December issue coverage

I was a bit surprised to open my mailbox today and have the December issue of Yen Plus fall out, seeing as how the November issue had come only a little over a week earlier. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but… well, if you’re a subscriber too, you know how it goes.

Unfortunately, JuYuon tells us in her letter that, “due to NaRae’s health,” Maximum Ride is on hiatus again this issue. Rats. But without health we have nothing, so please get well soon, NaRae.

(By the way, JuYuon, it’s come to my attention that I’ve misspelled your name as “JuYoun” at various times and places on this site. Sorry. I’ve purged every occurrence I could find and will try harder not to make the mistake in the future. You know, on the off chance you’re reading this and care and stuff.)

But in Max’s place, this issue brings plenty of special secular, gender-neutral, non-racial and entirely politically correct winter holiday presents to tide us over. Raiders finishes its two-issue preview run, and we also get a section of 13th Boy, which, from skimming through it, bears a very strong visual resemblance to Sarasah. And then there’s something else which has caused more than a little fuss for Yen Press recently…

This sheet of paper, attached to the inside of the B-side cover, is intended to be removed and used as an alternative wrap-around cover to a novel being published by Yen Press entitled Spice and Wolf. (This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first novel being published under the Yen Press badge; other books promoted in Yen Plus have been published by one of Yen Press’s various sister brands.) The story is about a traveling merchant in pseudo-historical pseudo-Europe who meets a wolf-girl goddess named Holo. Besides the cover, this issue also contains a pretty beefy sample of the book for your consideration.

(Get it? The title of this post is “December issue cover-age?” Eh? Eh? …Sorry.)

Spice and Wolf is one of a class of Japanese books known as “light novels;” easy-to-read and typically serialized novels targeted at the same young adult audiences most Japanese comics and anime productions are targeted at. Though quite popular in Japan, light novels have traditionally been a hard sell in the US; they just don’t seem to be on the radar of most anime/manga fans over here, or anyone else for that matter. So in order to appeal to a wider audience over here, Yen Press opted not to use a cover similar to the original Japanese one, which looked like the cover in the picture above, and instead created one decidedly less manga-ish. However, realizing that some fans would appreciate having a cover more resembling the original, Yen Press, while revealing the new cover for the book, also announced that this alternative cover would be shipping as a freebie with the December issue.

Well, proving that no good deed goes unpunished, the comment thread for their post was soon flooded by otaku furious at Yen Press for having the temerity to do what they thought was best to maximize the profits from their own products and attempting to make it fiscally feasible for them to continue to publish light novels in the future. With Otaku Entitlement Syndrome in full force, they demanded that Yen Press publish the book with the original cover; demanded that they slather it with the broken English phrase “Merchant Meats Spicy Wolf” as appeared on the Japanese cover and argued the misspelling was intentional (notably, the segment in this issue is subtitled “Merchant Meets Spicy Wolf”); demanded that Yen Press change the names of characters to match those used by amateur fan translators in their internet-released translations; expressed disgust at the immodesty new cover, which features a naked silhouette of Holo (at least one smart columnist caught on to the irony of such indignation — some NSFW art behind that link, but nothing worse than what you’ve already seen in Yen Plus); and insisted that they were not going to buy the book until Yen Press appeased them.

You can probably guess what I personally think of these people. Yes, even though I imagine I could find many of them among the audience of this site. But I don’t care; if you can’t wrap around your Ramune-addled brain that companies like Yen Press exist primarily to make as much money as possible by selling their product, and that it’s best for not only them but us fans as well if they are able to do so, and that they probably know better how to sell that product than you do, and, most fundamentally, that enjoying Japanese comics, cartoons, and other media is a hobby and not a lifestyle, then please feel free to leave this site and never come back. It’s not like there aren’t dozens of other sites on the internet pandering to people like you.

…Okay, rant over. So did your December issue show up early too?