Calling all Fairy Tail fans! The original series may be over, but the adventure continues for the guild members. Whether your ultimate favorite was Natsu, Lucy, Happy, Erza, Gray, Gajeel, Juvia or Wendy, with all these spinoff titles added to the Fairy Tail universe, you can continue your adventure with them by completing all the series!
And the saga continues for the whole Fairy Tail Guild, as they tackle the “100 Years Quest”, a job no one has dared to take on! The new Fairy Tail series Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest debuts August 20—TODAY!

Click on the cover to read Chapter 1 of Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest FREE!

And to celebrate the new quest, all of our select Fairy Tail titles, including 63 volumes of the original series and spinoffs, are now up to 50% off at our digital retail partners: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, MyAnimeList, and nook. Sale ends August 26!

~ Fairy Tail Universe Sale ~
August 20-26
Click on the links to read Chapter 1s for FREE!

Fairy Tail
Fairy Tail S
Fairy Tail ZERO
Fairy Tail Ice Trail
Fairy Tail Twin Dragons of Saber Tooth
Fairy Tail Rhodonite
Fairy Tail Lightning Gods
Fairy Tail Blue Mistral
Fairy Girls

‘Tis the dog days of summer, and maybe yer tired of this world and ready to jump into another one? Well you’re in luck, kind of, because now you escape to some new worlds—at a discount up to 50% off—with our first-ever Isekai Manga Sale!
For this week’s digital sale we’re featuring some our most popular hits, including That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and I’m Standing on a Million Lives. Plus we’re putting on sale a quartet of BRAND-NEW isekai titles that we started releasing just this past month: Slime spinoff The Slime Diaries, The Great Cleric, Goodbye I’m Being Reincarnated!, and our wacky new take on manga-about-manga that debuts TODAY—The Knight Cartoonist and Her Orc Editor! 
All of our select isekai series are now up to 50% off on digital at our digital retail partners: Apple Books, BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, Kobo MyAnimeList, and nook. But hurry! Sale ends August 19! 

~ Kodansha Comics Isekai Sale  ~
August 13-19
Click on the link to read Chapter 1 for FREE!

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
I’m Standing on a Million Lives
Alicia’s Diet Quest
The Great Cleric 
The Slime Diaries
Goodbye! I’m Being Reincarnated!
The Knight Cartoonist and Her Orc Editor

What better way to cool down during the hot summer days than taking a journey to the cold northern seas! From now until August 12th, get up to 50% off on all ten volumes of the Vinland Saga manga at our digital retail partners: Apple Books, BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, Kobo, MyAnimeList, and nook!
What are you waiting for?? The epic journey that inspired one of this anime season’s biggest hits is waiting! Sale ends August 12.

… and be sure to check out the special surprises this month with Vinland Saga as our 10th Anniversary Spotlight Series!
Not yet convinced? Here’s a free Chapter 1 preview of likely the greatest Viking comic ever!
[reader chapter_id=”6302″] 

10 Years of Kodansha Comics!
The year 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of the first Kodansha Comics manga published in English. Please join us in celebration as we select one classic Kodansha Comics series each month for exclusive content, promotions, and other surprises!

Vinland Saga Volumes 1-10 are available now from Kodansha Comics!

August Spotlight: Vinland Saga
Our August Spotlight title is Makoto Yukimura’s Viking epic Vinland Saga, which recently received an anime debut! So what kind of “special surprises” do we have for you to pillage this month? Check these out …

Surprise 1: Exclusive Vinland Saga pin!
As a part of the 10 Years of Kodansha Comics project, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Rightstuf to bring you this awesome Vinland Saga Pin!
Visit Rightstuf and order any volume of Vinland Saga and you’ll receive an exclusive pin for FREE! Available this month (August 2019) only or while supplies last.

Surprise 2:  Vinland Saga digital sale!
What better way to cool down during the hot summer days than taking a journey to the cold northern seas! From now until August 12th, get 50% off on Vinland Saga manga at our digital retail partners: Apple Books, BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, Kobo, MyAnimeList, and nook! What are you waiting for?? The epic journey that inspired one of this anime season’s biggest hits is waiting!

