The relatively successful airing of the anime adaptation of the very popular manga title Highschool of the Dead seems to have had a major consequence. The original manga has now been announced as having been licensed from Monthly Dragon Age (title’s original Japanese publisher) by North American manga publisher Yen Press. This is great news for the new fans of the anime (still just 3 episodes in but having impressed with those so far) and for the veteran manga readers who have been relegated to reading fan-translated versions of the series.

Yen Press has licensed some very solid titles from Japan and they’ve actually done a good job at bringing over these titles with as little censoring and changes to the artwork and dialogue as possible unlike some other NA publishers. I hope they do the same for Highschool of the Dead once they start releasing the first couple volumes over here in the US and Canada.

Highschool of the Dead has gore and violence aplenty which should appeal to the teenage and young men demographic the title has been targetting from the onset. The title also happens to be quite ecchi (fan-service) which makes American publishers of licensed manga nervous of late. It’s interesting to note that these very ecchi images wouldn’t be seen as too much of a problem over in Japan but here in NA where there are more puritanical groups lobbying to censor or outright ban these kind of titles then manga such as Highschool of the Dead will always have a harder time of coming over to these shores unedited.

Here’s to hoping that Yen Press does a very  hands-off approach in their handling of this popular title. It would be a shame for the title to finally be licensed but only to get the Tenjho Tenge treatment which would definitely get the title’s fans in an uproar. Hopefully, Yen Press saw what happened when CMX did that with Tenjho Tenge and just leave things well enough alone.

Source: Anime News Network