Their appellations remain as intriguing as their characters. Maybe this is a better section of the forum to mention the manga aspects of the developments surrounding the ongoing series? With thanks to Erica Friedman, from whose website
Okazu and reviews of the series, most of this information was distilled. She was also kind enough to post some of my ramblings -on the LINEmanga re-release- as a guest review, but we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. "Asagao to Kase-san" was printed in the
second issue of "Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari", released in August 2010. After publication of the yuri magazine was discontinued
in 2014, the "Kase-san" stories stopped appearing in print for a while too.
Hiromi Takashima didn't stop creating new stories with the character(s), however. While Takashima has continued self-publishing additional "Kase-san" related material as an individual, publishing company Shinshokan has released some of those stories online too. Beginning with
"Asagao to Kase-san".
Some, but not all, of the early stories were bundled and released in print book format. The first tankōbon was released under the name of the first story, in 2011. The book included four other “... to Kase-san“ stories. Besides the eponymous character, Yamada already featured prominently from the very start of the first story as well. A review can be found
here. In total three tankōbon volumes with "... Kase-san" stories have been released to date. In addition to “Asagao to Kase-san”, these are
“Obentō to Kase-san" and
“Shortcake to Kase-san”, with links for reviews inline. Takashima revised some of the stories and their artwork prior to publication in these collected volumes.
These have in turn been picked up for publication outside Japan. They've appeared in German, as
"Ipomoea" from Egmont, and in English, as "Kase-san and ...", from Seven Seas Entertainment, whose Book 1 is titled "Kase-san and Morning Glories". Publication of additional volumes is scheduled. Book 2 will be released on May 23, 2017. Book 3 on September 12, 2017.
As "Yamada and Kase-san", new stories, about both characters, now appear in a Japanese print magazine again: Shinshokan's
"Wings". A magazine with a slightly different target audience than "Hirari". This publishing company also releases new chapters online, in its
"WEBwings" webcomic. These eTexts are also made available, "FLASHwings", through Niconico and Yahoo Japan's online Bookstore. Older stories, the tankōbon versions of the "... to Kase-san" stories, are currently also re-run, free for a limited time, as a weekly
LINEmanga series. Except for the first three stories, each release in that format has expired after one month. The first three stories remain free while the others are available for a fee in the bundled volumes, online and in print. Geo-restrictions are in place for Shinshokan's online readers as well as for access to books and series on LINEmanga.
These books are all also appearing - with Takashima's participation- at "Yuri" events and in Yuri aimed bookstore promotions. In which the PV clips also appeared... as well as more recently the entire music video, which -with enough interest (?)- may translate into more
animated "Kase-san..." with promotion of the existing music clip and feedback requests appearing in Japanese and English.
Acknowledging reception, Takashima
tweeted a link for the
"Kase-san and ..." books on the Seven Seas Entertainment website, as well as an image of the recently revealed jacket for their English edition of Book 2:
"Kase-san and Bento". The image shows the "blurb" on the back cover:
They're a bit ahead in Japanese.
Romaji tittles are used from the start. Transliterated rather than translated. Appearing together with the titles in kanji and kana, on all the cover and title pages. Beginning with 「あさがおと加瀬さん」“Asagao to Kase-san”. Overseas publishers translated the flower name in this title for the first book and story. Egmont went with “Die Ipomoea und Kase-san” inside "Ipomoea", whereas Seven Seas went with “Kase-san and Morning Glories” throughout. For Book 2, Seven Seas chose to stick with “Bento” -which is, of course, not a flower- rather than a Lunchbox.
One of the interesting aspects of the series as serialised in “Wings”, to me, is that Takashima picked another flower for the title of the first story in “Yamada to Kase-san” too. Returning with “Nadeshiko to Kase-san”. The main title may have changed but the titles of this first story follows the previous pattern. It is perhaps useful to note up-front that the very latest stories aren't uploaded to LINEmanga yet. The upload schedule is weekly, Tuesdays, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the two catch up. On the last page of part one, of "Sunahama to Kase-san", splitting that story in half, before having it appear as the ninth instalment of the LINEmanga re-run, an announcement echoing Takashima's
blog entry and giving a tentative release date towards the second half of July 2017, for a tankōbon to be titled "Apron to Kase-san".
... and that, as I understand it, is where we stand at the moment. In a bright spotlight as radiant as their smiles.
The future really looks promising.