Surprise 3: Vinland Saga survey sweepstakes!
Have you been wanting to check out Vinland Saga in anticipation of its anime release? Set your sails and get ready to join the hunt for some sweet loot! For the month of August only, ONE lucky winner will win a set of Vinland Saga manga Volumes 1-10. All you have to do is take this survey by August 31 to enter for a chance to win!

Surprise 4: Celebrating Vinland Saga‘s anime! A special long-form fishing-hole interview between author Makoto Yukimura and director Shuhei Yabuta 
Vinland Saga‘s anime adaptation was announced in March 2018. The first round of announcements revealed some visuals from the show, and Shuhei Yabuta’s position as director. 
Yabuta previously directed the Inuyashiki anime and was a 3D-CG director for Attack on Titan. Now all eyes are on him and WIT Studio as they produce Vinland Saga, which depicts the lives of Norse warriors. 
Read on for an interview between Yabuta and Yukimura! Of course, you can’t talk about Vikings without talking about fishing! (Save your snappy comebacks, please!) We set the scene at a fishing hole somewhere in Tokyo … 
The Difference between Anime and Manga in Showing Flair 
Makoto Yukimura (MY): I saw some anime storyboard drafts and thought,”Oh, it’s already cleaned up and finalized!” That’s how incredible the recreation of the battle scenes are. In the manga, I am doing my best to think of the sword fighting as an entire scene, but since it’s ultimately just still images, the only thing that really matters is that the images look cool. But animation has to show the flow of movement from still image to still image. So seeing how that’s interpreted and put into motion made me go like,”Whoa, no way!” I was very happy to see how much you preserved the original work. It’s really true that when it comes to depicting motion, a manga author has nothing on an animator. 
Shuhei Yabuta (SY): You know, in that regard, I don’t think there’s a huge difference between manga and anime. Yes, animation is a moving video, but rather than expressing the whole movement, I try to make the cool points stick out and capture the viewer’s attention. When you get down to it, it really is like a sequence of stills. So at the core, I think, like you, that “We gotta make sure the stills have that flair!” 
If the still images don’t look cool, the animation won’t look cool. The parts that stick out in the manga, the images that you as an author focused on, are very clear and crisp—so my team has to think about how to lean into those illustrations. Since the motion in your manga is extremely clear, we never have to worry about how everything is moving. I think that makes the process very enjoyable for the animators! And I can feel the motivation from them—when I check over the motion sequences, I often think,”Wow, you even included this detail?!” [laughs] 
MY: That’s really great to hear. I have absolutely no worries about the anime. Coming from the manga side, however, I’m so jealous about animation. You get all the movement, the color … I would love to be able to draw a manga entirely in color, but it would take me about three years to put out one volume. [laughs] 
The Stark Differences between Anime and Manga Production 
MY: In animation, a lot of people are involved, right? In manga, at the most, you maybe get a little less than ten staff members. How many people in total would you say are involved in the Vinland Saga anime? 
SY: We’re still in the early stages, so we’re not at full capacity yet, but ultimately I would expect it to include about a thousand people. 
MY: A thousand! That’s two digits more than I expected! [laughs] But I only have five assistants! I’m sure you already have lots of processes to produce animation in place, but it’s hard to believe that you can get so many people to share in the same mindset of producing a single work. I would imagine that the more people there are, the more difficult it is. 
SY: You’re right. It’s hard. After all, different people will interpret the same idea differently. Sometimes there are differences in how deeply we think about something, and even when you’re trying really hard to be on the same wavelength, there are times that the results end up on slightly different vectors. So I end up reflecting on topics like: How do I talk about things to ensure that the work properly follows its core themes? How do I give directions to minimize the discrepancies? 
We have a whole bunch of people taking part in the series, but even with differences of opinion, we’re all coming in sharing a strong attachment to the original work and a determination to make it as good as it can be. So a ton of the production is supported by that motivation. 
I think that manga as a medium makes it easy for the artist to express their own creative nature. You have editors, too, of course, and you can’t do it entirely by yourself, but I think that in terms of personal vision, it’s very pure and genuine. But when it comes to animation where there’s an existing manuscript, since I’m not the author, there are times that I feel a kind of emptiness because it’s not truly my own creation. [laughs]  That being said, I’m still fascinated by work as a director—I want to make the finished product as enjoyable as it can be, and appeal to as many people as it possibly can. 
MY: Well, when it comes to the anime, it seems that the best thing I can do to make it better, is truly doing nothing at all … I can make the anime better by not getting involved! I’m really looking forward to how it turns out. Thanks for your hard work. 
SY: We’ll do our best to meet your expectations! 

