is a Japanese

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

series written and illustrated by Kazuhiro Fujita and published by

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of comics, magazines, light novels, dictionaries, literature, non-fiction, home media, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but ...

. The first collection, ''Yoru no Uta'', contains five stories and was released in July 1995. The second collection, ''Akatsuki no Uta'', contains four stories and was released in February 2004. An

original video animation , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and special episodes of a series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the ...

(OVA) adaptation of the story "Puppet Princess", from ''Yoru no Uta'', was produced by

TMS Entertainment , formerly known as the is a Japanese animation studio owned by Sega Corporation. TMS is one of the oldest and most renowned animation studios in Japan, known for its numerous anime franchises such as '' Detective Conan'', '' Lupin the Third ...

and released in March 2000. It has been licensed in North America by

Media Blasters Media Blasters, sometimes abbreviated as MB, is an American entertainment company that was founded by John Sirabella in 1997 and is based in New York City. It is in the business of licensing, translating, and releasing to the North American mar ...

Publication

The first collected volume, , includes five stories that were published in

's ''

Weekly Shōnen Sunday is a weekly manga magazine published in Japan by Shogakukan since March 1959. Contrary to its title, ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' issues are released on Wednesdays. ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' has sold over 1.8billion copies since 1986, making it ...

'' and '' Shōnen Sunday Zōkan'' between 1988 and 1994. The volume was released on July 18, 1995. The second collected volume, , includes four stories that were published in Shogakukan's ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' and '' Weekly Young Sunday'' between 1996 and 2003. It was released on February 18, 2004. Shogakukan re-released the volumes in a edition on April 15 and May 13, 2006.

''Yoru no Uta''

''Akatsuki no Uta''

''Puppet Princess''

, a story included in the ''Yoru no Uta'' collection, was adapted into a 42-minute

(OVA) produced by

and released on March 24, 2000, on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

. A

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

version was released as a bonus disc for the artbook on July 17, 2009. In December 2000,

announced that it had licensed the OVA in North America, and it was released on VHS and DVD on September 25, 2001. In August 2020, Media Blasters announced that the OVA would be released on

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on February 23, 2021.

References

External links