BookWalker‘s International Webstore announced today that all of their English digital manga volumes from Kodansha Comics will no longer have region-blocking. This includes the digital edition of Nekogahara: Stray Cat Samurai volume 1, for all regions except Japan. Previously, the volume was only accessible in Australia, Canada, France, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, & the United States of America.
The pricing of the manga is based off the Japanese yen. As such, the manga can be purchased online right now for $9.04USD (which was down from $9.59 at launch). Unless there is some changes in the future, it is reasonable to expect all future volumes of Nekogahara will be available in English digitally worldwide. Volume 2 of the manga is planned for it’s English release on January 10th, 2017.
In slightly related other BookWalker news, they have also announced on Twitter that they are currently working on supporting “simulpub” releases of individual chapters. This would be individual manga chapters that would be released in English the same day they are printed in Japanese. Kodansha Comics does currently publish some titles in this format (such as Attack on Titan, Space Brothers, and As The God’s Will Second Series). Nekogahara currently is not one of these titles, but it may be possible if Kodansha receives enough demand.
