During their panel at last week’s Anime Expo, Kodansha Comics announced an exciting lineup of print manga titles coming in 2025. Their lineup includes several teen and adult licenses from major artists:
Dead Rock – From Hiro Mashima, creator of the best-selling series Fairy Tail, comes a new fantasy series about a school for demons. Students battle it out to pass their exams and receive their own piece of the human world in this exciting and violent new series rated 16+.
Tower Dungeon – Tsutomu Nihei, creator of the best-selling series Blame and Knights of Sidonia, returns with this new tale of a Royal Guard and a young farmhand named Yuva. The two embark on a mission to rescue a princess from a labyrinthian tower in this 13+ series.
Hauntress – Kodansha announced that they have licensed this 16+ one-shot story from Minetaro Mochizuki, originally published in 1993. Hauntress is a horror story that was voted “Most Traumatizing Manga” in Japan. Mochizuki is also known for creating Dragon Head and for the manga adaptation of the Wes Anderson film, Isle of Dogs.
Toxic Daughter: Chi-chan – In this 16+ prequel to Eisuke Naito’s horror film, Toxic Daughter, Shuzo Oshimi expands the story of the character he designed for the film, Chi-Chan. Oshimi is best known for the 2012 manga The Flowers of Evil.
The Ayakashi Hunter’s Tainted Bride – Coming to print for the first time is this supernatural shojo manga from Midori Yuma and Mamenosuke Fujimaru. This 16+ series, which has been releasing on the KManga digital platform, is about a young woman who bears a demonic mark after a yokai attack. When a nobleman comes into her life, he offers her a way to escape the demon’s curse.
Codename Sailor V – This new collection of the series that spawned the iconic Sailor Moon franchise by Naoko Takeuchi is coming from Kodansha. This series is safe for readers 10+.
Spacewalking with You – This buddy-comedy series from Inuhiko Doronoda, which won the 17th Manga Taishō in 2024, will be licensed by Kodansha for English publication.
In addition to these print titles, Kodansha also announced two new digital licenses: Akiko Higashimura’s Tokyo Tarareba Girls Returns 2, a sequel to the Eisner Award-winning Tokyo Tarareba Girls (16+); and My Journey to Her, a standalone 13+ manga by trans author Yuna Hirasawa, who shares her experience of living with gender dysphoria and her trip to Thailand for gender-confirming surgery in 2015. Both titles release digitally in July 2024.
Read on for more titles from Kodansha that go on sale soon or are available to order today:
