I'm a day late sharing this anniversary news with you, but I only clocked it on Twitter this morning, when I saw this tweet from Weekly Shougakukan Edition @Wsstalkback which they posted yesterday:

"On this day in 2006 Takahiro Arai started his first serial in WSS --an adaption of "The Saga of Darren Shan." Arai won a contest to be the illustrator of this manga that ran from August 23, 2006 to February 18, 2009 and now will see an English re-release by Yen Press in 2021."

Wow -- hard to believe it's been 14 years since the manga began! I remember very vividly when my Japanese publishers asked me to choose my favourite from the five or six shortlisted artists. Each of those had been asked to roughly illustrate the first chapter or two of the manga, showing how they would adapt the story from the books if chosen to be the series artist. I was like a kid in a candy store as I read through them!

There were no words (or if there were, they were in Japanese), so I had to base my decision purely on the visuals and how the story flowed. All of the artists were incredibly talented, and some had a lot more experience than Takahiro Arai and their work was much more polished. But his storytelling ability shone through -- there was a pace and life to his work that for me placed it quite a long way ahead of the others, even though it was clear that this was a young artist with a lot still to learn. I told my Japanese publishers that although I would support whoever they chose, Takahiro Arai was my first choice to adapt the books. Luckily they saw it the same way (or perhaps were swayed by my advocating for him) and went with him, and the rest is freaking beautiful history!!!

All 12 volumes of the manga were released in English in the USA and the UK, and in lots of other languages too, but it's been a long time since they came out and they were never reprinted, so they've become very hard and expensive to track down. As the tweet pointed out, they're finally being reprinted in English, in an omnibus edition, with two volumes per book, starting in January 2021. Hurrah!!!!