I just found out today that Tokyopop acquired the rights to one of my favorite shoujo manga, Kirara Princess. I usually describe it as 'Kingdom Hearts for Girls'.

It's an absolutely fun and fascinating manga; there are few shoujo manga that I read in Nakayoshi these days, but Kirara was always one of my favorites. I've done some translation work for a fancommunity I run for Kirara, and naturally, I'm a little concerned about the quality of Tokyopop's translations. To be honest with you, the last Tokyopop-translated manga I read was Angelic Layer, and I was so disappointed in that translation that I just stopped purchasing English-translated manga altogether, and settled for reading the original Japanese tankouban (which not only helped me to learn various different  Japanese dialects, but was typically also about half the price of its American counterpart).

Tokyopop's preview of Kirara does not offer much, and as a result, there's little that I'm disappointed with thusfar. So far, Erika has been changed to Erica, and Kirara to Kilala--and while I prefer the latter to the former, so far, I have not had any major squicks with the translation or the Americanization of the series--but we'll see once I have volume one in my hands!

I am wondering, though, why Tokyopop decided to do a preview of the end of the first chapter rather than the beginning; I suppose they just wanted to show the Disney princesses as soon as possible. After all, that was Kirara's massive selling point in Japan.

To the staff working on Kirara Princess--good luck! I hope I won't be disappointed.