A retailer in Japan has listed a new, previously unannounced manga title by Rensuke Oshikiri, the creator of the video game-themed manga and anime series Hi Score Girl.
As reported by Anime News Network, manga retailer Honya Club has revealed that Issue 42 of Weekly Shonen Champion will feature a new manga from Oshikiri, entitled Genius. No details about the manga other than its author and title were revealed. The issue will be released in Japan on Sept. 16.
Oshikiri is best known as the creator Hi Score Girl, which was serialized in Square Enix's Big Gangan magazine from 2010 - 2018. The series begins in the early '90s and tells the story of Haruo Yaguchi, a young boy who slacks off at school and spends all of his time obsessing over video games. During an afternoon of destroying his competition in Street Fighter II, Haruo is finally defeated by a new opponent, who turns out to be Akira Ono, a quiet but popular girl from his school who is unnaturally talented at video games. The two become unlikely friends as their relationship parallels the growth of the golden age of Japanese video games during the decade. The series highlights many real-world arcade game franchises, including Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Splatterhouse and a few even more obscure titles, including Cave's DouDonPachi. The manga's publication was briefly halted when King of Fighters and Metal Slug publisher SNK sued over unauthorized references to its games in the series, but Square Enix and SNK eventually reached a deal that allowed the series to continue.
The manga was adapted into a CG anime series by animation studios JC Staff and SDME, which was released exclusively on Netflix in 2018.
A follow-up/spinoff series, entitled Hi Score Girl DASH, began publication in 2019. The series is focused on the character of Koharu Hidaka and jumps forward twenty years. Hidaka is now a middle school teacher, but is still obsessed with the video games that Haruo introduced her to. The new series was also written and drawn by Oshikiri. It is unknown if the DASH series will continue while Oshikiri works on their new title.
In addition to their manga titles, Oshikiri also wrote and directed the anime series The House Spirit Tatami-Chan. The comedy series told the story of a ghost who lives in Tokyo and has to deal with day-to-day struggles like finding a job and paying their rent. The series' production was successfully crowdfunded and the show was streamed by Crunchyroll.
Source: Honya Club, via Anime News Network
