Yen Press unveiled 17 new licenses on Friday, a haul split between 14 manga and three light novels, alongside two audiobook announcements. The publisher’s latest acquisition slate leans heavily on romance, mythology and dark fantasy, and it brings several established creators and social-media hits into English for the first time.
Yen Press has not yet announced release dates, prices or formats for the individual titles. What follows is what the company has confirmed so far.
The headliners
A few of the announcements carry built-in audiences from previous successes:
- Lilies in Love for 101 Days (manga) by Muromaki — the sequel to Lilies Blooming in 100 Days, the yuri series that became a social-media phenomenon. Yen Press describes this entry as a collector’s edition assembling 101 days of full-color yuri scenarios.
- Lord Hades’s Vernal Honeymoon (manga) by Ueji Yuho — a follow-up from the author of Lord Hades’s Ruthless Marriage, continuing Hades and Kore’s married life with a supernatural complication: the realm of Hades freezing over.
- Singularity Love: A Kenji Tsurubuchi Collection (manga) — a short-story collection from the creator of Touge Oni: Primal Gods in Ancient Times, blending romance, time travel and mythology.
- Exchange Parties with Anthropomorphic Figures (manga anthology) — a multi-creator collection edited by the HARTA editorial department, featuring work by Ryōko Kui (Delicious in Dungeon), Suzuka Morino (Servant Beasts) and Hachi Inaba (The Tiger Won’t Eat the Dragon Yet).
- Kafka’s Journey (light novel) by Chizuru Mizushina with illustrations by Haruyuki Morisawa — a girl confined to a sky-island village who escapes using her late grandfather’s old plane.
The rest of the manga slate
Beyond the headline titles, the manga licenses cover a wide tonal range, from romance to horror:
- Desire of the Untouchable Flower by Mai Kaniu — a bodyguard romance set around the heir to a cosmetics empire.
- The Great Yet Flawed Gods by Ei Ohitsuji — Greek mythology as domestic comedy, following Zeus, Hera, Hades and Persephone.
- I Want You to Expose Me by Suzuka Stellagi — a struggling bijin-ga painter finds an unexpected model.
- Monster of Absolute Evil by Gagane — a battle royale in which thirteen murderers, including a disgraced police officer, are revived.
- Summer Love Begins with a Lie -squall- by ROCOCO, with an original story by LYCORIS — a runaway middle schooler taken in by her homeroom teacher.
- Chef in the Demon King’s Castle by YMK — a transmigrated human chef determined to keep her kitchen job.
- The Immortal Girl’s Breeding and Cultivation Travelogue by fujihan, with an original story by Luna Usagi — a mage who has granted herself eternal life.
- The Parasite Princess by Toshiya Higashimoto — a college student whose new roommate begins copying her too closely.
- YATTARA by Ooyamada — a gluttonous monster with an appetite for entire nations.
- Chewed Flesh, Ground Bones by Paregoric — an occult reporter and a psychic cameraman in a story spanning 1999 and 2023.
Rounding out the manga list is Lilies in Love for 101 Days, Lord Hades’s Vernal Honeymoon, Singularity Love and Exchange Parties with Anthropomorphic Figures, all detailed above.
Light novels and audiobooks
The two remaining light novels are Oh Boy, Was I Wrong About Her by Hibariyu with illustrations by siso, a childhood-friends reunion comedy, and The Returned Tyrant Princess Rewrites Her Dark Past by Hiironoame with illustrations by Tetsuhiro Nabeshima, a time-loop revenge story about an imperial princess executed for another man’s crimes.
Separately, Yen Press confirmed audiobook editions for Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai and for Valkyrie Bullet, the light novel written by Yomu Mishima with illustrations by Pinakes. Those extend the publisher’s audio line rather than adding to the print catalogue.
Why it matters
This is a broad slate rather than a single tentpole pickup, and that spread is the point. Yen Press is a subsidiary of Kadokawa World Entertainment, so its licensing announcements serve as one of the clearest signals of what the English-language manga market is being asked to absorb next season.
Two patterns stand out. First, sequels and companion volumes to proven hits — Lilies in Love for 101 Days and Lord Hades’s Vernal Honeymoon — let the publisher build on titles readers already know, which is a lower-risk bet than launching entirely new series. Second, the anthology and collection entries put well-known names such as Ryōko Kui and Kenji Tsurubuchi in front of English readers in new formats, which tends to drive discovery across a creator’s other work.
The heavier presence of yuri, romance and myth-inspired titles also reflects where digital and bookstore demand has been strongest in recent years. None of the 17 titles has a release date yet, so readers looking to pre-order will need to wait for the individual volume announcements that usually follow a slate like this one.
It arrives in a crowded stretch for English manga licensing. Yen Press’s announcement landed the same week that news broke of My Tiny Senpai’s ending with its 14th volume and the launch of the new creator-driven series Boat Girl, showing how quickly the pipeline of new Japanese titles reaching English readers keeps refilling.
Source: Anime News Network, citing a Yen Press press release
Featured image: Cover art for Kafka’s Journey, one of the newly licensed light novels, via Yen Press.
