The July issue of Shueisha‘s Jump SQ. magazine revealed on Thursday 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 not release a new chapter in the next issue and will resume serialization in the September issue.

The series took a break in November and returned to serialization in the March issue on February 4.

The manga resumed serialization on September 4 following a 1-month break in August.

The manga had previously resumed serialization in July 2025, after being on hiatus since the magazine’s June 2024 issue, which released in May 2024. The manga did not appear in subsequent issues, and the magazine’s staff then stated in September 2024 that the manga was going to continue its hiatus for a while, due to Watsuki’s poor health.

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 sexual abuse images. 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 first season of the new anime re-adapting the main manga series premiered on Fuji TV‘s Noitamina programming block and other venues in July 2023. The anime ran for two consecutive cours (quarter of a year). The second cours began in October 2023. Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired, and it is also streaming an English dub.

Rurouni Kenshin Meiji Kenkaku Romantan: Kyōto Dōran (Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Disturbance), the second season, premiered in October 2024, and aired for a continuous two cours for a half-year run. Crunchyroll streamed the season as it aired. The anime will get a third season.

Source: Jump SQ. July issue

This episode is one big fight scene. Our heroes battle Tenga and Ashinaga—two Daemons that fought Left and Right to a standstill in the past and were eventually defeated by being sealed in a mountain. If you stop and think about it, this raises the question of who freed them in the present (i.e., someone who is almost certainly part of one of the Higashi Village factions as they seem to know about the Lost House) and implies that there may be other counters to Seal and Break out there (as it seems unlikely that Asa would knowingly do so and Left and Right have been waiting on their own mountain). Of course, none of this is explored even slightly as the immediate threat overshadows everything else.

Objectively, the fight has all the parts it needs to be exciting. We have a credible threat with Tenga and Ashinaga. Not only are they on par with Left and Right, but their master is also hidden somewhere while Yuru is right there in the open—an easy target. It’s got twists and turns galore, and our heroes only win because they can outthink their opponents as well as outfight them. There’s just one big problem: how things play out is insanely contrived.

The reason for this is centered around Dera. In this episode, he uses a high-powered sniper rifle to take out Ashinaga. More than that, he has 100% accuracy—he hits every shot he takes. He not only shoots a hole through Tenga’s leg but also shoots out both of Ashinaga’s eyes before decapitating him with a shot through the neck.

This begs the question, if Dera can blow off Tenga and Ashinaga’s heads with a single shot, why didn’t he? Why blind Ashinaga and hobble Tenga first? If blinding Ashinaga was somehow necessary, why not shoot the neck right after? Why switch targets to Tenga? And if switching to Tenga was important, why not shoot her in the neck? Why shoot her in the leg?

If Dera had fought as he should have, given his character, the battle would be over the moment he took that first sniper shot. Ashinaga would have lost his head, and Tenga would have faced a two-on-one beatdown even if Dera hadn’t taken a second decapitating shot moments later. The truth is that there is no readily available in-world explanation for his seemingly illogical choices.

Thus, we have only the obvious real-world explanation to fall back on: if Dera had acted as he logically would have given his skill and experience, the fight would have been less exciting. It would have been a major anticlimax, and we wouldn’t have been able to see Yuru’s quick-thinking fake-out to make Tenga and Ashinaga think that he already had the Seal power.

I’m not going to sugarcoat things: I absolutely hate when writers do this—when they have their characters act uncharacteristically stupid or unskilled solely because the plot demands it. Good writing is having your characters act in-character while still furthering the plot in the most emotionally engaging direction.

And in the case of this episode, it’s not like things can’t be fixed with just a few minor tweaks. All it would take is having Right, Left, Yuru, Dera, or the old lady with the knife blinding Ashinaga and injuring Tenga’s leg in some way other than the sniper rifle. Then, as the combined Tenga-shinaga chases Yuru, have it break the window into the armory—allowing Dera to get the sniper rifle and eventually take the kill shot. Just by having Dera get the rifle later, it’s all fixed. The contrived writing is gone, and we are left with a fun, tense battle. But, unfortunately, that’s not what we got, and I, for one, was left annoyed and disappointed.

Rating:

Daemons of the Shadow Realm is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Anime debuts on July 2

The Anime Corner website reported on Monday that HIDIVE will stream the television anime of Kazuto Mihara‘s The World Is Dancing manga for the summer 2026 season. HIDIVE shared an English-subtitled trailer and visual:

The anime will debut on Tokyo MX and KBS Kyoto in Japan on July 2 at 10:00 p.m. JST, then on Sun TV at 24:00 JST (effectively, July 3 at 12 midnight). The anime will air on BS Asahi and TVQ Kyushu starting on July 3.

The anime stars:

Toshimasa Kuroyanagi (Shōnen Hollywood, The Great Passage, Backflip!! series and film) is directing the anime at Cygames Pictures. Keigo Sasaki (Blue Exorcist series and film, ERASED, Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray two seasons) is designing the characters, and Satoshi Nemoto is credited for calligraphy and title lettering. Macaroni Empitsu are performing the film’s opening theme song “shusho.”

Shochiku describes the story:

In 1374, amid the turmoil of the Northern and Southern Courts’ long running conflict, a boy named Oniyasha is born into a family of sarugaku theater performers. He spends his days in a kind of quiet gloom, haunted by a simple but persistent question: Why do people dance? Then, one day, he witnesses a dance that he feels to be “good”—and everything begins to change. This is the story of the beautiful young boy who would one day shape the art of Noh and be remembered as Zeami.

Mihara launched the manga in Kodansha‘s Morning magazine in March 2021, and the series ended in October 2022. Kodansha published six compiled book volumes of the manga. Kodansha USA Publishing licensed the manga and published the manga’s six volumes digitally.

Sources: Anime Corner, HIDIVE‘s YouTube channel