Anime Expo 2026 hasn’t just been a feast for anime anime fans; there have been some really exciting manga and video game announcements, too. Kodansha, in particular, brought a standout manga and novel lineup, with a new Witch Hat Atelier story collection, a deluxe edition of Astro Boy and Princess Knight author Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, and a Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun spin-off from original author Osamu Nishi. Here’s everything Kodansha announced. You can find more information on these titles on Kodansha’s website.
Blaze of Flesh and Blood by Honomi
Description: “Physician Roger Baldwin, a member of one of the five great houses, is forced on pain of death to transplant a Philosopher’s Stone into a human heart—and after 10 failed attempts, he finally succeeds! At the age of 18, the recipient, Mahoro Baldwin, is sent to the Lowen Royal Officers Academy to study magic, and to discover the fate of his adoptive brother and bosom friend Siegfried. But when he arrives on the Isle of Crimson, he soon realizes he has much more to learn than a few spells. At once intimidated and fascinated by the gorgeous upperclassmen Noah St. Johns, Mahoro is drawn ever deeper into a web of intrigue and attraction that he barely comprehends…
This magic academy drama unfolds in a gothic fantasy kingdom simmering with class conflict and sexual tension…
The epic manga adaptation of the popular light novel begins here!”
The Chronicles of Leënde by Rei Tasaki and Nezu Usugumo
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description:“Facing a political marriage with a much older man, fifteen-year-old aristocrat Julia Schreiber convinces her father Victor—a commanding knight and beloved hero—to first take her on a journey to Leënde, a magical land whose people are dying from a mysterious illness. There she meets Tristan, a beautiful but aloof archer who seems to be keeping some secrets of his own. All too soon, however, dark machinations threaten to upend this idyllic adventure and throw Julia into a fight beyond her wildest dreams…”
CLAMP Official Artbook COLOR GOLD 1989–2024 by CLAMP
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description:“The professional debut of CLAMP in 1989 with RG Veda brought a new energy and style to fantasy manga, and the four-member manga collective would go on to reinvigorate and revolutionize nearly every genre. But what has set CLAMP apart from other master storytellers is the consistent beauty and creativity in their visual art. In 2024, fans in Japan got a chance to celebrate this aspect of CLAMP with an acclaimed exhibition at the National Art Center in Tokyo
As part of the meticulous process of curating and restoring CLAMP’s art for the exhibition, two premium art books were produced: SHIRO and KURO. Now, the COLOR series concludes with GOLD, a cloth-wrapped, jacketed hardcover packed in a diecut slipcase. This large-sized, archival-quality artbook includes all the stunning color artwork from SHIRO and KURO—over 250 pages—as well as content exclusive to this edition, including a stunning fold-out illustration from CLAMP’s classic X in the center and a new, 48-page section focused on the collective’s masterful black-and-white work.
Drawing on not just manga and anime but also a variety of rarities, such as magazine bonuses, a video game, a telephone card, and other official merchandise and communications, CLAMP Official ArtbookCOLOR GOLD features art from series including:
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLECardcaptor
- Sakura
- Chobits
- Magic Knight Rayearth
- xxxHOLiC
- CLOVER
- Angelic Layer
- X
- Tokyo Babylon
- RG Veda
…and many more!”
Dig It by Yoshidamaru
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: T”hrilling matches, a memorable ensemble, and the drive to push past limits will have fans of Haikyu!, Blue Lock, and Medalist cheering for more. As the son of a former star player on Japan’s national volleyball team, Gaku Shishiya has spent his volleyball career striving—and failing—to be an ace hitter like his father. The tension between them hits breaking point when a promising player on Gaku’s middle school team becomes his father’s new mentee, and as payback for the betrayal, Gaku aims to reinvent himself as a hitter’s ultimate nemesis: the libero, a defensive specialist. With his high school career just beginning, can Gaku truly rise above the legacy that nearly destroyed him…?”
Drawn Deep by Suji Hanabusa
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description:“Feeling like a fish out of water after moving to his mother’s sleepy seaside hometown, Yukiya is on his own one day when he hears agonizing moans coming from a secluded cove by the shore. Ignoring locals’ warnings about the so-called murderous monster said to haunt the sea, he goes to investigate and finds a beautiful young man in pain. The man, though unable to speak, seems to have the power to transform into all sorts of animals and sizes and quickly shrinks himself into a boy of Yukiya’s stature. A sweet relationship soon begins to blossom between the two lonely souls, but little does Yukiya know, this beautiful creature is hiding dark, hideous secret…”
Fatale Game by Battan
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “‘If it means that I can read your work again, I’ll even chase you to the ends of the earth.’ Seri Tainaka, writing under the pen name Nanakusa, is a mid-career manga artist living in the shadow of her only one-hit-wonder. Her series ‘To Hell and Back’ was adored by fans, but despite now being a ten-year veteran, her successes ended there. So when Seri is told that she is being assigned a new editor, it only fuels her insecurities. When Seri meets the quirky Sumire Futami, she’s both creeped out and captivated by the strange and overly forthright woman, who claims she’d go to hell and back to make her a success again. But just when Seri starts to think she and Futami might be an unstoppable duo, she meets the other manga artists Futami is assigned to, and a dangerous game of jealousy, envy, and femme fatales begins. It turns out that Futami has no qualms about going back and forth between which of her artists capture her attention the most, and they’ll stop at nothing to win the number one spot in their fickle editor’s heart!”
Historié by Hitoshi Iwaaki
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “After shocking the world with Parasyte, Hitoshi Iwaaki returned with a series he’d been aching to tackle since before his professional manga debut. A historical epic set in ancient times, Historié tells the story of Eumenes, a young man with quick wits and a vast destiny to fulfill. In time, he’ll become a famed army commander and personal secretary to Alexander the Great. But the road to glory is fraught with danger
Experience the magnum opus of one of the manga medium’s greatest storytellers, in a large-sized hardcover that’s a perfect match for the Parasyte Full Color Collection.”
