Something New is Something Old...

New (Old) Work of Yoshihiro Togashi Being Published!

It has been a little over 5 months since we last heard anything from Yoshihiro Togashi or his people regarding another return for Hunter x Hunter - we wish we had better news for you all! We can tell you that Viz has released one of the new volumes which was published last year in March (Vol. 25), and Volume 26 is due out in January of 2010. So, provided that Yoshihiro doesn't release anything between now and then (which at this point would not surprise any of us), the North American release of HxH has more or less caught up to their Japanese counterparts.

Yesterday, Shueisha announced that one of Yoshihiro Togashi's older works,Level E is going to be released as part of their Shonen Jump Remix comics at bargain prices and distributed at convenience stores. This series has not been licensed in English as of this writing. Level E was published in three volumes from 1995-1997, right between the end of Yu Yu Hakusho and the beginning of Hunter x Hunter. It's a sci-fi story about extra-terrestrials drawing a human into their strange intrigues. Earthlings are the last to know that there have been aliens populating their planet. One such alien, Ouji, crash lands on Earth on his way from the planet Dogra, and he loses his memory. He soon moves in with Tsutsui Yukitata, a first year High School student who is also living on his own. Tsutsui's life is turned upside down when he becomes the object of Ouji's torment. We couldn't find much else about this (save for some scanlations which we'll hint do exist!). However, it is the opinion of one fan that his art style was more realistic than his other works, and that it was a little grim. So far, we only have two release dates. #1 was released on May 18th, and #2 will be out on June 1st.

And another good piece of Yoshihiro Togashi news? Yu Yu Hakusho is coming to Blu-Ray in Japan , with the first of three volumes set to be released in October. Many news outlets are predicting it will be a hot seller!

Now, if only we could hear something good about Hunter x Hunter...