4 Out-of-Print Manga from the 2000s that I Desperately Want Revived Before I Turn 40

I’m turning thirty this week. It’s a little intimidating. A lot happened in my twenties, both good and bad, and I’m trying to be optimistic about all the stuff that is going to go down in my thirties. The inevitable stuff, like the incoming wave of early aughts nostalgia.

Here are four manga from the 2000s I hope to see get print rereleases during my next decade:

1. Pet shop of Horrors and spin-offs (Matsuri Akino; TokyoPop/ various Japanese Publishers)
Recap for those unfamiliar: Eerie, possibly vampiric man runs a pet shop in New York Chinatown, sells exotic and dangerous creatures to rich people, regularly pisses off local police officer.

Iโ€™ve written a little bit about it previously, but Iโ€™ll say it again here: Pet Shop of Horrors was one of the most influential pieces of media I consumed as a teen. It shaped what I look for in horror and supernatural literature.

I received the entire TokyoPop run of the original Pet Shop of Horrors series last year as a birthday gift and have been slowly revisiting my high school years through them. Only 8 of the 12 volumes of the sequel series Shin Pet Shop of Horrors (localized in English as Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo) were released in the US before TokyoPopโ€™s 2011 closure. While looking up more about sequel, I discovered that there are two other spin-off series about the Count D universe, one of which is still ongoing. It appears that the North American licenses for these are all currently unclaimed. Iโ€™m very conservative when it comes to collecting entire series, but I would probably make an exception — and buy another shelf — for all 30+ volumes.

2. Please Save my Earth (Saki Hiwatari; Viz Media/ Hakusensha)

One of the most fascinating things about looking back on manga localized in the early 2000s is seeing how much my taste has changed. I clearly remember seeing Please Save My Earth in Borders, and even on a friendโ€™s nightstand at one point, but I never bothered to pick it up because the plot summary sounded boring to me:

Alice’s dreams of being a lovely woman living on the moon provide an escape from her job babysitting the holy terror Rin. When he goes one step too far, she slaps him, causing him to fall off a balcony and into a coma.

When he awakens, he seems changed – and strangely connected to Alice. Meanwhile, at school, Alice meets a pair of boys with an oddly close relationship. She soon learns that they, too, have dreams of living on the moon.

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$25.87 x 21 volumes = oof

Now, sixteen years later, I am kicking myself. This sounds rad. I am mystified at how 14-year-old me could think โ€œteenagers looking for other teenagers who have dreams about their past lives as moon aliensโ€ did not sound rad.

The good news is that Viz still appears to have the license for Please Save My Earth. The bad news is that they are only distributing it digitally right now, and the original 2000s volumes are near impossible to find for a reasonable price, even on secondhand selling sites.

3. Suppli (Mari Okazaki; Tokyopop/ SHodensha)

When Minami Fujii, an ambitious 27 year old employee of an advertising agency, splits up with her boyfriend of seven years, she finds herself throwing herself ever more deeply into her demanding, high pressure job whilst simultaneously attempting to deal with her loneliness and her fears that life has passed her by. Subsequently, Minami finds herself spending more of what little free time she has in the company of her co-workers and finds that new romantic opportunities are opening up to her in her work place.

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I came across Suppli while browsing Goodreads lists, and the Free Library of Philadelphia miraculously had a copy of the first volume from TokyoPop. It was very beat up, so beat up that I read it in the library instead of checking it out because I was afraid it would disintegrate in my backpack. But I was immediately hooked. Since reading Suppli, Iโ€™ve been taking note of all the recent josei manga releases that feature professional working women (My Androgynous Boyfriend, Everyoneโ€™s Getting Married), but none have really struck the same cord with me as Suppliโ€™s workaholic protagonist stumbling through a work-centric social life.

I picked up used copies of Suppli volumes 2 through 5 back in April and was devastated to learn that only half of the series was released in English. Now that North American publishers seem to have noticed the growing audience for josei manga, I think itโ€™s time to finish it up.

4. Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Fumiyo Kouno; Last Gasp/ Futabasha)

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms follows one familyโ€™s lasting traumas of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing through four generations. I noticed the slim little volume in the Graphic Novel section at the Free Library of Philadelphia Chestnut Hill branch many, many times and always hesitated to pick it up. And then finally, back in February, the last time I was in Center City Philadelphia, I checked it out from the Walnut Street branch. It was the last book I got to read while sitting in a coffee shop, right before the Pennsylvania retail shutdown in March. It was the first book someone direct messaged me about to ask where they could find a print copy to read.

My answer: Sit tight and check out In This Corner of the World in the meantime.

The English language publisher, Last Gasp, is still in business, but Town of Evening Calm is not listed on their website (although they do have a very lovely edition of Suehiro Maruoโ€™s Strange Tale of Panorama Island.) To be perfectly honest, I can’t say I think about Town of Evening Calm a lot. But it does come to mind whenever I worry about the precarious situation of older, out-of-print books in general collections. I visualize it going the the same way as that copy of that first volume of Suppli and realize with prices ranging from $50 to $150 on used book sites, how difficult it might be to replace.


I’m writing about these four licenses because I think they have a chance. North American publishers have been reaching back to previous decades for both out-of-print series and previously unlicensed work, usually releasing them as 2-in-1 volumes or special edition hardcovers. At first, they were major titles with large, mostly younger female followings– Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Magic Knight Rayearth, Fruits Basket, including previously unreleased spin-offs. But then I started seeing series and creators that had never even pinged on my teenage radar. Hardcover and multi-volume editions of works from Naoki Urasawa, Kazuo Umezz, Moto Hagio, and Akiko Higashimura are now accumulating in my apartment, along with nearly every Junji Ito short story collection. Some publishers are openly requesting reader suggestions, too, something that would have been unimaginable to me as a teen. Honestly, after finding out just this week that Saiyuki is now getting a hardcover release, I’m pretty optimistic about seeing new editions of Pet Shop of Horrors or Please Save My Earth. Optimistic and patient.


2 Comments Add yours

  1. alsmangablog's avatar alsmangablog says:

    I’m sad Suppli was never fully released in English too. The art was so beautiful! I’d be great if some of these series saw a reprint some day. I’ve been pleased to see several long out of print titles getting new editions recently, hopefully that trend will continue.

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