VIZ Media has announced that the upcoming sequel to Boys Over Flowers will release simultaneously in English as the Japanese release. Shueisha is releasing Boys Over Flowers 2 on the Jump+ digital manga platform as a bi-weekly digital serialization starting on February 15th. VIZ will be releasing the English translated version on February 14th on the VIZManga platform free for a limited time.
The titles will also be available via Comixology and from Amazon for the Kindle platform. While this isn’t the first release of digital manga by VIZ this represents is an unprecedented change in the manga industry, and I’m excited for it. One of the major things holding the industry back has been the ‘scanlation’ groups, who are able to get English versions of manga up near simultaneously with Japan. This shows a move to try to build up more business via a legal platform and more importantly, growth in the industry to where they can afford to do so.
