Welcome to the New Kodansha Page

Welcome to the new and improved Kodansha Comics website. While we are still a work in progress, we will henceforth be amazing your eyeballs with awesome content and improved interfaces (in your faces)! In this space, we’ll be posting random bits of stuff, including translated tweets from our authors, random giveaways of books and other goodies, videos of fascinating things, and whatever else our beautiful minds can conjure. All this, and more, will be coming from the staggering brilliance of my mind, and the collective brainpower of the rest of the folks who work hard to publish Kodansha Comics manga.

Please clap your hands (each time you clap, a Fairy Tail meets its on-sale date) as I introduce you to our staff, beginning with myself.

I am David Yoo, the Editorial Czar (or Csar, if you prefer) of Kodansha Comics. I would list my accomplishments, but there is only so much space I could occupy before damaging the Internet. I once made a typo, just to see what it felt like. When I see an ambiguous pronoun, I glare at it until it becomes clearly defined. I once deleted a dangling modifier, just to watch it die. I am the most handsome editor in manga (all due respect to my fellow editors out there, you’re wonderful, but my beauty is incomparable). If you read Kodansha Comics manga, you have undoubtedly read a book I worked on, and it was likely the greatest experience of your life. If not, then you probably read it wrong and should try again.

Hi, my name’s Stephen Pakula and I’m the Production Manager for Kodansha Comics. Basically, that means I’m in charge of turning our comics into actual physical books that you can buy, hold, smell and read (and if you’ve done none of those things then stop reading this blog and go buy Animal Land). I’ve worked in the manga industry on and off for over 12 years, and thinking back on the multitude of titles I’ve been involved with I can, with zero hesitation, say that my crowning achievement is getting to share an office with David Yoo, our Editorial Czar. I am constantly wearing shades for fear that David’s sheer luminescence might burn my retinas. If you ever run into him at a convention, don’t look him in the eyes. You’ve been warned.

I'm Ben Applegate, the newest addition to the Kodansha Comics team. Over the last ten years, I have translated and edited manga, lived in Kyoto and Tokyo, written and edited for a daily newspaper in Seoul, led tours of Japan, hosted a weekly radio segment about movies, met and married a lovely and intelligent woman, played too much Magic: The Gathering and developed an extreme beer snobbery. Most recently, I was editor of the DMP Platinum imprint, where I translated and edited the first-ever manga licensed through Kickstarter: Barbara, by Osamu Tezuka. At Kodansha, the series I edit include: Arisa, Attack on Titan, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Bloody Monday, Cage of Eden, Fairy Tail, Genshiken: Second Season, No. 6, Sankarea and Vinland Saga.

Dallas Middaugh’s parents bought him a lot of comics. When he was old enough, he started buying a lot of comics. He still buys a lot of comics. He reads, writes, publishes, edits, studies, writes about, and teaches them. He does not draw them. He uses the terms comics to cover the whole form: manga, ligne claire, superheroes, the works. He has a comic-book-related tattoo. He might show it to you if you ask him.