English publisher Vertical Volumes 1 | ||
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Original run June 2007 – October 2009 Publishers Vertical (NA), Ohta Publishing | ||
Velveteen & Mandala, known in Japan as Becchin & Mandara (Japanese: べっちんとまんだら, Hepburn: Becchin to Mandara), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Jiro Matsumoto.
Contents
Plot
Velveteen & Mandala takes place in a dystopian Tokyo that is in the midst of a war. The story focuses on the high school students Velveteen (べっちん, Bechhin),who lives in a battle tank on a riverbed in Tokyo's Suginami ward, and Mandala (まんだら, Mandara). After a large air raid, zombies start to fall from the sky. and the girls get involved in exterminating the zombies in the dry river bed area. Although they have to fight the zombies, most of conflict is between them as they are both deeply disturbed, and both are harboring dark secrets that even they don't know.
Release
A seinen manga, Velveteen & Mandala first appeared as a serial from June 2007 and October 2009 in Ohta Publishing's Manga Erotics F magazine. The 14 chapters of the series were compiled into a single tankōbon released by Ohta Publishing on November 26, 2009. In the following year, at the Anime Weekend Atlanta, Vertical announced that it had licensed the manga for an English-language translation in North America. Vertical's representative Ioannis Mentzas said the series was chosen among other Matsumoto's title on the basis that it had not been scanlated. Vertical released the manga on August 30, 2011.
