Horo fans are aghast at the decision of the English publishers of sagacious wolf light novel series Spice and Wolf to dump the titular spicy wolf Horo completely in an effort to appeal to “fantasy audiences,” who presumably cannot be expected to buy anything without a scantily clad lady or dragon on the cover.
Yen Press lengthily excuses their decision to dump the charming cover illustrations which formed the basis for a series of light novels, anime, games and manga, saying there is no way real Americans will buy books with funny Chinese cartoons on the cover:
What is a light novel, really? It’s a novel. It’s a book with spiffy illustrations.
Sure, there are some distinct challenges when it comes to positioning these books in our market, but ultimately there are a lot more readers of novels out there right now than there are readers of manga and comics.
That’s a huge potential audience, and we really want to help our novels realize that potential. These are great stories, and we’re proud to be introducing them to whole new readership.
Some of the “spiffy illustrations” currently getting in the way of marketing this book to the swords and sex hungry US fantasy market:
They are keen to spin the decision as one made “in the best interests” of Horo fans and light novel aficionados alike:
We think this design really captures Holo’s playful spirit in a way that will appeal to fantasy audiences. At the same time, though, we certainly know that some of the existing SPICE AND WOLF fans out there might have a harder time embracing this new direction.
What we hope, though, is that those fans understand our reasons for making these changes and will turn out to support this property that they know and love and in turn support the success of light novels in general in this market so that one day — hopefully! — we’ll be in a very different place where we can confidently and successfully utilize the original cover art for these books.
What I’d really like to see come to pass is the day where light novels are actually bringing new readers into the manga community!
Possibly not if all the existing fans of the franchise are aghast at the ruination inflicted upon poor Horo by a now almost universally vilified Yen Press.
Yen Press are attempting to appease actual Horo fans, whom they dismiss as “hardcore,” and hawk their own rag in the process, by offering a limited edition dust jacket featuring the original artwork packaged with their magazine, though it is hard to see many being satisfied by this…
Fans can however take scant solace in the fact that even Yen Press is not ready to start stripping out the interior illustrations yet – these will remain intact for now.
It is indeed curious that whilst some companies are desperate to copy Japanese visual styles in order to effectively market their own products, others actually dealing with licensing Japanese works are desperate to downplay the same visual elements, even to the extent of suppressing the art in favour of western styles or 3D CG…
Generic fantasy novel edition Spice & Wolf goes on sale in December.
I have a strong feeling the people who edited the cover don’t even know what the hell the book was about or even cared.
I understand them, but like someone said, they are already in the manga shelf, so what the heck.
PS. It’s good <3
3DPD.
I remember seeing this in the bookstore and thought “f♥♥k this I’m not buying this s♥♥t.”
I can appreciate ‘westernising’ the art in the hopes of drawing in new readers, and if an expanded market would lead to more titles becoming available I’m all for it; the biggest problem I have is that the font looks like it was published in the fucking 70s, vs the subdued, modern style in the original covers. Additionally, it looks like the designer is taking cues from Twilight and I’m pretty sure Spice & Wolf has a different demographic there. And jesus wept, get a better artist. Horo looks mannish there.
It’s fine with me with them changing the cover to attract more readers as long as they don’t mess with the content and they find a more decent cover picture than what Yen Press posted here. I agree the cover is horribly done. Find a good photographer, model, pose, Horo character 3D or 2D. Just change the d*mn current cover!!!
The new cover isn’t great, and yes, the way the shadows falls do make her look buck-toothed, which is pretty bad design, but I can’t really bring myself to care about this. It’s only the cover. It’s not as if they were editing every panel of a manga. As a novel, it’s about the words, not the few pictures that are associated with it.
The Japanese pop aesthetic is trasmitted though images. Using these images is going to keep the product locked into the existing anime/manga fan niche, while dropping only one of them opens it up to fantasy fans who may be repelled by it otherwise. This is a good business decision with a minimal impact on the product itself.