The purple-suited Ali of Del Rey Manga just slapped some Fairy Tail slap-bracelets onto VIZ reps, which makes me giggle. (As do the bracelets. Transported back to my childhood!)

Dallas Middaugh and I just bonded over our locational names (full name is Georgia, if you didn’t know). Moving on, now we’re throwing slap bracelets around…one of the reasons they went with slap bracelets is so that when Ali would throw them around, no one would get hurt, as nearly happened with their last freebie– pins.

The panel consists of Dallas, editor Tricia Narwani, director of acquisitions Mutsumi, and Ali Kokmen. And some very squeaky microphones. ANN just saved the day by turning off the microphones.

First up, Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail 1 and 2. Mashima, of course, is well-known for Rave Master but he has, we’re told, matured greatly with Fairy Tail (though Dallas says he’s probably not yet at his peak). The series debuted at #8 on the graphic novel sales list, so good stuff there.

Next up is Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess. The fifth volume also broke into the top 10 bookscan list, a slowly growing “sleeper hit” for Del Rey. Note to self: check it out. Dallas also admitted to having only just started it himself (and to not reading everything Del Rey puts out– only so many hours in the day).

Moving into the new title announcements, due in Spring 2009…Gakuen Prince by Jun Yuzuki, a bishie romantic comedy, apparently it’s doing very well in Japan (PR manager April Flores just made an appearance, hi April!). A prestigious girls-only school starts allowing boys in, but only a very select few…and the “girls are just starving for men. It’s a harem turned into hell.” Sounds fun to me. Right up my alley, even.

Next up is Samurai 7, the manga by Mizutaka Zuhou, due out in April 2009. Based, of course, on Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (and the anime of which

SAYONARA ZETSUBOU SENSEI! MARCH 2009! I’M THERE! YARRR! *flails* On the title, they’ve decided to go ahead and keep the Japanese title, which caused them a battle with the original Japanese publisher (Kodansha), but there is a subtitle: The Power of Negative Thinking. Good stuff!

A final new license, a novel: The Case of the Dragon Slayer, by Boogiepop author Kadano Kouhei, due out in February.

Talk of the upcoming Wolverine manga, which will be shounen and which has some pretty nice character designs– not too manga-ish, but definitely not classic American style either.

Then there’s the X-Men shoujo manga, character designs for Kitty Pryde, and it’s much more classic manga style and very shoujo…actually it reminds me of shoujo manhwa a bit. Apparently Kitty is going to be the first female student at Xavier’s academy. Ice Man is her love interest, and I really like the designs for Night Crawler, Kitty’s first friend (why can’t HE be the love interest? Night Crawler FTW!). And finally, Beast looks like Totoro.

…I’m not even kidding. I can’t take any photos (don’t have my memory card for my real camera and my cam phone *sucks*), but I’m sure they’ll be around soon…but yeah, he looks like a fanged, slightly mean Totoro. With a tie. Maybe Totoro and Ali combined, actually? Hm.

We’re moving into the Q&A: licensing novels is a bit harder than manga because it’s still a bit early in that market. Zetsubou will be coming out about every four months.

An interesting note about Faust: it includes a manga by Yun Kouga that is ONLY available in Faust and nowhere else in English. The title wasn’t mentioned so I’l have to look into it later.

And we’re wrapping up here…so stay tuned for Yen Press, who supposedly has something big for us.

Posted by gia in Con Reports, Features • Comments (14)