Might as well go ahead and make it official. We’re picking up Cocoon, a four-volume manga by Kenjirou Takeshita (the mangaka of Happy World!) which was originally serialized in Comic Blade Masamune, a shounen magazine published by Mag Garden. Cocoon was actually dropped from serialization after volume three, but Takeshita saw fit to release the rest of the series as a doujin. Pretty nice, right?
As for what it’s about… it’s set in a semi-dystopian society. Our protagonist, Kai Anber, is a slave of some sort who, together with a mysterious insect-esque girl, Mayu, escapes from his situation. They meet up with a group of crazy “mercenaries” after that, and then some cool stuff happens.
If you want a bit of a sample, here’s a spread from volume 2 that I think is pretty neat.
Anyway, in all likelihood, we will not be commissioning translations for Cocoon, as it’s just a bit of a fun project for us. As such, the release schedule will likely be rather random unless we acquire more translators; additionally, each chapter in volume 1 is around 50 pages, so don’t expect more than one a week.
By the way, we’re also interested in scanlating the manga adaptation of H2O ~FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND~, a seinen manga by Kira Inugami which is serialized in Comp Ace. Unusually for a seinen manga, it has furigana. It also has very, very nice art (Inugami is the original game artist and character designer) and seems to be a quite competent adaptation of the original, as it has the same writing staff as the game as well. Kefit and I are pretty big fans of H2O, so we’d be very interested in picking this up if we can find an interested translator.
By the way, try to spread the word about Happy World! and Kenjirou Takeshita if you enjoyed the series. Takeshita is pretty much completely unknown in the western world, and I think it would be great if there were more English-speakers aware of his works out there. Of course, the fact that Happy World! is his only series with even a single chapter scanlated kind of precludes this, but that’s another reason why we’re picking up Cocoon.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Take it easy, yo.