Kodansha Comics's Newest Digital Mangas

Press Release

Kodansha Comics’s newest simulpub APOSIMZ, science-fiction manga

master Tsutomu Nihei’s follow-up to Knights of Sidonia, debuts

February 24th on Kindle and comiXology

More: new digital shojo manga series House of the Sun, Peach Heaven, and

The Full-Time Wife Escapist will hit February 28th

San Francisco, Calif. (February 23, 2017)—Kodansha Comics’s newest digital simulpub manga to debut on Kindle and comiXology is APOSIMZ, science-fiction manga master Tsutomu Nihei’s follow-up to his cult hit Knights of Sidonia (which was adapted into a Netflix Original series). Nihei is also the creator of the manga classic (and recently reissued) BLAME!

The first chapter of APOSIMZ will be available on February 24th as a digital edition only on comiXology and Kindle. New chapters will follow on the 24th of every month thereafter (the same day they appear in Japan). Chapters will be priced at $1.99 each.

With APOSIMZ, Nihei takes us into at-once familiar and disorienting territory: a towering “City” built upon the ruins of a mysterious device from the distant past, a “Country of Dolls” of people afflicted with a disease that slowly turns them into machines. A prologue chapter from APOSIMZ was previously available only through Tsutomu Nihei’s limited-time Humble Bundle offering, but can now be read at kodanshacomics.com.

Also, adding to Kodansha Comics’s digital manga ramp-up for 2017, a trio of highly anticipated shojo manga will make their debuts on February 28th.

House of the Sun (Taiyo no ie, in Japanese) is Taamo’s moving account of a young woman who reconnects with a childhood friend as she puts together the pieces of her life following her parents’ broken marriage.

Peach Heaven is a racy tale from Mari Hoshino, detailing the life of an ordinary high-school teenager with a secret identity as … an erotic novelist! What happens when the new transfer student/male supermodel discovers her secret?

Finally, The Full-Time Wife Escapist (aka Nigeru wa haji da ga yaku ni tatsu) brings us Tsunami Umino’s romantic comedy that was recently adapted into a hit Japanese television drama. Mikuri is a recent grad without a whole lot of job prospects, so out of desperation when her housekeeping gig is about to come to an end, she comes up with the idea of becoming the wife of her single salaryman boss—as a job!

Kodansha Comics has been steadily bringing out new manga series in digital format since the start of 2017. More announcements of upcoming titles for the spring will be made at the Kodansha Comics panel at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle on March 4. The announcements will be made the same day on kodanshacomics.com.

Volume 1s of House of the Sun, Peach Heaven, and The Full-Time Wife Escapist are available for preorder across all Kodansha Comics digital book channels: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, and nook.

More information and Chapter 1 previews of the aforementioned series can be found at kodanshacomics.com.


About Tsutomu Nihei

Born in 1971 in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, Tsutomu Nihei has been drawing comics professionally since the mid 1990s. In 1995 he was awarded the Jiro Taniguchi Special Prize in that year's Afternoon Magazine Four Seasons Awards for his submission, Blame. After working as an assistant to veteran comic artist Tsutomu Takahashi, Nihei went on to launch his debut series BLAME! in Afternoon Magazine in 1998. Following the success of BLAME! he next penned BioMega (published in English by Viz Media) and Wolverine SNIKT (Marvel). In 2009 Nihei returned to Afternoon to launch his most recent series, Knights of Sidonia. In 2015 he won the Kodansha Manga Award in the General Comics category for his work on Knights of Sidonia.

About Kodansha

Founded in 1909, Kodansha Ltd. is Japan’s leading publishing house, based in Tokyo, Japan. Under the leadership of Yoshinobu Noma, company president since 2011, Kodansha continues to play a dominant role in the media world, producing books and magazines in a wide variety of genres including literature, fiction, nonfiction, children’s, business, lifestyle, art, manga, fashion, and journalism. Recently, the company has focused on creating and developing a wide range of digital businesses. Company profile can be viewed here.

Kodansha Comics is the manga-publishing imprint of Kodansha USA Publishing (KUP), established in New York in 2008. Kodansha Comics’s first works were Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Shirow Masamune’s The Ghost in the Shell. Kodansha Advanced Media is a digital-content distributor and producer established in San Francisco in 2015. More at http://www.kodanshacomics.com