AnimeOnDVD talks with Michael Gombos, Dark Horse’s director of Asian licensing, about the company’s recent manga and manhwa acquisitions, including the much-anticipated Gantz:

AoD: GANTZ has long been desired but considered an incredibly hard title to sell even with a strong anime tie-in. Fears of censoring are large as well as the potential for low sales if the title is shrinkwrapped or stores avoid it. As the series features both sex and violence, and we’ve seen that violence is okay but sex isn’t when it comes to what can be sold, are there additional hurdles for GANTZ to achieve release here?

MG: First off, GANTZ will not be censored; if you have read Berserk or MPD-PSYCHO, or any other title that has been picked up in the last five years, I am sure that you will realize this is our policy. MPD-PSYCHO also features a cavalcade of both sex and violence (and often both at the same time—mutilated nude corpses, etc.), and I personally think that GANTZ isn’t as rough as MPD-PSYCHO by a longshot.

I’d be interested to hear where you heard it would be a hard sell from. Given that the anime was a huge success, I think that GANTZ could be easily likened to Berserk.

The “hard sell” part may have come from here.

(Via ComiPress)

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