Well, I've been holding on to some good news when it came to this franchise, but I'll get to that later...

For now, look at this:

The second volume of the Twelve Kingdoms novel, titled "Sea of Wind", is due on March 11, 2008, only a few weeks away!

Here's some links on where to get it:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• BooksAMillion

This is going to be about Taiki's journey in the land of Tai. Should be interesting to read, as his story didn't get a big chunk of the anime series to get told.

Now for the big news, it's this blurb on that I found on livejournal:

New 12K story on the way
Big news via the Juuni Kokki Database:

A new Juuni Kokki story by Ono Fuyumi is scheduled to appear in the upcoming (2/27) issue of yom yom, a Japanese fiction magazine.

Title:「丕緒の鳥」 (Hisho no Tori)
Length: 90 pages

No further info as yet. Edit: Mainichi News reports that the story will be set in Kei. (Thanks, nachte.)

Very good news! It's sounding like Fuyumi Ono might be starting to write again in the Twelve Kingdoms universe! Hopefully, she is able to complete the main story and the anime can be finally completed (with a real budget would be nice...). Granted, the story that came out in yom yom sounded like a one-off story that doesn't continue the current cannon, but it is still good news for fans of the Twelve Kingdoms novels and anime!