Zelda News: Himekawa Manga Being Published in English and a Phantom Hourglass Manga

Once upon a time the duo known as Akira Himekawa thought that their publisher wouldn't allow their Zelda manga to be distributed outside of Japan. It looks like that may have changed...

Back when Annie, the first and original scanalator of the Zelda manga, and I were working on translating and editing the Oracle series- she was speaking with one of the artists. It's been a while but, if I remember correctly, they informed her that, although they would love to see their work published outside Japan, they had been told that it just wasn't going to happen.

But... When I was looking for when the next Vagabond was coming out on Amazon, I got distracted and stumbled upon this:

The Legend of Zelda, Volume 1 by Viz and Volume 2

Viz has nothing about it on their site that I could quickly find but the major (and parent) publisher Simon & Schuster also has it listed on their site as a Viz publication.

It only says "Legend of Zelda" If anyone knows more, like which volumes they mean (I'm thinking OoT, since it's two volumes and a popular series) would you let us know here by posting a link to the source info?

The good news? It's awesome for the people like me who love the manga. The bad news? Sites hosting the scanlations may be asked to take them down when it's released. At least that's a pretty common practice when a series is picked up. The companies use fansites and imports sales to find out what is popular and then... *bam* The fan work has to be removed. While part of me think it sucks that they piggy-back like that, a bigger part of me understands. I would rather see the stuff I love in easy to hold volumes that I can actually read. (And hopefully the artists will benefit from the sales too!) If it does come out in English, pick up a copy and support it! Maybe then Nintendo will hire the girls to do a Wind Waker and Twilight Princess manga as well

Edit: Forgot to add this but for those of you who don't know: On Akira Himekawa's site it looks like there is a Phantom Hourglass manga slated for June. I can't read Japanese, (I'm horrible with languages, I can only use common sense) someone want to confirm what it says for me? :3

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Comments

Jumbie says:

The news about the manga coming to the US actually leaked, Viz didn't want it to be known yet.

Check this out:
http://zentendo.com/news.php?newsId=1009

Oh, that bit about the PH manga is very good news!

Melora says:

Ha ha, that's amusing. Well, since their parent publisher had it on their site I guess it was going to be leaked after all, but that explains why Viz's site was barren. Thanks!

Hummm, random side note for anyone who cares: That WW manga another fan mentions on that linked site is just a 4 Koma anthology, not Akira Himekawa work.

Dins_Daughter says:

Awesome. I wonder, though, if it's just comming out in the US, or if it's comming down here to us Aussies. Either way, at least it's leaving Japan in other forms than the internet translations.

Zelinxia says:

That's cool, but I wonder when they will make one for The Wind Waker...

Morgil says:

I just got the June issue of Nintendo Power. On page 18, it confirms this. It is in fact the OoT manga being released. Interestingly enough, it states that both volumes will be released in October, though that may be an error, since i heard elsewhere that the second volume was to be released in December.

The Missing Link says:

Confirmified for you Melora. That's Phantom Hourglass alright.

ZELDAFAN!n_n says:

Well, that's pretty awesom! Regardless of whether it comes to Europe or not, I think it'll come to Iceland, that happens quite a bit (the newest Pokemon games first came here way before the European release) And the Phantom Holurglass manga sounds great, too. Now what about the WW and TP manga? *sigh*

Also, I never knew Akira Himekawa were two persons

ChibiZelda says:

I will have to frequent the book stores more. =3

themetalwing says:

actually...it says here at bordersmedia.com, it says that they're gonna be published in october... http://beta.bordersstores.com/online/store...type=0&simple=1

linkfreak131 says:

Actualy, there iS a manga for wind waker. Although, it's a four-panel comic; it's not really in the traditional style for manga to be in, and not very many people know about it.

Sorce: http://www.zelda64hyrule.com/manga-action-view-chap-18.html

You must scrol down a bit, and click on the seconed link (in case you can't read French). They don't unfortunatly, have the entire manga up, only a couple of pages.

A tradtional Wind Waker manga would be awesome, though. ^^ As well for the Phantom Hourglass one; it looks so cute! I must travel to Little Tokyo again and buy it once it come out... >_>

Melora says:

linkfreak131: Actually, those are pages Anastasia translated for my old site, http://historyofhyrule.com It's the one I mentioned in the comment I made above XD It's too funny that it's on that site, I wonder where else the old content is floating around. Yeah, that's just 4 koma, I think Nintendo had it produced for their Japanese kids magazine. I believe that this site has translated the whole volume (I've yet to download the files) into English: http://www.animecouncil.net/ If you're looking :3

Morgil: Thanks for the precise info, I'll have to check out that NP

Yay, TML, thanks. I could only compare the Japanese characters in the summery to that of the box art XD

linkfreak131 says:

Ah, I did not know that. o_o Yeah, that's the first website I've seen those pages on, and I found those a little over a year ago, so I just figured it was the actual manga. Thanks for the page, though. That'll definatly help me... I had to get one of my friends to translate it from French to English for me, and even that was hard for her since most of it was in slang. xD