About Makoto Yukimura
Makoto Yukimura made his debut with the science fiction manga Planetes, serialized from 1999 to 2004. Vinland Saga is his first manga for Kodansha Comics.

Celebrate 10 Years of Kodansha Comics with us all year long by following us on KodanshaComics.com!

Be sure to check back again next month, when we’ll be throwing the spotlight onto yet another Kodansha classic!

Attack on Titan, Princess Jellyfish, Your Lie in April … We here at Kodansha Comics love those manga series with powerful, beautiful, fearless female characters! To feature those awesome ladies, this week only, we’re hosting Power Women Sale, where we put 30+ selected manga series with our favorite female characters and put them up up for 50% off discount at our digital retail partners: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, and nook. Sale ends August 5. 

Here’s a few recommendations!

Farewell, My Dear Cramer—the latest masterwork by Naoshi Arakawa of Your Lie in April fame debuts today!
All three of Arakawa-sensei’s manga from Kodansha Comics are a part of the Power Women Sale!

And here’s the complete lineup!

~ Kodansha Comics Power Women Sale  ~
July 30-August 5
Click on the link to read Chapter 1 for FREE!

Again!!
A.I.C.O. Incarnation
Are You Lost?
Attack on Titan: Lost Girls
Boarding School Juliet
Chihayafuru
COPPELION
Drowning Love
Farewell, My Dear Cramer
The Flowers of Evil
Fuuka
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Gleipnir
Golosseum
Kasane
Kigurumi Guardians
Magical Sempai
Missions of Love
My Brother The Shut-In
My Little Monster
Mysterious Girlfriend X
Nodame Cantabile
Peach Girl
Peach Girl Next
Perfect World
Princess Jellyfish
Princess Resurrection
Princess Resurrection Nightmare
The Quintessential Quintuplets
Real Girl
Sayonara Football
Shojo Fight
A Springtime with Ninjas
Tokyo Tarareba Girls
Wave, Listen to Me!
Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches
Your Lie in April
You’re My Pet
Yuri is My Job!

Too hot to go out and do anything? Best buckle down with aircon blasting, an ice-cold drink, and an entire series of manga to read! This week, we’re hosting our first-ever Binge-Reading Sale featuring 30+ completed manga series—putting them up for a huge discount at our digital retail partners: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, and nook.
Here’s the deal
Wanna try something new? Digital Volumes 1’s of select completed manga series are only 99¢ ($1.99 for omnibus volumes)!
If you like what you’re reading, keep goin’—because all the other volumes are up to 50% off!
Pretty sweet deal huh? But you gotta hurry, because the sale will end on July 29!

Here’s a few recommendations!

Wow! Big-time 2019 Eisner Award winner for “Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia” (just announced at San Diego Comic-Con!), Akiko Higashimura’s Tokyo Tarareba Girls, leads off our Binge-Reading Sale!

And here’s the complete lineup!

~ Kodansha Comics Binge-Reading Sale  ~
July 23-29
Click on the link to read Chapter 1 for FREE!

