Kagurabachi has kicked off a special celebration of the manga’s first anniversary, and with it has launched a new contest where Chihiro Rokuhira will be killing the winners’ own characters. Kagurabachi first hit the pages of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine a year ago, and Takeru Hokazono’s original manga series has since become one of the biggest new releases of the magazine in the last few years. It’s become such a hit that Shueisha is really going all out to help celebrate how far the series has come in the first year of its publication within the magazine.
Kagurabachi teased that there would be special projects to help celebrate the manga’s first anniversary, and the newest issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump revealed what one of these major projects are. It’s going to be a special contest in which fans in Japan will be able to submit fan art of their own kind of “mob sorcerer character” to Shueisha, and selected winners will see their original character being killed by Chihiro himself in future chapters of the series. This contest might be limited to Japan, but it’s undoubtedly one of the coolest contests in quite a while.
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How to Read Kagurabachi
If you wanted to check out the Takeru Hokazono’s Kagurabachi manga as it releases, you can find the newest chapters online for free with either Viz Media’s digital Shonen Jump library or Shueisha’s MangaPlus service (and the entire back catalog with a paid subscription). New chapters are released on a weekly basis, and the first physical volume will be getting an English language release in the United States later this Fall.
Kagurabachi has come a long way since it went viral before the first chapter of the series hit last Fall, and it has gone on to win some choice awards. Hokazono himself shared the following statement after winning the Next Manga 2024 Award this year, “I’m truly grateful! I’m also feeling a strong motivation to make it even more interesting the meet the expectations of everyone who said ‘This is the next big thing!’ So please continue to support me in the future as well!”
As for what to expect from this new manga that’s been taking over Weekly Shonen Jump magazine with each new chapter, Kagurabachi is teased as such, “Young Chihiro spends his days training under his famous swordsmith father. One day he hopes to become a great sword-maker himself. The goofy father and the serious son–they thought these days would last forever. But suddenly, tragedy strikes. A dark day soaked in blood. Chihiro and his blade now live only for revenge. Epic sword battle action!”
