Kohei Horikoshi is heading back to the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump with a new story. The creator of the worldwide hit My Hero Academia (Boku no Hero Academia) will soon publish a short one-shot titled Warawanaide yo, Shijima-san. The manga is set to appear in the issue released on August 10.
The new manga is being described as a boy-meets-girl story with horror elements. It is an interesting mix for Horikoshi, giving him room to work with a darker, more unsettling mood while keeping the relationship between the main characters at the heart of the story. Since this is a one-shot, readers can expect a complete, self-contained tale rather than the immediate start of another long-running series.
This will be Horikoshi's first return to Weekly Shonen Jump since My Hero Academia came to an end. The manga finished its serialization in August 2024 after running for a decade, and its 42nd and final collected volume followed in December of that year. The ending closed the book on Izuku Midoriya's long path from a Quirkless student with an unlikely dream to a major figure in the world of professional heroes.
My Hero Academia has more than 100 million copies in circulation worldwide, making it one of the most successful modern manga titles and one of the best-selling manga series ever published. Its reach went well beyond the original manga, bringing a large international audience into a superhero world built around school rivalries, personal sacrifice, social pressure, and difficult questions about what being a hero really means.
Over the years, the franchise expanded to include a television anime, theatrical films, spin-off manga, video games, novels, merchandise, and several other projects. The anime adaptation was produced by BONES, a studio widely known for energetic action scenes and expressive character animation. The final season of the anime was released in 2025.
There is currently no sign that Warawanaide yo, Shijima-san is intended to become a full series. Still, one-shots often allow established manga creators to try out ideas, genres, and visual approaches that may not fit their earlier work. For longtime Horikoshi readers, this short project should provide a first glimpse at the stories he is interested in telling now that My Hero Academia has concluded.
