posted on by Joanna Cayanan
Manga has been on Hiatus since Jump SQ. magazine’s June 2024 issue
© Nobuhiro Watsuki, Kaoru Kurosaki, Shueisha
The official X (formerly Twitter) account for Shueisha‘s Jump SQ. magazine announced on Monday that Nobuhiro Watsuki and his novelist wife/story collaborator Kaoru Kurosaki‘s Rurouni Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc (Rurouni Kenshin, Meiji Kenkaku Romantan: Hokkaidō-hen) manga will go on hiatus for a while, due to Watsuki’s poor health.
The manga has been on hiatus since the magazine’s June issue this year. Jump SQ. magazine then announced that the manga will take a one-issue break and did not appear in the July issue. But the manga also did not appear in the magazine’s August, September, and October issues.
Watsuki and Kurosaki launched the Rurouni Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc manga in Shueisha‘s Jump SQ. magazine in September 2017. The manga went on hiatus in December 2017 following Watsuki being charged for possession of child pornography. The series later resumed publication in June 2018.
Viz Media had been simultaneously publishing the manga in English, but stopped after the manga went on hiatus in 2017.
Watsuki first launched his 28-volume Rurouni Kenshin manga in Shueisha‘s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1994. The manga has more than 72 million copies in circulation worldwide. The manga centers around Kenshin Himura, once a deadly assassin during the Meiji Restoration, who is trying to find a new life beyond violence.
The manga has since been adapted into a 95-episode TV anime series, an anime film, three original video anime projects, five live-action films, and a stage musical by the all-female musical theater troupe Takarazuka Revue.
The continuation of the new television anime project based on the main manga will premiere on October 3 on Fuji TV‘s Noitamina programming block and will air for a continuous two cours (quarter of a year) for a half-year run. The new television anime first debuted in July 2023 and aired for 24 episodes.
Source: Jump SQ.‘s X/Twitter account
