At the San Diego Comic-Con ICv2 caught up with Yen Press’ Kurt Hassler, who waxed enthusiastically about his favorite acquisition announced at the show.  For more on Kobato and the other new Yen manga announcements see “Clamp’s Kobato Leads Yen Press Announcements."

What did you announce here that you are most excited about?

The big Yen announcement at our panel yesterday was the new Clamp title Kobato.  We’re going to be releasing it in May.  We’re going to put the first two volumes out simultaneously.  Obviously Clamp has a huge following in the states and we’re very excited to be expanding that following with this release.

How many volumes is the series?

The series is currently up to the third volume in Japan so we’ll be getting very close to the Japanese releases right off the bat.  It’s a great, fun, light series.  It’s going to really appeal to all the existing Clamp fans and hopefully bring in a new generation of younger readers in much the same way that Cardcaptor Sakura did back in the day.

Are you trying to catch up as close as you can to Japan to try to blunt the effect of the scanlation sites?

Not really.  It’s not really…scanlation isn’t a huge concern for us.  Obviously there’s a lot of fan enthusiasm.  It’s a title they’ve been waiting for for awhile.  We really felt like doing that a two volume simultaneous release will have a big impact with the fan base given the opportunity to get a jump and it should really mitigate the delay between the U.S. market and the Japanese.  We’re keenly aware how much the fans like to get the material as close to the Japanese releases as possible.