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Gengoroh Tagame's Fish and Water Manga Gets English Release
posted on by Anita Tai
The official Bluesky account for manga artist Gengoroh Tagame announced on Monday that Pantheon/Penguin Random House will release his Fish and Water (Uo to Mizu) manga in English physically and digitally on June 23.
The publisher describes the story:
From the brilliant mind behind Gengoroh Tagame (My Brother’s Husband, Our Colors), Fish and Water follows the unlikely love story of two “straight” friends. Having met at a mutual friend's wedding, Akira, a business sales administrator, and Koji, a freelance writer, quickly become close buddies. One day, during a visit with a farm client, Akira is offered a case of freshly picked cabbage. Since no one at his office wants it, and he is no cook, Akira decides to see if Koji (who loves to cook) might be interested. Lonely and in the midst of pandemic-related shutdowns, Akira uses this as an excuse to come hang out at Koji's house. Once they get past how to be covid-cautious, they become quite relaxed with each other, creating an amusing but emotionally confusing scenario. Akira and Koi grapple with deciding if they are just friends or something more.
Tagame launched the series on Futabasha's Web Action site in October 2022, following the published one-shot manga in May 2022. The series ended in April 2023. Futabasha shipped the compiled book volume in May 2023.
Tagame launched the My Brother’s Husband manga in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine in November 2014 and ended it in May 2017. Futabasha published the manga's fourth compiled volume in July 2017. Pantheon Books shipped the manga in two two-in-one omnibus volumes in English. The manga was nominated for Best Comic at the 44th annual Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2017. The manga also won an Excellence Award at the 19th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards in 2015. Amazon named the book as one of 20 books in the "Comics & Graphic Novels" category of its Best Books of 2017 list. The Harvey Awards nominated the manga for its "Best Manga" category in 2018.
The manga inspired a three-episode live-action mini-series adaptation that premiered in March 2018.
Pantheon Books has also released Tagame's Our Colors (Bokura no Shikisai) manga in English.
Tagame is best known for his gay erotic manga. German publisher Bruno Gmünder Verlag has published Tagame's Gunji, Fisherman’s Lodge, Endless Game, and The Contracts of the Fall manga in English, and Fantagraphics Books' Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It anthology featured work by Tagame.
Sources: Gengoroh Tagame's Bluesky account, Penguin Random House
