this month's Triage X chapter, he added a pile of corpses that look suspiciously like zombies. I actually had to look closely to make sure they were plain corpses. That has to be a good sign.

There's not much to say about this issue. The extras are Triage X and Maken-Ki illustrated card folder things (I'm not really sure what their purpose is). Anyway, there's nothing new, but I'll scan them and include them with the monthly raws.

I'm not sure if any of you are fans of Full Metal Panic, but there is a new series starting next month called Full Metal Panic Zero. I'm guessing it's a prequel.

Raws for Triage X and Maken-Ki! will come tomorrow some time. See you then.