Interstellar Violin by Kazuto Mihara
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “Unable to fit in at his new school or bring himself to pick up the violin he’s studied for years, Yoshida does his best to simply muddle through life—until the day a curious new girl named Satella simply appears in the middle of music class. No one else, however, seems to notice her arrival, much less find this sudden, unexplained addition to their class roster unusual. Who is this strange new soul, and what does she want? One thing’s for sure: after making first contact, Yoshida’s world will never be the same…”
Manga Lover by Ko Fumimura
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “Yanai, a successful manga editor, is in Shinjuku to research the lives of youth who hang out around Kabukicho, when a girl suddenly grabs him by the shirt. Misumi lives in a manga cafe, cleans a love hotel for what little cash she has, and spends all her time devouring manga—but now she’s started writing it, and wants Yanai to take a look. He’s dismissive at first, until he finally reads it and discovers she has real, if unpolished, talent. He offers to be her editor, but gets more than he bargained for when this almost feral girl suddenly takes up residence in his apartment! Her desperation and fixation are at total odds with the professional world he knows, jolting him out of his normal routine and opening his eyes to what manga is really about.”
Myther by Teki Yatsuda
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “It is the near future, and the night sky over Tokyo glitters with LED light. One of the screens, five stories high, shows a woman tucking a device behind her ear. A voice makes a promise. “Want to become a new you? Meet MYTHER—the device that will design your perfect self and make all your dreams come true.”
Meanwhile, inside one of these buildings, someone is committing a savage and inexplicable murder
The shining land of Japan is full of beautiful people, thanks some would say to Ideva, the company that developed the Myther. Representing the forefront of AI technology, this curved piece of metal contains a custom-built neural interface designed to help you become the ideal version of yourself, and eliminate the weaknesses that are holding you back. But it’s become clear that something is going wrong, and Kyo, an agent with the top-secret National Special Intelligence Office, has been assigned to unravel a series of bloody deaths that all seem to revolve around the device that has changed his world. Yet how can anyone protect the public when all the powers that be want to do is cover it up, and everyone’s loyalty is in question…?”
Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix Deluxe Edition by Osamu Tezuka
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description:“From the premiere of Astro Boy on television in 1963 to the release of Buddha, Princess Knight, Dororo, Black Jack, and other English editions in the 21st century, Americans have become familiar with the vast breadth of Osamu Tezuka’s stunning career, over which he produced more than 150,000 pages of comics
Yet the most conspicuous omission from Tezuka’s English catalog has long been the series he considered his magnum opus, one he worked on and reworked from the 1950s until his death in 1989: Phoenix. Known as Hi no tori (“firebird”) in Japanese, this meta-series—inspired by Tezuka’s omnivorous appetite for Asian folklore, American science fiction, Russian ballet and animation, and anything he he found fascinating—leaps through extremes of time and space, encompassing exciting action and experimental suspense, stark philosophy and intimate drama.
Tying it all together are the recurring “actors” of Tezuka’s “Star System”; themes of mortality, legacy, love, and ego; and the titular bird herself: at times a mythical being living in a volcano, at others a spiritual presence in deep space, always a mystery
This new Kodansha edition features the acclaimed original translation, commissioned during Tezuka’s lifetime by his production company, from Dadakai—a collective consisting of Jared Cook, Shinji Sakamoto, and Frederik L. Schodt, the inaugural inductee of the American Manga Awards Hall of Fame. This translation was previously published by Viz Media from 2002–2008 but is long out of print, and Schodt and Cook themselves have returned to assist in updating it for this edition
The art draws on a new restoration published in Japan in 2020, intended to replicate the visuals of Phoenix precisely as it would have appeared to Japanese readers experiencing it for the first time in COM, Tezuka’s seinen manga magazine, in the 1960s. This edition features recreations of two–, three–, and four-color art treatments that were forgotten for decades, with new lettering from master letterer and font designer Sara Linsley, wrapped in a cloth cover with screenprinted and foil-stamped trade dress.”
The Serenade of Spring Thunder by Nikki Asada
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “Elite ninja Kagaribi, as beautiful and sultry as he is deadly, has wooed more women to complete his missions than he can count. To him, love is no more than a weapon…and a disease. His next task: seduce and steal away Rindo, a cloistered princess said to have inherited the awesome power of a dragon god. Little does he know, this conquest will need more than a little sugar to go down—if she doesn’t take him down first.”
Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Devilish Tales : Kalego’s Story by Osamu Nishi
Release Date: Spring 2027
Description: “Years before he became one of the most feared teachers at Babyls, Kalego Naberius was himself a student at the school for demons, dealing with a very big problem. For some reason, his schoolmates keep mistaking him for the shadowy figure picking off unruly students one by one—and trying to pay him back for the beatings. Not the type to sit and wait, Kalego and his classmate Balam start searching for the real culprit, only to find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game of demonic proportions…!”
Witch Hat Atelier: Special Stories by Jun Esaka; created and supervised by Kamome Shirahama
Release Date:Spring 2027
Description: “Supervised by Kamome Shirahama, this prose collection contains three exclusive side stories starring beloved characters from the Witch Hat Atelier manga series. Between Olruggio stumbling upon a mysterious magical creature, the apprentices tending to a silver dragon, and the Knights Moralis going undercover, adventure abounds on every page!”
io9 is on the ground at Anime Expo 2026. We’ll be bringing you updates on all the biggest panels, screenings, and announcements, plus exclusive one-on-one interviews with the people behind some of the best and most popular anime around. You can check out all of io9’s Anime Expo coverage here
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