Air Gear
ALIVE
Ao-Chan Can’t Study!
Animal Land
Aoba-kun’s Confession
Basilisk
BLAME!
Bloody Monday
Cage of Eden
Can You Just Die, My Darling?
Chi’s Sweet Home
Complex Age
COPPELION
DEATHTOPIA
Dragon Head
Fairy Tail
Forget Me Not
Fort of Apocalypse
Fuuka
Genshiken
Genshiken Second Season
Inuyashiki
Karate Heat
Kasane
Knights of Sidonia
Love Hina
Mardock Scramble
My Little Monster
Nodame Cantabile
Parasyte
Peach Girl
Rave Master
A Silent Voice
Suzuka
Tokyo Tarareba Girls
Until Your Bones Rot
The Walls Between Us
Your Lie in April
World End and Apricot Jam

 
Initial D, BECK, MARS … Kodansha Comics and comiXology have been teaming up to bring back some long-out-of-print manga fan-favorites as comiXology Originals — exclusively available comiXology and Kindle. In some cases we’ve been completing those series that never concluded in their original runs—publishing the English-language versions of the final volumes for the very first time … so you can find out what the heck happened!
To showcase those series, this week we’re hosting  the comiXology Originals Sale with the following lineup of manga up to 50% off only on comiXology and Kindle! (Sale ends July 22.) 

Kodansha Comics x comiXology Originals Sale
(July 16-22) 
Click on links below for free Chapter 1 previews!

 
Initial D
By Shuichi Shigeno
At last, Shuichi Shigeno’s all-time manga about Japanese street racing that turned into a global phenomenon is back! Live the legend of how Tak Fujiwara went from tofu delivery boy to street-racing god. This edition marks the long-awaited publication of the complete series in English, including the final volumes never released in English before.
Tak Fujiwara spends a lot of time behind the wheel. His tofu delivery job sends him racing down the treacherous roads of Mount Akina, and without even realizing it, Tak has mastered racing techniques that take most drivers a lifetime to learn. Of course, none of his friends realize this. They’re all too busy watching the Akina Speed Stars, the local street racing team. When the legendary Red Suns show up to challenge the Speed Stars, it looks as if the Trueno Eight Six that has been seen racing through the mountain roads. The question remains … who’s the driver of this phantom car?
 
 

 
 

 
MARS
By Fuyumi Soryo
Are you ready for some … drama? The all-time, long out-of-print shojo manga classic is back! With even more twists and turns then you probably remember, Fyuyumi Soryo’s beautifully illustrated high-school psychodrama turned some young comics readers heads inside-out when it was first released, with hysterical plots revolving around the traumatic secret histories of its seemingly poised protagonists. Art class was never quite like this …
Superpopular motorcycle racer Rei and shy, neurotic art student Kira are worlds apart … until one fateful day brings them together. Rei stumbles upon Kira in the harassing hands of her sleazy art teacher and saves the quiet girl from his clutches. And when the resident school pretty boy plants a kiss on a statue of Mars in the studio, Kira finds herself drawn in and even summons up the nerve to ask him to model for her!
 
 

 
 

 
You’re My Pet
By Yayoi Ogawa
Far from your typical manga romance-a-thon, You’re My Pet (previously released under the titleTramps Like Us) features one of the more memorable protagonists in manga history, putting a sardonic X-Ray to life as a single woman in the big city, with suprising nuance and edgy, sophisticated humor. Fans of Akiko Higashimura’s Tokyo Tarareba Girls will want to check out one of its great predecessors, which seems to have hardly dated at all.
Life was good for Sumire Iwaya … until the day she discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her, she gets demoted at work, and her life spirals toward the dumps. Things take a turn for the better when she crosses paths with Momo, a handsome-but-homeless guy with a colorful past who puts a bounce in her step and a shake in her hips. It takes two to tango, but when Sumire’s first love reappears in her life, will this be the last waltz?
 
