Viz Licenses “Tonikaku Cawaii: Fly Me to the Moon”

Since I enjoyed Hata-sensei’s Hayate the Combat Butler, sans the weak ending, I decided to give his Tonikaku Cawaii: Fly Me to the Moon series a go in 2018. I never understood why Hata-sensei spelled “Kawaii” with a “C” for the official name of his manga, but whatever. The series is rather enjoyable, so I had hoped it would get licensed. While I got my wish, sadly, it isn’t going to a great company.

Fly Me to the Moon, by Kenjiro Hata, is coming Fall 2020! Prepare to play among the stars when this out-of-this-world love story hits stores! 💫🌙 pic.twitter.com/0HT1IbsoXW

— VIZ (@VIZMedia) February 14, 2020

Story in Brief

The story of Tonikaku Cawaii: Fly Me to the Moon (which Viz is just using the official Japanese English subtitle “Fly Me to the Moon” and apparently dropping the Japanese name completely) centers around a teen boy named Nasa. He is saved from being run over by a mystery teen girl named Tsukasa. Nasa immediately falls for her. Despite his injuries, Nasa asks her out. She agrees to go out with him IF he marries her.

Nasa skips high school to live on his own and do freelance work. All the while, he dreams of seeing Tsukasa again. After he turns 18, Tsukasa shows up at his apartment door. She has her guardian’s written permission to marry Nasa, so that very evening, they register their marriage with the local registrar.

From there, Nasa and Tsukasa begin life as husband and wife. However, there may be more to Tsukasa than meets the eye.

Viz Problem: Release Timing

Considering how Viz’s sales of Hayate the Combat Butler are, it is amazing that they have even licensed Tonikaku Cawaii: Fly Me To The Moon. Since Viz wasn’t getting the sales they wanted from Hayate the Combat Butler, they immediately made changes to insure sales would continue to fall. What did Viz do? They reduced the number of volumes sold a year from four to two. That means that we won’t finish getting Hayate the Combat Butler in English for at least another 10 years! 🤬

Tonikaku Cawaii: Fly Me To The Moon is another weekly series from Hata-sensei. It isn’t nearly as popular in the West as Hayate the Combat Butler was. As of January 2020, nine volumes had been released in Japan. By the time the first American volume of Fly Me to the Moon is released in Fall 2020, Tonikaku Cawaii Volume 13 will be out in Japan. That means we’ll be starting over two years behind the published volumes in Japan, which are doing about five per year.

Considering what Viz did with Hayate the Combat Butler, how can we trust Viz not to do the same to Fly Me to the Moon? The truth is, I full expect that Viz will slow down publishing of the manga within a couple of years ’cause “That’ll improve sales!” 🙄

Viz Problem: Adaptation

On a personal level, Viz has been irritating me of late with their adaptation of Hayate the Combat Butler. They are still using most honorifics, but they’ve backed off on others ’cause “reasons.” But more egregious is the blatant rewriting of text where it is not required.

For example, the original Japanese text might have a character threaten another person by saying something like, “I will burn you with the fires of hell if you don’t stop!” Viz’s adaptation might turn that accurate but readable translation into, “Continuing on this course will lead to you getting a serious ass kicking!” And the excuse for this rewrite would be, “Well, both are a threat, so what does it matter if we are saying the original text or not?”

As such, I don’t trust Viz to do Fly Me to the Moon correctly. I have doubts that they’ll return my Japanese honorifics. (That’s a minimum for me to buy the product.) But even if they do, Viz may localize things to not say what was said in the Japanese. I don’t want that either.

Nevertheless, I’ll keep my eye out on this one.