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Digital Manga's Ludwig B Kickstarter Meets Goal

Digital Manga's Kickstarter campaign to localize and publish both volumes of Osamu Tezuka's Ludwig B manga met its goal on Friday with about four hours to go. The campaign had to raise US$21,600 to meet its goal, and as of press time the campaign has raised US$21,643.

Digital Manga describes the series as:

Born a musical genius, Ludwig van Beethoven struggles with his passion like all artists. On top of being used and abused by aristocrats and dealing with his pushy, alcoholic father, young Beethoven must also deal with ear damage caused by a blow from Franz Creutzstein's cane. When Ludwig is charged with taking care of his two younger brothers during a tumultuous French war, all he can do is express his conflicted thoughts through music.

The manga was published after Tezuka's death and was never finished.

Digital Manga's previous Kickstarter campaign to publish Osamu Tezuka's 13-volume The Three-eyed One and seven-volume Rainbow Parakeet manga failed to meet its US$380,000 goal last week. Digital Manga president Hikaru Sasahara said that he originally wanted to use Kickstarter to fund 50-70 books a year, but has switched to a goal of 20-30 volumes in order to lower the cost of publishing including licensing fees, advanced royalties, labor, and other expenses. He added that he'd like to launch a new campaign for one to five books almost every month, with a week or two in between each campaign.

Digital Manga successfully funded a print edition of Tezuka's Captain Ken manga in June. Digital Manga also used Kickstarter to raise funds to reprint Tezuka's Barbara and Swallowing the Earth manga. The English release of Barbara was nominated for an Eisner last year.