Following up on its special announcements from this year’s San Diego Comic Con, Kodansha USA has announced an additional four new print releases in Spring 2025.
The new releases consist of two manga licenses, a manga box set, and a new edition of a classic samurai novel.
Here are the details for the latest releases:
Snegurochka of the Spring Breeze
Story and Art: Hiroaki Samura
Release Date: Spring 2025
Winner of the “Excellence Award in Manga” at the 2014 Japan Media Arts Festival.
Synopsis:
Bielka (“Squirrel”), a beautiful young woman in a wheelchair, and her taciturn companion Shchenok (“Puppy”) must keep their true identities secret as they navigate the fraught political climate and harsh landscape of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Intrigue abounds in this richly historical and erotic political drama that weaves historical figures including the Romanovs and Rasputin into Hiroaki Samura’s brilliant fiction.
The POOL
Story and Art: Gamon Sakurai
Release Date: Spring 2025
Synopsis:
Twenty years ago, a wormhole suddenly appeared above Earth’s orbit and opened a passageway to an alien planet full of untapped resources and mysterious life forms. Two decades later, Team Sierra, a small military squad of security specialists working for the Tiberius Coke Corporation, are thirty miles away from home base on that planet when their leader, Chief Yugi Oishi, spots an SOS flare coming from a theoretically abandoned mine.
Despite the danger, she leads her four-man team to the facility to see who’d called for help, only for it to be attacked by a horde of powerful creatures almost as soon as the doors close behind them. Now, she and the stranded exploratory excavation crew Team Sierra finds inside must traverse the treacherous mine to reach the only vehicle that could get them to safety — without waking the terrifying monster that’s been picking off the researchers one by one.
Twilight Out of Focus Box Set
Story and Art: Jyanome
Release Date: Spring 2025
A collector’s box set that contains volumes 1-4 of the Twilight Out of Focus series and includes a special booklet with U.S.-edition exclusive art, a never-before translated short story, and all-new full-color illustrations.
Synopsis:
Second-years Mao Tsuchiya and Hisashi Otomo make three promises: 1) That Mao will never tell anyone that Hisashi is gay and has a boyfriend, 2) That Hisashi will never think of Mao “in that way,” and 3) That they’ll always knock before entering, in case someone is having some “private time.” The two’s ground rules should ensure a peaceful life together in their dorm, but life is never as simple as it should be, and some things are not so easily promised…
Musashi (New Edition)
Story: Eiji Yoshikawa
Translation: Charles Terry
Release Date: Spring 2025
The new edition of Eiji Yoshikawa’s classic samurai novel features a new cover design.
Synopsis:
Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai–without really knowing what it meant–he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive and brings life in his own village to a standstill—until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk.
Source: press release
Interested in our weekly chart updates and news? Subscribe to our newsletter to receive more content in your inbox!
