It is a sad day in Xanadu.  Having only just discovered the over-the-top manli-goodness that is Sengoku Barasra, aka Basara Devil Kings, the anime, I had to search to see if there was a manga for it.  And, joy of joys, there was!  It was licensed too!  Udon Entertainment, the purveyor of Video Game and Capcom comics has licensed it.  At least, that’s what everyone thought.

I thought it was odd at first, that a google search for the manga didn’t land an Amazon hit in the first 10 links.  A search of Amazon did reveal the book , but as unavailable, but with a shipping date of September of 2008.  A search of other sites gave another date of April 2008, or available for pre-order.  Not even the Udon site had a listing.  This confused me, so, since a web search wasn’t doing me any good, I went to the next best place for manga knowledge; Twitter.

A query there didn’t get me any answers, but it did get a response from Udon that they would find out.  A few days later, I got a response from Stacy King, Marketing Manager for Udon.  Here’s what she told me:

UDON hasn’t published or even translated any of this manga; although the contract was announced while it was in talks, things fell through with the final negotiations.

Stacy wasn’t sure why negotiations fell though, or if Basara Devil Kings will come up again in the next round of negotiations, but they are keeping it in mind when they look at possible licenses later in the year.

So that is the sad tale of the Basara Devil Kings manga as of this moment. I do hope it does get licensed eventually.  It’s only three volumes long, and even though the manga doesn’t appear to be as outrageous as the anime, the characters and story are still interesting enough for me to want to check out.  And who knows, may be later on in the manga I’ll get to see Takeda Shingen ride up a vertical castle wall standing on two horses while holding his battle axe in front of him.