Twst’s English manga publisher has changed, with Random House Worlds re-releasing already-published Twst manga, and the two prints are not the same.
Random House Worlds, a publishing imprint of Penguin Random House, has made at least three corrections to spelling errors within the Heartslabyul arc, and there are multiple instances of typesetting being redone, removing the need to hyphenate some words, hyphenating new ones, and combining “age of ten” into, “age often.”
Continuity errors from the first release remain:
・Trey’s unique magic introduced as Doodle Suit in volume two and written as Paint the Roses in volume three without explanation
・Cater’s nickname for Grim shifts from Gee-rim to Grimmy boy
・Deuce switches from three volumes of using honorifics to using first names in volume four, without explanation, and in contrast to the original story, where he never refers to any upperclassmen without an honorific with the one exception of Ruggie, in Book 2 (more ▶︎)
・”Unique magic” was localized as “unique spell” in volume two of the English manga, which was changed to “signature spell” in volume four
In volume four a spelling error during Riddle’s overblot monologue of “or an hour everyday” was retained in the Random House Worlds reprint, carried over from the initial print of volume four rather than being corrected to, “for an hour everyday.”
Trey saying Riddle “had the top grades in our class since middle school” was also retained in the reprint, despite how Trey and Riddle attended different middle schools and it is unlikely that they would have been in the same class if they hadn’t, as Trey is a year ahead.
Originally Riddle’s mother presents him with a low-carb cake made with soy flour and nuts, “packed with lecithin to help make you smarter,” which was changed in the English-language manga to Riddle’s mother saying that it is a cake she ordered for him, despite how she originally did not say so.
In Book 7 Riddle presents a cake to visitors that his mother has made herself, with Ortho guessing that it is a representation of the kind of sweets that his mother from his memories would make, so it is possible that the cake from the flashback was actually homemade by Riddle’s mother in contrast to the new detail added to the English-language adaptation, though this is not yet confirmed.
The source of the cake was possibly left unspecified on purpose, but Twst’s English translations will sometimes try to solve canonically ambiguous situations, as seen with Vil and the VDC choreography (more ▶︎) and Riddle’s mother’s activities during his independent study hour in the English game (more ▶︎).
But will Penguin Random House also be reprinting the Twisted Wonderland novels?
There does not seem to be any proof of such at this time, but the dedicated introduction page for the first novel on VIZ Media’s website has disappeared.
For the licensing itself, this may be connected to Penguin Random House’s May 2025 announcement that it had entered new expanded licensing agreements with Disney.
VIZ Media’s copyright page still lists the first two novels, but they also list information for the Heartslabyul manga, which has already been re-distributed by Penguin Random House, so this page may be out of date as of this writing.
The Random House World’s print of the Heartslabyul manga states:
Copyright 2023 by Disney Enterprises, Previously published by VIZ Media in 2023.
And the website for Penguin Random House does not currently list the entire Twist manga library, showing only the Heartslabyul arc, volumes 1 and 2 of Savanaclaw, and volumes 1 and 2 of Octavinelle, the same content that has already been published by VIZ Media.
Image: screenshot of Penguin Random House Twst listing as of September 2026
The last announcements concerning Twst releases from VIZ Media seem to be June of 2025 where they shared Amazon pages, not dedicated pages on their own website, for purchasing volume one of the Scarabia arc and the second novel.
Could this timing mean that the VIZ releases of Scarabia and the second novel already progressed too far into production to be transferred to the new publishing arrangement? So they were left as VIZ Media’s final involvement with the Twst franchise?
And this was not a simple reprint of pre-existing books, with the two manga almost entirely re-typeset, and even font types showing slight differences.
Were the spelling corrections and re-formatting of the Penguin Random House reprints overseen by a designer, without any input from a translator? That would possibly explain why only the biggest mistakes, Grim’s name and the word “good” were caught, while smaller issues, characterization mistakes and continuity errors were not.
It also very curious if Penguin Random House will be retaining the change in Azul’s dialogue in Octavinelle arc volume 1 where he says he does not want to be tired when, originally, he says he does not want to gain weight, in a line that was actually retained in the usually-stricter English-language game, despite how the manga are otherwise more accurate to the original dialogue than the game. More ▶︎
