You’re probably right, I was a bit unfair with this series. I just remember having a hard time getting through it at the time. I think I get bored easily with sci-fi shoujo for some reason. Even To Terra, which I knew was a good series, gave me problems, and A, A’ was also kind of a slow read when I picked that up years ago. Of course, I also read A, A’ dozens of times, so I liked it well enough.

I read an article just now at Publisher’s Weekly that said they were sort of struggling to make a profit, which I could believe… aside from the fact that their manga titles are likely (and unfortunately) not that popular, a lot of their fiction and nonfiction books are EXTREMELY fringe, I never see them advertised or discussed in the normal places. I was kind of surprised to hear that their best-selling book by far was one of the Aranzi Aronzo books, though I probably shouldn’t have been. It’s pretty easy to see how those could be popular.

And speaking of Vertical Inc., what’s up with the “contemporary manga” imprint that’s supposed to be launched this season? I wrote them an e-mail a few months ago asking them what titles might be released under this imprint and what exactly does “contemporary” imply, but no one bothered to respond. I’ve seen articles mention that mostly teen shoujo titles will be covered…but that’s awfully vague.

Now that I think about it, do you happen to know if this was possibly based on, say, a novel or something? It feels like the kind of story that would be much better if it were expanded out into a novel.