OK, I am seriously excited for Stargazing Dog, which is coming in September from NBM. Here’s the description from the NBM blog:
A moving manga that is a major best-seller in Japan, selling now over 400,000 copies and being made into a movie. Oto-san is down and out. Life has conspired against him, nothing coming together the way he wished, so he sets out with his car to just get away from it all. All people around him have abandoned him in indifference but as we discover along with him, the one he can count on utterly and completely is a dog he just adopted who follows him blindly, faithfully and completely, to the end, lightening up his new adventure into the unknown.
When I was still interning at Tokyopop, this title came up in a licensing meeting and the editors and I were all over it. Admittedly, we were easily lured in by the adorable dog pictured on the cover, but also because it seemed like a unique story. There aren’t a lot of manga published in English that make you want to cry, but this is definitely one that will try to hit all your soft spots.
Obviously, this one didn’t get licensed by Tokyopop, but the company tried to put the feelers out there by asking fans if they wanted to read manga that made them cry. I can’t remember the result, sadly, and the Tokyopop website is gone for good.
I’m very excited for this one, mostly because I feel like cute dog-centric manga aren’t as popular as cute cat-centric manga. I have a huge bias for dogs and I’d much rather read about them than finicky (albeit cute) cats. But also because I did want to see this one (and many other titles that I looked at during those old licensing meetings) in English. I’m glad NBM had the guts to pick this one up and start their manga line with it. I hope this is a sign of many more interesting manga to come!
I’m definitely picking Stargazing Dog up come September and I’ll probably cry. The titular canine looks just like my own dog!
Broken Frontier has a three-page preview up if you want to take a peek at Stargazing Dog. Unfortunately, there’s no text included.
Oh, I happened to pre-order this today.