I mentioned Black Butler in my post about Yen Press, and since it’s one of our new series here at Mooresville Public Library, I wanted to bring it up!
Black Butler is a supernatural adventure/dark comedy series, slanted towards girls but definitely not shojo. It’s set in Victorian England, specifically in the late 1880s--the time of Jack the Ripper. The main characters are Ciel Phantomhive, 12-year-old head of the Phantomhive earldom, and his butler Sebastian. While the Phantomhive family (such as it is, since Ciel is an only child and an orphan) heads a toy and candy empire, it’s also secretly the watchdog of England’s seedy underbelly for Queen Victoria. This means Ciel must track down any criminal threats that drift up from the underworld into polite society (like the aforementioned Jack the Ripper) and eliminate them. Ciel typically accomplishes this via Sebastian, who is not really your typical butler, on account of he is a demon.
Literally.
When Ciel’s family was murdered, he was kidnapped, and the anger and pain caused by his mistreatment at the hands of his captors summoned Sebastian. Ciel then entered into a Faustian compact, promising Sebastian that if the demon helped him avenge his family, he would have his soul in return. While hunting for the truth behind the murders, Ciel continues to fulfill the Phantomhive duties of destroying threats to the British crown, and Sebastian continues to obey his orders until the final day comes. (Funny as this manga is--and it is--there’s a reason I called the comedy dark. This is an older teen series.)
Black Butler is translated by (obviously) Yen Press. It’s currently ongoing, with 5 volumes available in English; we have the first four here at MPL! It’s also serialized in the magazine Yen Plus. In addition, there are two anime series, both complete. The first ran for 24 episodes from 2008 to 2009; and the second ran for 12 episodes in 2010. The first anime has been licensed and dubbed by Funimation as “Black Butler season 1,” but so far the second has not been brought over.
April 28, 2011
April 14, 2011
Publishers: Yen Press
Since I’ve mentioned Yen Press a few times in the last months (in reference to K-On and Kobato, as well as some upcoming titles), I figured I should give a little background on them.
Yen Press is a subset of Hachette Book Group USA, a company owned by Hachette Livre (a French company, so it’s not surprising that they’ve tackled such a wide range of manga titles--there's a lot more manga translated into French than there is into English, and titles tend to come out faster over there, too. The entire run of Yugioh was out in France when Shonen Jump was just getting into the start of the card game). Yen Press is also one of the newest of newcomers (that are still around) to the manga translation world: it was founded in 2006.
Yen Press took a page out of Del Rey Manga’s book and published translation notes with their volumes. They also tend to include honorifics; there are some exceptions, such as Black Butler, where they’ve eschewed honorifics because they would feel out of place to an English-reading audience (since that series is set in Victorian London). Unlike Del Rey, however, Yen Press doesn’t usually include a few translated or untranslated pages of the next volume at the end of a manga; they default more to a ‘teaser,’ similar to Tokyopop’s model. The difference is that Yen Press tends to do a full page teaser complete with summary and a panel from the coming volume, while Tokyopop typically only does a summary.
Yen Press is also what I would consider the most otaku of manga translators--they pretty much dived in assuming that their predecessors (Del Rey, Viz, Tokyopop, and some smaller companies like CMX or DrMaster) had sufficiently introduced manga and basic Japanese culture to the mainstream that they could dispense with Anglicizing their titles. They’ve also been the main introducer of manhwa, or Korean manga, to America (like Cynical Orange and Hissing); and they’re also publishing a few original English titles, like the Maximum Ride series and the Twilight graphic novel. So while they may not be the best place to start if you’re unfamiliar with manga, once you get the hang of it I highly recommend them!
Yen Press is a subset of Hachette Book Group USA, a company owned by Hachette Livre (a French company, so it’s not surprising that they’ve tackled such a wide range of manga titles--there's a lot more manga translated into French than there is into English, and titles tend to come out faster over there, too. The entire run of Yugioh was out in France when Shonen Jump was just getting into the start of the card game). Yen Press is also one of the newest of newcomers (that are still around) to the manga translation world: it was founded in 2006.
Yen Press took a page out of Del Rey Manga’s book and published translation notes with their volumes. They also tend to include honorifics; there are some exceptions, such as Black Butler, where they’ve eschewed honorifics because they would feel out of place to an English-reading audience (since that series is set in Victorian London). Unlike Del Rey, however, Yen Press doesn’t usually include a few translated or untranslated pages of the next volume at the end of a manga; they default more to a ‘teaser,’ similar to Tokyopop’s model. The difference is that Yen Press tends to do a full page teaser complete with summary and a panel from the coming volume, while Tokyopop typically only does a summary.
Yen Press is also what I would consider the most otaku of manga translators--they pretty much dived in assuming that their predecessors (Del Rey, Viz, Tokyopop, and some smaller companies like CMX or DrMaster) had sufficiently introduced manga and basic Japanese culture to the mainstream that they could dispense with Anglicizing their titles. They’ve also been the main introducer of manhwa, or Korean manga, to America (like Cynical Orange and Hissing); and they’re also publishing a few original English titles, like the Maximum Ride series and the Twilight graphic novel. So while they may not be the best place to start if you’re unfamiliar with manga, once you get the hang of it I highly recommend them!
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