AX08: Go! Comi
Sitting in on the Go! Comi panel now: and they’re first telling us that 07 Ghost is actually read “seven ghost,” not “oh-seven ghost.” Just so we know. And now they’re doing one of their cute little manga trailers for the series, which, btw, they have a HUGE banner for in the convention center.
We’re talking over all of the current titles, like Crossroads, Tenshi Janai, After School Nightmare, Kamisama Kazoku, Ultimate Venus, etc.
New licensing announcements, yay! Only a few that they can talk about: one is Days of Cool Idols, a BL one-shot, due out this fall (I’ll get the author name at the end). Next year they’ll release You Higuri’s series Crown, based on the original work by Shinji Wada. It’s a shoujo manga, not BL. It’s ending in Japan this December, and they’ll start releasing it in January. She may also get back to Cantarella at the end of this year…maybe.
And finally…a new series by Mick Takeuchi (creator of Her Majesty’s Dog and Wise Man Sleeps), titled Shibariya Komachi. The series follows a 17-year-old girl who accidentally loses nine years of her life– i.e. she becomes an 8-year-old. (Another description says she becomes a 10-year-old, but Go! Comi says she loses nine years, so…you tell me!). I love Takeuchi’s other works so I’m sure I’ll love this one too. ♥
And we’re now getting a preview for o-play, Go! Comi’s new manga gaming initiative– inspired by the Japanese dating sim/renai visual novel type games. However, instead of stat-building like what appears in some games (Angelique) it’s all about story-building. It’ll be online-only, and episodic, kind of like an anime or a manga– so expect cliffhangers. And the price will be under $10…a hit. Hm. It sounds interesting…
The title of the demo game is Dragon Academy. It looks okay so far, although the music’s awful– but this is slug music, not the actual final music, so we’ll see how it goes. It looks very much like a standard visual novel kind of game. It’s all flash, and the art looks really nice.
Here’s a shitty photo of the game:
When you need to make a decision, instead of selecting a text response, you get a wheel of faces (the wheel of emotions, or “wheel of emo”) where you select the way your character responds internally. Interesting.
And now just a couple of minutes for questions: the game will be charged both on a per-chapter (”episode”) basis, and probably also a subscription service eventually, probably when more chapters are available. They’re currently making three games, and they definitely are investigating the possibility of taking Japanese manga and developing games based on their manga (there’s a reason they’ve shown this to You Higuri already)…IF the games do well.
Some asker just got corrected for using “shounen-ai” (which is NOT a term for BL in Japan). A Black Sun/Silver Moon question about whether they’ll pursue more titles by her, and the answer is yes. And a question about Masque of the Red Death, their OEL BL title from Wendy Pini, who is here sitting in the audience already. They had a panel about it last night, and they’re going to have a signing with Pini back in the dealer room after this panel, with posters. There’s also a mock-up of the print edition for people to flip through…if you’re 18+. Those who preorder the book will get it signed by Pini.
The end!
Tags: ax08, go!-comi, liveblogging
July 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am
right wall, that you?
July 5th, 2008 at 11:10 am
@ace: Yes! Didn’t have time to find you at Tpop =P
July 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am
I’m the big guy with the blonde ponytail in the blue shirt
July 5th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I read two new Go! Comi titles the other day and liked them - Kamisama Kazoku and Hikkatsu! Strike A Blow To Vivify (QUALITY ENGRISH title, but funny book about a karate student who is trying to elevate hitting machinery to make it work again into a high martial skill).