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Starting this May, Vertical, Inc, a New York City-based boutique publisher of all things Japanese from hard-boiled crime to DIY crafts and cookbooks, will publish Kou Yaginuma's 16 volume manga series, Twin Spica. A science fiction story, Twin Spica is about 14 year old Asumi Kamogawa who applies for a spot at the exclusive Tokyo Space School.

"It's charming," Vertical's marketing director, Ed Chavez, said of Twin Spica. "It's got a good narrative, interesting and engaging characters, and it's sci-fi but not heavy in that regard. You can get into it without getting intimidated by it." Each volume of Twin Spica will retail at $10.95 and will be released on a bimonthly schedule.

Twin Spica takes place in 2024, fourteen years after Japan's first manned rocket launch, the Lion, fails and crashes into the small seaside town of Yuigahama. The crash killed many of the town's residents, including Asumi's mother. Spica was originally serialized back in 2001 in the manga anthology magazine Comic Flapper, from Japanese publisher Media Works, where mangaka Yaginuma was voted Best New Artist for that year. The storytelling is understated and matter-of-fact with a natural tension built into the narrative, not fabricated by screentones or frames. " It's nothing like what you would see in a Shonen Jump magazine," Chavez says. The series ended and the final volume was published in Japan in 2009.

While Yaginuma knew little about space training, as the series progressed and gained popularity, he did extensive research. As a result, Twin Spica was endorsed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) who also co-produced an animated adaptation for television with Japan's PBS equivalent, the NHK. The series was also adapted into a live-action television drama.

Chavez says that he first learned of the manga three or four years ago, and while he didn't find the narrative intimidating, the series's length was another matter. "A long series is a bit of a risk." Chavez says. "Even with a major hit like Naruto, sales will drop with every new volume released. If you're already selling a few hundred thousand units, you can take such a risk. For us, the scale is much smaller. Once sales drop off 30% or so from volume one to volume two, that's a big drop. And they'll drop another 10-15% with the next volume." Chavez says that with their series, Buddha, sales dropped by 40% between the releases of the first and second volumes. "It's a little scary when you see those numbers tail off."

To build interest in Twin Spica, Vertical has been delivering galleys to a number of media outlets, including the aerospace and space tourism industries. The publisher is also preparing a curriculum and lesson plans for librarians and teachers given the book's detail of space training and its education positive traits.

Overall, Chavez is excited for the series which he sees as more gender neutral than the publishers past manga releases. "It's one long continuous story. There's something for everyone in there," he says.

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