Full Metal Panic! Sigma Reissue

Earlier this month in a Monday post on our facebook wall we reported about two mysterious Sigma volumes to be released in Japan on December 20, 2012. Well, we figured it out now. Full Metal Panic! Sigma will be reissued in fewer and bigger volumes. Instead of the current 160 pages per volume according to amazon.co.jp the new books will have 288 pages each. Both together could fairly cover the old volume 1-3 and the first few chapters of volume 4.

If that's not enough, the next new Sigma volumes 3-4 will be released on January 19, 2013 and should reach up to volume 7 or maybe even 8. It can be ecpected, that the Full Metal Panic! Sigma reissue will have 10-11 volumes in total. With 2 volumes each month they might even catch up before the release of the final Full Metal Panic! Sigma volume 19. There might actually never be a Sigma volume 19 as it gets consumed by the new volume order.

What's more? We also get the cover arts:

New Full Metal Panic! Sigma Volume 1-2 Cover Arts

Looks familiar? It should. Those are alterations of the original volume 1 and 3 cover art.

If you think it's all about the money, you probably haven't been around for too long. The first Full Metal Panic! Manga also got rereleased back in 2005 as Full Metal Panic! Comic Mission. All of the main story light novels got new cover arts, when the series was closing up in 2010.

One upside of fewer and bigger Sigma volumes would be that they easier find their way to the foreign market. With 160 pages per volume there is not much money to be made, as production and shipping costs stay nearly the same while the content is fairly small, thus people demanding lower prices. We don't know if english western publishers will ever pick up Full Metal Panic! Sigma but we sure hope that this will make it a lot easier for them.


EDIT:
It looks like the reissues of Full Metal Panic! Sigma will be based on the main story light novel content with each volume including all chapters to the respective book. Thus volume 1&2 will cover the chapters of (4&5) Ending Day by Day Part 1&2, while v3 will collect the chapters of (7) Continuing On My Own and v4 those of (8) Burning On Man Force. The other collections should be:

v5 - (9) Come Make My Day
v6 - (10) Approaching Nick Of Time
v7 - (6) Dancing Verry Merry Christmas
v8 - (11) Always Stand By Me - Part 1
v9 - (12) Always Stand By Me - Part 2

Bringing it up to 9 volumes overall.