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Tokyopop Reveals Details of Stitch!, Nightmare Before Christmas Manga Releases

Anime News Network's Anime Expo 2016 news coverage sponsored by Yen Press.

Tokyopop announced at its Anime Expo panel on Monday details about its release of Yumi Tsukirino's Disney Stitch! and Jun Asuga's Disney Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas manga. Although both manga are based on Disney films, they are series by Japanese artists that were originally released in Japan.

The company will release the first volume of Disney Stitch! on August 10. The 176-page manga will retail for US$10.99.

The story follows the blue alien Stitch as he visits a fictional Japanese island near Okinawa. He becomes friends with a young girl named Yūna who is skilled in karate. The duo's adventures include going fishing, entering a costume contest, and trying to bake a cake.

Tsukirino launched the manga in the Shogakukan no Gakunen Betsu Gakushū Zasshi series of magazines for elementary school students in 2008. Shogakukan published two compiled book volumes in 2009. Shogakukan also published compiled books of Maho Asada's separate manga based on Lilo & Stitch! that same year.

Disney's 2002 film Lilo & Stitch! also inspired an anime series that Disney co-produced with Japan's Madhouse anime studio. The anime also follows the story of Stitch and Yūna.

The anime series spawned two sequel series in Japan: Stitch!: Itazura Alien no Daibōken and Stitch!: Zutto Saikō no Tomodachi. The original series premiered in Japan in 2008, and the two sequels premiered in Japan in 2009 and 2010. A one-hour sequel special, Stitch to Suna no Wakusei, aired in 2012, and a new special, Stitch! Perfect Memory, aired last August.

Disney Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas will ship for US$15.99 on October 5. The story is based on Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In the original film, a weary Jack Skellington is bored with Halloween as Halloween Town celebrates it every year. Jack plots to abduct Santa and reinvent Christmas as a spooky holiday.

Kodansha released Asuga's one-volume manga in 2004 and republished the book in 2005.

Tokyopop teased at its Comic Con International panel last year that it would have upcoming original "manga" collaborations with Disney. Tokyopop founder Stu Levy said that the works would be original and would possibly have Japanese artists.

The company announced at its Anime Expo panel last year that it was planning to begin publishing manga again in 2016. Tokyopop had shut down its North American publishing operations in May 2011 but collaborated with other companies to release manga and world manga after the closure.

Source: ICv2