Thursday, October 30, 2025

Discover Wandering Cat's Cage from Takumigraphics

 

 

Fantagraphics brings you quality comics and graphic novels. But did you realize that they also public great manga titles? To mark their 15th anniversary of publishing manga, and ahead of the company's 60th birthday, Fantagraphics is introducing a new imprint. Plus, they want to highlight some forthcoming titles. 

Here's all the info concerning their future with manga:

 

Ever since Fantagraphics was founded in 1976, we’ve sought out graphic works that are imaginative, daring, and aesthetically compelling. For the first 30 years, our focus was primarily on English language cartoonists, with forays into definitive translations of exceptional European and South American works. 2010 marked our first serious entry into literary manga with the publication of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by the pioneering shojo manga creator Moto Hagio. Since then, we have continued to publish groundbreaking manga by Atsushi Kaneko, Kago, Inio Asano, Susumu Higa, Gengoroh Tagame and others. Fantagraphics has continued to broaden the scope of our publishing throughout the 21st century, living up to our brash claim made decades ago — publishers of the world’s greatest cartoonists.


As part of our 50th Anniversary in 2026, we are proud to announce an imprint devoted exclusively to East Asian comics (encompassing comics, manga, manhwa and more from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and other countries): Takumigraphics.


We chose Takumi from the Japanese because it’s double-bottomed meaning encapsulates the imprint’s editorial goals: it refers to “excellence,” skillfulness,” “adroitness,” “ingeniousness” — as well as a person who embodies those qualities. It’s a term we feel exemplifies the aesthetic caliber of the books that will comprise this imprint — works of mastery and vision.


While the initial focus of Takumigraphics will be on Japanese comics, future titles will include comics by authors from Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, and other Asian countries. While this represents a wide range of nuanced cultures and backgrounds, comics from these countries often share an aesthetic and visual language that we believe readers will recognize and appreciate. We couldn't be more excited about this new chapter at Fantagraphics!

 

Now, here's all the info about their upcoming title, Wandering Cat's Cage:

 


Akane Torakai, Deb Aoki, Andrew Woodrow Butcher, Christopher Butcher, Translator: Jocelyne Allen 

On sale date: May 26, 2026

An elegiac manga about gender, community, family, control, class, love, and what makes life worth living at the end of the world.

In Akane Torikai’s Wandering Cat’s Cage, it is the near future. Only a few women are still able to menstruate, and even fewer men will be born to them. Reproduction is limited to medical intervention controlled from on high, and the structures and lives of the past hold no weight: they are only hinted at through the remaining scraps of a world that no longer exists. Life can be good, though, if you fall in line, and the women of The City live bright, happy, tightly controlled lives. But complete obedience isn’t for everyone. For the women across the river, who live in a rundown shantytown, viewing the opulence of the city from afar each night, life is different. It is humble, and often dangerous, but it is free. It is here that Sanada, a young acupuncturist, lives with the mysterious Reiho, the only male she’s ever met, and who sells himself to the rich women who sneak across the river for something they’ve never experienced …The two form a small “family,” taking in other young women ousted from the city. But a real, living, breathing male might be too precious to leave to the shabby streets. When Reiho is kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to the breeding program in the city, Sanada must join with the other outcasts to try and rescue him, and learn the difficult truths of love, self-actualization, society, community, safety, and the future itself.

Master manga-ka Akane Torikai (Sensei’s Pious Lie) has produced a stunning work of relational SF through a gender-bent looking glass. Torikai pulls no punches examining the deeply messy subjects of our day — sexuality, gender dynamics, romantic love, familial trauma, freedom, and control, through immaculately realized settings and character-rich, emotive body language.

 

Here's a look inside:

 


 

 

Thanks to Takumigraphics for sharing this announcement and advance preview with us.

 


 



 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment