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J-Novel Club Licenses Clockwork Planet Novel Series

J-Novel Club announced on Thursday that it has acquired the worldwide digital English rights to Yuu Kamiya and Tsubaki Himana's Clockwork Planet light novel series. The online service is currently offering the first third of volume one for members and the first 40 pages for free users. The first e-book will go on sale in August.

Kamiya and Himana launched the novel series with illustrations by Shino (Sunday Without God, Lance N' Masques) in 2013, and Kodansha published the fourth volume in December 2015. Kuro has been drawing a manga adaptation of the novels in Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Sirius magazine since 2013, and Kodansha published the seventh volume on April 7. Kodansha Comics is publishing the manga series in English, and it describes the manga's first volume as follows:

Naoto's a high school dropout and brilliant amateur tinkerer. He lives in a world that has been so over-exploited that the entire surface has become one vast machine. When a box crashes into his home containing a female automaton, it's a harbinger of change that will rock the entire globe, and give Naoto his chance to be a hero.

An anime adaptation from studio XEBEC premiered in April and Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs. FUNimation Entertainment is producing an English dub.

Kamiya also wrote the No Game No Life light novel series and drew the illustrations in A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives light novel series.

J-Novel Club launched in October of last year, initially publishing titles from Hobby Japan and OVERLAP. Clockwork Planet is J-Novel Club's first license from the Japanese publisher Kodansha. Membership to the service costs US$4.95 a month or US$54 a year, and gives subscribers access to a new chapter a week for all its series. Subscribers also get access to a member-only forum. Premium Membership gives subscribers a free finalized e-book each month in addition to the benefits of the regular membership, and costs US$10.95 each month or US$120 for a year. Seven Seas Entertainment plans to release some of its titles in print, starting with Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and Occultic;Nine.