Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga officially ends after 5-year run

Modified Jul 25, 2024 17:35 GMT

Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga officially ends after 5-year run (Image via Project No.9)

Thursday, July 25, 2024, saw the ninth compilation volume of the Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga series, officially confirming that the series will conclude with the release of its 10th volume. No word was given on when the tenth volume would be released, but it’ll likely begin shipping in Japan sometime before the end of the 2024 calendar year.

The news of the Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga’s conclusion comes just weeks after the official television anime adaptation from Project No.9 premiered as a part of the Summer 2024 season. The anime has been met with respectable critical and commercial success, with Kodansha USA recently having licensed the manga for release in English. The first translated volume is set to be released in English in April 2025.

Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga ends just as anime adaptation gets underway

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While the Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga is ending, currently available information suggests that its prequel story, Senpai Is an Otokonoko: The Encounter, will continue. Although Wikipedia lists both series under the same continuation, the original story will conclude with its 100th chapter, with those issues listed beyond it on Wikipedia concerning the prequel story. As a result, the start of said prequel story will not be included in the original’s 10th and final volume.

The original manga has a storied publication history, having won some impressive awards and accolades. This includes becoming the third-place web manga winner of the 2021 Next Manga Award, the third most-read Line Manga series of 2021, and the third highest-ranked series in a 2021 AnimeJapan survey on manga from the preceding year that readers wanted adapted and the highest ranked in 2022.

Critical reviews of the series have praised the characters, as well as how profound the portrayal of protagonist Makoto Hanaoka’s home and family life was and how it affected his loneliness. The artwork and story were also heavily praised, with the coloring being described as beautiful and the portrayal of the characters’ feelings being called well-written by many.

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The Senpai Is an Otokonoko manga series is written and illustrated by Pom and was serialized digitally through Line Manga from 2019 to 2021 as a weekly series. The manga was collected into compilation volumes starting in 2021, with Ichijinsha publishing them in Japan. As mentioned above, Kodansha USA has licensed the manga for release in English.

The manga follows protagonist Makoto, a young man who dresses like a woman in secrecy due to his mother’s disapproval. Attending school dressing as a girl, Makoto’s underclassman, Saki Aoi, eventually falls in love with him, believing he is a woman. However, even after Makoto reveals his truth to her, she still pursues him, leading to Makoto’s childhood friend Ryuji Taiga getting involved and confronting his feelings for Makoto, starting the love triangle.