Once again we see a new sign of sequential art becoming much more accessible through a digital medium, as Viz has a new digital manga announcement. Volume 8 of the popular manga series, Blue Exorcist, will see it digital release an entire 3 months before the print edition ever hits stores in the United States. Volume 8 is already available for immediate digital download at the low cost of $4.99 through VIZManga.com and the VIZ Manga app for the Apple iOS and all Android-enabled smart phones.  The print form of volume 8 wont be in stores until November 6, 2012.

For those curious, Blue Exorcist is a teen paranormal action/adventure series created by Kazue Kato. It is the tale of a famous exorcist, Rin Okumura, who was raised by Father Fujimoto, never knowing his real father. One day a fateful argument with Father Fujimoto forces Rin to face a terrible truth – the blood of the demon lord Satan runs in Rin’s veins. Rin swears to defeat Satan, but doing that means entering the mysterious True Cross Academy and becoming an exorcist himself. So the story unfolds as Rin attempts to fight the demons and keep his infernal bloodline a secret, while sometimes releasing his demonic power so that he might draw his father’s sword to fight said demons.

In Volume 8, awakened by the traitor Saburota Todo, the Impure King’s massive form threatens to engulf the entire city of Kyoto. As the Exorcists of the Tokyo Branch and the monks of the Myodha temple do all they can to contain the demon, Rin and his friends find themselves separated and each faces their own deadly battle. The action intensifies as Rin and Ryuji race to confront the full might of the Impure King while Yukio singlehandedly takes on Todo and discovers that he may be his own worst enemy.

Manga creator, writer and illustrator Kazue Kato won the prestigious Tezuka Award when she was only 19 for her work, Rabbit And I, published in Japan in Akamaru Jump. From 2005 to 2006 her series, Robo to Usakichi, a sci-fi adventure featuring a rabbit (again!), was published in the monthly magazine Shonen Sirius, through Kodansha. Her latest manga series, Blue Exorcist, debuted in Jump Square magazine in April of 2009. The manga currently only has 8 tankōbon out in Japan (bring US fans close to being caught up with the series if they purchase the digital download today) and a 25 episode anime series which was released last year from A-1 Pictures (distributed in the US through Aniplex).

The bright note of this for many manga fans is Viz’s rather impressive move to get closer to same day manga releases of manga in the US and Japan, with both English and Japanese languages. Scanlators have long been pirating manga under the defense that no major American manga companies were offering fans English translations of manga as quickly as they were released in Japanese in Japan. However, with Viz approaching this daunting task by acts like their Shonen Jump Digital Warp program, and speeding up the release of physical volumes from long running manga series like Naruto and Bleach, they might be the first American manga company to come close to giving the fans just what they want, when they want it.