 

 
 

 
BECK
By Harold Sakuishi
BECK is back! Harold Sakuishi’s wildly addictive 34-volume rock ‘n’ roll epic that redefined for a generation what manga could be returns—at last complete in English.
Fourteen-year-old Yukio Tanaka is one heck of a boring guy. He has no hobbies, weak taste in music, and only a small vestige of a personality. His shy and somewhat neurotic personality makes him his own worst enemy. Little does he know that his life will be forever changed when he meets rocker Ryusuke Minami, an unpredictable sixteen-year-old with a cool dog named Beck. Ryusuke has just returned to Japan from America, and when he inspires Yukio to get into music, the two begin a journey through the world of rock ‘n’ roll dreams! Lace up your Docs and head to the mosh pit—Harold Sakuishi’s manga series that spawned the hit anime is back!
 
 

 
 
 
Seven Shakespeares
By Harold Sakuishi
Literary secrets come alive when Harold Sakuishi, creator of the all-time-classic rock ‘n’ roll manga BECK, tackles a different kind of legend: William Shakespeare.
He’s said to be the greatest playwright and poet in history, the author of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth, but just who was William Shakespeare? Harold Sakuishi unlocks the secrets behind the writer you only thought you knew! Volume 1 comes in a special, 520-page 2-in-1 edition.
 
 
 
 
 

comiXology Originals series are available exclusively on comiXology and Kindle! 

Here’s an easy and economical way to get into all-time cyberpunk manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro and the movie it’s based on, Alita: Battle Angel, all at once: Preorder the Alita: Battle Angel Blu-Ray/DVD/4K on Amazon before July 22, and you’ll get a digital download code for Battle Angel Alita Volumes 1 and 2 on comiXology! 
And if you like what you’re reading, keep going! Because for the next two weeks we’re putting all three Battle Angel Alita series on sale up to 50% off at our digital retail partners: BookWalker, comiXology, Google Play, Kindle, and nook. (Sale ends June 22.)

How to read Battle Angel Alita: a guide to the 3-part epic saga

Battle Angel Alita The original series
Originally published in Japan in 1990 under the title “Gunmu” (銃夢 literal translation “gun dream”), it took Kishiro 5 years to establish the worldview and overarching stories in this 9-volume original series. 
Synopsis: In a dump in the lawless settlement of Scrapyard, far beneath the mysterious space city of Zalem, disgraced cyber-doctor Daisuke Ido makes a strange find: the detached head of a cyborg woman who has lost all her memories. He names her Alita and equips her with a powerful new body, the Berserker. While Alita remembers no details of her former life, a moment of desperation reawakens in her nerves the legendary school of martial arts known as Panzer Kunst. In a place where there is no justice but what people make for themselves, Alita decides to become a hunter-killer, tracking down and taking out those who prey on the weak. But can she hold onto her humanity as she begins to revel in her own bloodlust?
The entire series (Volumes 1-9) is now available on all digital platforms.
2-in-1 deluxe print edition volumes 1-5 are available now. Or get all 5 volumes in the complete series box set!
 
 

 
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order 
You thought you said “goodbye” to Alita by the end of the original series. Think again. This sequel series tells you how Alita and other characters survived even further into the future!
Synopsis: Alita wakes up alone in the sky city of Tiphares, her brain and body reconstructed by the mad scientist Desty Nova. There’s no time to wonder why Alita’s greatest enemy would resurrect her, though—the royal city has been thrown into chaos by Nova’s revelation that the Tiphareans have had their brains replaced by bio-chips! Everyone needs answers—and Alita will fight to get them!
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is available as omnibus Volumes 1-5, plus regular Volumes 16-19 in print & digital editions! 
 
 
 
 
 


Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle
The latest story arc of the Battle Angel saga goes back into what Alita was looking for all along–– her childhood memories on Mars. 
Synopsis: For centuries, war has raged on the dusty, red surface of Mars. This apocalyptic crucible will produce the solar system’s most fearsome warrior, Alita. But for now that warrior is just a little girl named Yoko. The future and past of the battle angel fan out across the reaches of space in the final chapter of one of the greatest sci-fi epics of all time!
Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle Volumes 1-6 are now available as a digital & print editions!