Princess Knight, by Tezuka Osamu, is being published by Vertical.
To say that this is a “long-awaited” announcement is sort of an understatement. Start saving your money now, seriously, because I expect everyone who calls themselves a Yuri fan to run out and get this. No exceptions, no excuses. If you can afford a pizza, you can afford this book. (If you really can’t afford this book, ask your library, nicely.)
Princess Knight, aka Ribon no Kishi （リボンの騎士）is one of the seminal works of Yuri fandom. Tezuka’s visible influences include Disney’s Snow White and Takarazuka, and this series set the bar for notable later girl-princes such as Lady Oscar in Rose of Versailles and Tenjou Utena in Revolutionary Girl Utena.
If you have been paying the least bit of attention to the manga and Japanese lit worlds, Vertical’s other two announcements will be pretty big news, as well. So this was a great off-season announcement for all of us.
WOW!! This is EXCELLENT news!! Folks will finally get a chance to read this classic Tezuka work. I’ll be passing this info on to my library job, as we purchase many works my Tezuka. So this is something we definitely want. I want to read this myself.
These are excellent news!! For a generation who was one decade up is the great chance of having in print the manga that revolutionized shoujo!!!
‘Start saving your money now, seriously, because I expect everyone who calls themselves a Yuri fan to run out and get this.’
Then I’ll be sure to get it!
This is excel….ah damn it, it’s already been said twice. But this truly is great. “Ribbon Knight” (my internal name for it) is something I have been interested in learning more about for a very long time. The only thing that could make this better is if Nozomi finally announced the anime license. I know they’re trying for it.
This is kind of interesting–I heard Tezuka usually wrote his women characters in a more misogynistic light. Was this one of his exceptions?
@Filo – That’s too broad a generalization to be true. Tezuka has both male and female characters that are presented negatively. And he does terrible things to both his male and female characters.
But to answer the question – both Princess Knight and Astro Boy are tales for children. They are generally less dark than his work for adults.
I read a bit of this manga when it was featured in Shojo Beat magazine several years ago and always wanted to know what happened next. I’m glad that Vertical decided to acquire the rights to publish it!
Can’t wait to hear about their other acquisitions!
Just an information for those who don’t mind reading their manga in japanese on a computer, smartphone or ipad: you can buy these for download on http://www.ebookjapan.jp and just this weekend they have a special offer where you get 50% in points on your purchase (if you buy for 5000yen, you get 2500 points, which you can use on your next purchase instead of 2500yen). There are also a lot of other manga that might interest okazu readers (hana no asuka gumi,….).
I’m not affiliated with them, just wanted to let you all know about the big rebate this weekend.
@Martin – Interesting link. I’m not sure yet if I feel it to be legit, but at first glance it seems like it could be – my biggest caveat is that I find it hard to believe that all these publishers have suddenly started to work together to allow this without *mentioning* it to anyone.
So I caution anyone chose to use this system that this may be you paying for access to yet again bootlegged materials – as you know I do not support that in any way.
However, I will look into this site and if it is legit, I’ll let you know.