Anime Expo 2014

Vertical

After a democratic vote, Vertical Inc. marketing director Ed Chavez decided to jump straight to the company's newest announcement, so that the rest of the time could be spent talking about the acquisition and production process.

Scheduled for Summer 2015 is Dream Fossil – The Complete Satoshi Kon, a 440-page trade paperback that collects the 15 short manga stories of the late visionary director Satoshi Kon. The book will include some of the projects that Kon did in his later teenage years, as well as some of the work that helped launch him into the film business. Featured works including his early "Toriko" manga (no relation to Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro's manga of the same name), which won the Tetsuya Chiba Award for new artists, but was never published in a magazine, as well as a follow-up work. The compendium will also include his color comic, "Picnic," which will be reproduced in full color. The book will retail for $24.95.

After the announcement, Chavez provided an illuminating look at how a manga property makes it to North America and onto store shelves, specifically from Vertical's point of view. He chatted about the various steps along the way, from the early research and development stages, to budgeting, to bidding, to contracting, to production, to scheduling.