Kodansha USA is one of the largest manga companies. It is launching Kodansha Print Club, which will bring digital-first favourites to print, starting with Love, That’s an Understatement, Teppu and Blade Girl. Penguin Random House will distribute these manga titles to bookstores and comic book stores throughout the United States.
Starting December 10, 2024, customers can purchase Kodansha Print Club titles by searching for print editions of Love, That’s an Understatement, Teppu, and Blade Girl Volume 1 from the following online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million, Kinokuniya, Hudson Booksellers, Powell’s, and the Crunchyroll Store. More retailers will be added in the future.
One of the things Kodansha is known for is its sizable digital-first catalogue, and ever since the start of the digital program, we’ve noticed fans clamouring to have several of these series available in print. The Kodansha Print Club is our way of trying to bridge this gap and start fulfilling some of those fan requests,” says Ivan Salazar, Kodansha USA, Sr. Marketing Director. “Across conventions and online, fans have told us how important it is to have a physical copy of their favourite manga—to hold them in your hand and display them on your shelf—and the Kodansha Print Club is just one more way to respond to manga readers by bringing even more fan-favourite manga into print.”
About Love, That’s an Understatement:
Spare eraser? Check. Extra folding umbrella? Check. First aid kit? Check. Cool and collected high school student Risa Amakawa has something in her heavy bag for every situation, and the last thing she needs—or knows how to ask for—is anyone’s help. When she saves a beat-up delinquent in the park one rainy evening, she refuses repayment. But it turns out that saving the notorious Zen Ohira buys her the attention of some unsavoury characters. As Zen keeps swooping in to help her out of one pickle after another, her feelings about relying on anyone but herself—and her feelings toward Zen—slowly begin to change… A new rom-com from the author of Lovesick Ellie!
About Teppu:
It’s not easy being good at everything. First-year high school student Natsuo Ishido has always been a gifted athlete, and her ability to quickly master every sport has not only bought her a life of boredom but also the resentment of everyone else who has had to work hard for their achievements. Not that Natsuo cares what anyone else thinks. All she longs for is a break from the monotony…for a real challenge worthy of pouring all her efforts into. A rival—an equal—worth beating down, crushing, and demoralizing… That all seems like a pipe dream until two annoyingly peppy transfer students arrive from Brazil and start a brand-new club that teases the challenge she craves—Mixed Martial Arts.
About Blade Girl:
One year after losing her leg, 16-year-old Rin is tired—tired of the painful physical therapy, tired of being treated differently, and tired of her stupid, heavy, awkward prosthetic leg. All that changes when she encounters the Blade Runners, a group of one-legged athletes who run with “blades”—carbon fibre prosthetics specialized for competitive running—made by their gifted prosthetist, Kazami. The blades are light, flexible, and formidably challenging to control—Rin can barely walk with one, much less sprint. But as she tumbles to the ground again and again, she rediscovers many of the things that she’d forgotten and finds a new goal: to compete in the Paralympics.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
