By Indie manga publisher Glacier Bay Books announced a fresh wave of licenses on Sunday, headlined by Oedo-chan of Moguraya, A Vase of Life, and Faraway Blue — plus a pair of additional titles and a full slate of continuing reprints from the absorbed Star Fruit Books line.
Oedo-chan (Credits: Glacier Bay Books)
New Licenses: Edo Fables, Sci-Fi Fragments, Ephemeral Love
The most charming of the bunch may be Oedo-chan of Moguraya by Serata Naminami, a heartwarming errand-running manga set in old Edo. Oedo-chan works at the Moguraya shop alongside Captain — who happens to be a mole — while Oedo-chan herself is a stray cat. Beneath the fable-like warmth lies a tragic backstory for its hardworking heroine, in a story about the many lives crossing paths in a big, cruel, mysterious world.
A Vase of Life by Aoi Mukoubi, the creator of TO THE SEA, collects the author’s early science-fiction-flavored work — described as a beautiful and disturbing selection of shimmering, fragmented moments at the very end of the line.
Faraway Blue by Akino Kogomi is a debut collection gathering two poetic, ephemeral stories about love and what comes after it, from a new illustrator and comic artist to watch.
Two more titles round out the announcement: All I Can Do by Aoi Ikebe, a tender examination of what it means to be human in a world rushing to strip humanity away, and The Dovecote Express by Ikuko Hatoyama, the strange, luminous journey of a young boy aboard a mysterious train — framed as a romantic vision of the voyage of the souls of wartime carrier pigeons.
Kickstarter Pre-orders and Star Fruit Reprints
Pre-orders for the new titles — along with Codomopaper’s Juji and Aichi and Courtney Loberg’s We Don’t Go Through the Angelgrass — open next week on Kickstarter. The company is also releasing Ding Pao-Yen’s Future Unfolding.
Glacier Bay is meanwhile carrying forward the Star Fruit Books catalog, with reprint releases including Hideshi Hino’s Occult Detective Club / Graveyard of the Death Dolls and his Panorama of Hell, Yōichi Abe’s PRISM short-story collection, Noroi Michiru’s The Horrors of Noroi Michiru Part 2, Sachiko Asuka’s The Phantom Thief Baron Bat, Taro Kanafuro’s Suburban Hell, Yamazaki’s Let’s Meet in the Next Life, Tatari Takayama’s TATARISM, and Minami Q-ta’s Not All Girls Are Stupid.
The Star Fruit line moved to Glacier Bay in February, following the death of Star Fruit Books founder Matt Haasch in September 2025. Glacier Bay previously confirmed it has received most of Star Fruit’s inventory, keeping those acclaimed horror and indie titles in print.
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Source: Anime News Network — read the full story there.
