HOLY CRAP! A new volume of “Eden” is coming out in March!
Yeah, I couldn’t believe it when I read Dark Horse’s solicitations either. Thirty months after the last volume shipped, the company has announced that vol. 14 of “Eden: It’s an Endless World!” will be arriving next March. I had pretty much given up hope of ever seeing this volume. In fact, this was the first month I went through their solicitations not actively expecting to see it. Now that the new volume is on the horizon, it’s up to everyone who’s interested to pre-order their copy now and spread the word about it in the next five months. So while I don’t try to explicitly push a recommendation on everyone, I’m making an exception here: BUY. THIS. BOOK. It’s the best science-fiction manga in recent memory and now, thankfully, still be best one being currently published.
In the meantime, some things to consider:
Way back in 2011, before the release of vol. 13, I had the chance to ask Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson at Comic-Con about whether or not they had definite plans to release the rest of the series or if that would be contingent on how this volume sold. He affirmed the latter, which is what I’ve heard the company line to be on their manga releases over the years to be. So what does this mean? On one hand it indicates that “Eden’s” sales haven’t really gotten any better in the years since the last volume since we’re getting vol. 14 six months later than the original wait between vols. 12 & 13. It’s clear that there’s some kind of threshold here that dictates the release of a volume and someone at the company is keeping an eye on it. I’d certainly love to know what that threshold is. In fact, being aware of how many copies of vol. 14 need to be sold for us to get the next one could be a useful tool in motivating the (very small) fanbase for this series to keep buying it and generate word-of-mouth about the series.
That being said, it would also be nice to see Dark Horse get out and do some advertising for this next volume. This isn’t something I harped on back when I was trying to hype vol. 13, but if you’re releasing the next volume in a sales-challenged series after a two-year hiatus with little-to-no promotion, well… It’s not likely that’ll change the title’s fate. I may not have been looking in the right places, but I didn’t see ANY indication that Dark Horse advertised the presence of vol. 13 beyond its solicitation in Previews. I can only hope that after the 30-month wait has shown them that if they want to continue publishing this title, some kind of advertising — if only to make sure that everyone who bought the previous volume knows that a new one is coming out — is necessary.
The publication of vol. 14 will also leave us with four volumes left to be published in the series. Now, that’s a nice even number and the perfect amount for them to be published in two two-in-one editions to wrap things up. It’s not unusual for a publisher to do something like that, we saw it with the entirety of “Tenjo Tenge” and another sales-challenged series, “Twin Spica,” did that for the last five volumes in its run. Of course, the people at Vertical who published “Spica” also admitted that they were doing it at a loss and that the title only saw completion through the dedication of its staff. I’d love to see Dark Horse show that kind of dedication with “Eden,” but I imagine they’ve got a much more rigid corporate structure that wouldn’t allow for this kind of thing.
Still, one can hope. The fact that this volume will also arrive at around the same time as Sakura-Con, where the company regularly announces new licenses, would also appear to give them a decent platform and timeframe to hype its release. I’ve got no plans to go to the con, but I’d love to see a con report that talks about how someone asked about their future plans for the title (or even brought up any of the things I’ve mentioned here). Yes, the odds still remain slim for the title seeing completion here, but the fact that vol. 14 is coming tells me that someone at the company is clearly trying. I don’t want that effort to be in vain. I’ll be pre-ordering my copy when Amazon has a listing for it. If you want to have any hope of reading the last four volumes then you should too.