Twelve Kingdoms

This is not a drill folks, Manga and Light Novel publisher Seven Seas has announced as of yesterday, via their homepage and Twitter account just yesterday that they have picked up and intend to publish a new translation of Twelve Kingdoms!

Links:
Seven Seas Announcement on their website’s news corner: LINK
Seven Seas Cross announcement on their official Twitter account: LINK
Retweet/Commentary by someone claiming to be the translator*: LINK


*As of now, it does not appear that Eugene is officially involved whatsoever with this new, licensed translation/North American publication, nor has he made any blog posts on the news himself. Personally, I’m really curious to hear his thoughts considering how long he has worked on this series as a passion project to bring it largely, all on his own, to dedicated fans across the globe reading in English! Also I cannot verify the identity of the translator as I do not have a Twitter account nor could I find any credits or staff listing for who was working on the Seven Seas edition (In my defense I was away from my phone and devices all day and came back to approximately 20+ people, their moms dogs and complete strangers who basically meme me as “the obnoxious 12k guy” in large servers unrelated to this media whatsoever, screaming at me about the news, entirley because they know I’d lose my mind, which I did! lol, so the search for more info continues!)

First off, this is HUGE for a lot of us who’d long given up hope on ever seeing this series catch the eyes of a modern market or publisher! We won y’all! We did iiiiit!

Pre-orders for the first volume, which is slated for July of 2025 (currently) do not yet appear to be available at this time through usual retailers and online outlets.

in the mean time! What do we all think about this news? I’m incredibly stoked and feeling all kinds of emotions about it, similar to when Shirogane was released way back in 2019! 

Hello DW 12K community, for those of you who have relied on Eugene Woodbury's website these some twenty or so odd years since it first went online with his translation project of the first novel in the series proper Shadow of the Moon, he has officially decided to let his website lapse and to retire the site. The url www.eugenewoodbury.com will now (for the foreseeable future) redirect exclusively to his blog hosted at blogspot where his translations, notes and other articles relating to Twelve Kingdoms, Japanese Culture, Translation and Media still remain.

With his blessing (Comments in this post) I've taken it upon myself to scrape and re-host his original website with the addition of a modified index page he created shortly before its lapse (and I myself will eventually add a splash page to explain that the site is a mirror/static archive for historical/education purposes only) on my own domain where I host my personal site among other things. (Please note the nature of my website is Adult Oriented/NSFW)

I'm hoping to invest in a sub-domain name to host an ongoing web project dedicated to collecting and archiving 12K fannish creations, websites and information curated by the English speaking fandom over the past 30 years of this series' run, including this archive. I'll post here in the event the url for this mirror changes and will add a redirection page to help people maintain their bookmarks!

For now, Eugene's Website can be found archived as a static mirror,. fully accessible from now until the ends of time (or my untimely death and consequent inability to pay my domain reg and site hosts lol) here on my website at this link: http://www.trsatsuki.net/hosted/Eugene_Woodbury/index2.html

Many people have expressed interest in seeing this website archived and kept "live" for a little while longer, myself included, for its nostalgia, its place in the history of this fandom, and its easy accessibility. It is worth noting however that Eugene himself considers these versions to be the least up-to-date and considers his google doc formats to be akin to "living" documents, and so his (still accessible!) downloads, still linked on this mirror, are to be considered the most accurate and recommended reading experience of his translations!

I'm endeavoring in the future to make similar plans to back up and archive Mina and Aili's translations of Taiki's first two books from Worlds in Translation, the two books Eugene himself has notably not undertaken. Any help in contacting the translators for Shore of the Maze and Demon Child for formal permission to archive their work for future fans would be greatly appreciated!

For a fun little community survey, I'd be curious to know:

What is your history with Eugene's website or translations? How did you stumble upon them? Do you prefer his or other fan's efforts to bring this series to English speaking and/or reading audiences?

~ Lukadian
 

Hey there! Decided I should probably make a little introduction: My name is Lukadian and I suppose I’m a new mod here, so I’ll be helping out here in keeping this comm running on DW for those who’ve retired from the fandom, this platform or who are otherwise are a little too busy to keep up with things here. I’m honored and thankful for this invitation to assist and do any needed housekeeping!

Twelve Kingdoms  has been one of my most enduring fandoms and I’ve been in love with it ever since I discovered it some time in… apparently 2011 after I did some digging for a different post I’m still  noodling up about how I came to discover Fuyumi Ono’s novels and eventually the anime which was my true entry point for the books. My kicks of obsession for it come and go but it’s never quite left me and while I’m of the mind to pursue fannish activities amidst re-reading the series in anticipation of properly catching up with Eugene Woodbury’s translations of the 2019 books, I’d love to post more here and see what, if anything, the community here would like to see moving forward!

I love organizing events and traditional zines and have the ability to manage and print small projects, I enjoy encouraging others and giving spotlights to creatives and have entertained the idea of finding and showcasing various talented people’s work like fan artist and fic writers, and I have a deep and abiding love for all things meta, commentary, analysis and archival! A goal of mine is to bind some of the available fan translations into books for my personal library, and perhaps, to share the typesettings with the fandom at large to bind their own copies. (Or maybe we could organize and harass some publishers to try to take another whack at bringing this series to western audiences!) If there’s any interest in seeing a fan week or zine or other such event here, feel free to reach out to me, my PMs are always open! 

Lastly, I recently came into possession of the White Heart postcard set featuring the original/classic Kodansha book covers and illustrations by Akihiro Yamada! Since I have both his art books already featuring this artwork, I’d absolutely love to gift and trade these postcards with fannish friends and folk who might enjoy them! This set includes roughly, all colored cover illustrations, several interior scene illustrations and a few more promotional pictures used in a few of the early 2000’s calendars! If you’d like to be sent one of these post cards at random or would like to request a favorite character and a little note, please comment and I can PM you to arrange sending you one! PO Boxes perfectly acceptable (I’ll be using my own if a return address is needed), can’t be too careful with personal information in this day and age, but I thought it would be nice to offer these little treasures out!

PS. Per my initial suggestion, I’ve been given the go ahead to give members of this comm the ability to broadly create and use new tags for their posts moving forward, I’ve added a few as well for tagging posts containing fanart, fanfic and cosplay among other things!