Has Excel Saga Been Removed From VizManga!?

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https://www.vizmanga.com/excel-saga

...There's nothing there anymore except a banner, and it no longer shows up on the list of available titles. Likewise, nothing appears when you search for it. You can, however, still read volumes you've already purchased.

I have attempted to contact them via Twitter. I would suggest that anyone else with a Twitter account also drop them a line so they can be made aware that the series still has concerned fans!

[LumRanmaYasha]

This is so strange. I don't think a series has ever been taken off of VizManga before, has there? I wonder why they did. The most troubling part of this is that it'll hurt the ability of new fans who have trouble finding the older volumes (especially 5, 7, and 8) to get into the series with ease. 

This development makes me especially glad to finally have physical copies of the series now. Hopefully they'll put it back and this was just a mistake.

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I wanted to own digital copies of every volume as well, just to support the series. (I have all but 27, which I was hoping to pick up soon.) I have a theory as to why it's gone, but I feel that it might not be giving Viz enough credit after they stuck it through all 27 books. I was thinking that perhaps their license expired almost immediately after #27 came out, and they didn't feel like renewing it. This would render them unable to sell Excel Saga digitally or print new copies of it for retail.

But yes, this is a devastating blow for newcomers to the series. It's back to having jerks price-gouge 7 and 8, I suppose.

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Did some investigating: apparently the first English volume came out exactly 10 and a half years ago the Thursday before last. I remember checking earlier this month, and the digital volumes were still available for purchase. I don't know how long licenses last for, but if - for instance - you have to renew them every six months, this could strengthen my theory of it expiring.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Six months renewal time seems a little short, especially since manga publishing contracts typically require licensors to license 3-5 volumes at a time at the least. But the evidence does make your theory certainly possible. It'd be a travesty if that's really what's happening. After sticking with the series all this time, it feels odd that Viz would just let their license expire, especially when they still have other obscure manga on VizManga that couldn't be selling much better.

There goes my hope of omnibus re-releases too. At least the Excel Saga fandom is still better off than Oishinbo or Iron Wok Jan fans (to name a few) and still have most of the manga easy to find and available to buy at affordable prices, but losing cheap access to read volumes 7 & 8 really hurts.

I still hope that this is just a temporary thing and they'll bring it back at some point. After all, they have Firefighter on VizManga, which is not only obscure and (relatively) old, but from what I've heard sold abysmally when it was in print, so if they're willing to release that, then there's still some hope...