Glacier Bay Books announced five new manga licenses on Sunday. The indie publisher, which focuses on alternative and indie Japanese comics, will put out Oedo-chan of Moguraya, A Vase of Life, Faraway Blue, All I Can Do, and The Dovecote Express. Pre-orders for all five open next week on Kickstarter.
Here are the licenses, with the details the publisher shared.
Oedo-chan of Moguraya, by Serata Naminami, is about a stray cat who works at a shop called Moguraya alongside a mole named Captain. Glacier Bay describes it as a heartwarming errand-running manga set in a fable-like old Edo, with a tragic backstory for Oedo-chan underneath the sweetness. This edition includes a bonus story.
A Vase of Life, by Aoi Mukoubi, gathers early science fiction work. Mukoubi is the author of TO THE SEA, which Glacier Bay has already published. The publisher calls this one a beautiful and disturbing selection of fragmented moments at the very end of the line.
Faraway Blue, by Akino Kogomi, is described as two poetic and ephemeral stories about love and what comes after. It is a debut collection from a new illustrator and comic artist.
All I Can Do, by Aoi Ikebe, is a study of what it means to be human, written with an eye on a world that is rushing to remove what is human in it.
The Dovecote Express, by Ikuko Hatoyama, follows a young boy on a strange train. Glacier Bay describes it as a romantic vision of the voyage of the souls of wartime carrier pigeons.
The Kickstarter also includes two titles from other publishers: Codomopaper’s Juji and Aichi and Courtney Loberg’s We Don’t Go Through the Angelgrass.
Star Fruit Books reprints continue
Glacier Bay is still releasing reprints from Star Fruit Books, the publisher it absorbed last year. Those include Hideshi Hino’s Occult Detective Club / Graveyard of the Death Dolls and his Panorama of Hell manga, 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, Takayama’s TATARISM, and Minami Q-ta’s Not All Girls Are Stupid.
The company is also releasing Ding Pao-Yen’s Future Unfolding.
Why this matters for English readers
Glacier Bay has built its catalogue around work that larger publishers pass on, and this batch keeps to that. Indie manga and reprints of cult horror are the kind of titles that rarely get English editions, and when they do, the print runs are short. The Kickstarter route means the books exist only if enough people order them, which is how much of this scene operates now. It puts the label in the same corner as other licensing outfits, from Glacier Bay’s own catalogue on the Sweet Shop platform to Viz Media’s recent pickup of The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom.
The Star Fruit Books reprints are the more notable part of the announcement. Star Fruit’s founder, Matt Haasch, died in September 2025, and Glacier Bay took over the publisher’s line and inventory in February. Carrying those titles forward keeps a set of out-of-print and hard-to-find manga available, which would not have happened if the catalogue had simply gone quiet.
Source: Glacier Bay Books’ Bluesky account, via Anime News Network
Featured image: Oedo-chan of Moguraya cover art, via Glacier Bay Books / Anime News Network.
