Ablaze has licensed four manga by Osamu Tezuka, none of which has been published in English before, for publication in 2023 and 2024. All four were licensed from Tezuka Productions in cooperation with DI Books, a licensing and localization service founded by manga industry veteran Dallas Middaugh (see “Middaugh Moves to Crunchyroll”). Here’s a look at the four titles:

• One Hundred Tales is set in the late 1500s and is a samurai version of Faust: An accountant, sentenced to death because of his lord’s crimes, is visited by a witch who offers him three wishes in exchange for his soul. He wishes for a satisfactory life, a beautiful wife, and a position as a provincial lord. After he is reincarnated, he attains all three, but then the witch arrives to claim his soul. The book will be released on August 29, 2023, as a 208-page paperback with an MSRP of $12.99.
• Shakespeare Manga Theater collects Tezuka’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and a robot version of Romeo and Juliet, into a single volume, which will be released in Q4 2023.
• Tomorrow the Birds is a revenge-of-nature manga in which the birds have become more intelligent than humans and turn on them. This one-shot collects a variety of shorter and longer stories and will be available in Q2 2024.
• Neo Faust is Tezuka’s third adaptation of Goethe’s classic story of a man who sells his soul to the devil. It was one of Tezuka’s last manga, and he was still working on it during his final illness. It will be published in Q4 2024.

Click Gallery below for covers!