Kodansha USA Publishing announced new manga licenses during its panel at San Diego Comic-Con International on Saturday. 

The company also announced it will release a box set of the first six volumes of Saka Mikami‘s The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity manga in spring 2027.

The newly announced manga licenses are:

Title: The Pool

Creator: Gamon Sakurai

Debut Date: Spring 2027

Synopsis: Twenty years ago, a wormhole suddenly appeared above Earth’s orbit and opened a passageway to an alien planet full of untapped resources and mysterious lifeforms. Two decades later, Team Sierra, a small military squad of security specialists working for the Tiberius Coke Corporation, are thirty miles away from home base on that planet when their leader, Chief Yugi Oishi, spots an SOS flare coming from a theoretically abandoned mine. Despite the danger, she leads her four-man team to the facility to see who’d called for help, only for it to be attacked by a horde of powerful creatures almost as soon as the doors closed behind them. Now, she and the stranded exploration crew Team Sierra finds inside must traverse the treacherous mine to reach the only vehicle that could get them to safety—without waking the terrifying monster that’s been picking off the researchers one by one.

Title: Subaru and Subaru (Subaru to Subaru)
Creator: Shuuichi Shigeno
Debut Date: Spring 2027
Synopsis: One year after Takumi Fujiwara’s student Kanata Rivington tore it up on Japan’s mega-popular MFG street racing circuit, two new drivers are itching to try their luck at the event. Their names: Subaru Sato from Gunma Prefecture, and Subaru Kudo, from Kanagawa. The world of Initial D and MF Ghost meld into one as these two Subarus join together to weave the ultimate street racing legend!

Title: The Cat and Dog’s Nine-Tailed Lives (Inumata to Nekomata no Isshō)

Creators: Maki (Story), Hamuhamu (Art)

Debut Date: Spring 2027

Synopsis: One day, a pet cat and dog named Buchi and Kotaro wake up to find that they have become yokai, supernatural beings blessed with eternal life. Now, not only do they get to spend more time with their beloved owner, they can stick around to befriend his children, and his children’s children! But even as Buchi and Kotaro remain the same, their owner slowly begins to gray…

Title: Kraken Mare

Creators: IZU (Story), Hagane (Art)

Debut Date: Spring 2027

Synopsis: In the distant, far-flung future, humanity’s pursuit of a vital energy source known as “Black Ether” has awakened monsters called Krakens, which lay dormant within black holes. These horrors brought humanity to the brink of extinction. A thousand years later, the Krakens are worshipped as gods by a church that exploits them to spread fear and control the remnants of humanity.

Brave smugglers known as scavengers defy the iron fist of the clergy, risking their lives to mine black ether in secret for profit. The crew of the space ship Pulsar, led by Captain Paze, is tasked with extracting black ether from an extremely dangerous black hole at the request of the Mars-based pirate group Red Sand.

Oriale, a church agent and skilled Atomancer, lurks amongst the crew, pretending to be the innocent cook “Eden.” But when the Pulsar is discovered by a terrifying Abyssal Kraken, she must reveal herself in order to save the crew.

Title: Meaheim

Creators: Kenji Tsurubuchi (Story), Konata (Art)

Debut Date: Spring 2027

Synopsis: A young scholar named Ren makes her way to Meaheim, the last town on the border of the Dark Lands—a bizarre place where horrifying monsters run amok, and reality itself is all but unrecognizable. With the aid of a Guide named Tobia, Ren sets off on a journey into the very maw of chaos, where she must overcome monsters known as “Witches,” traitorous adventures, and the godforsaken land itself to retrieve the panacea and save her brother…

Title: Rega in the Sleeping Forest (Nemureru Mori no Rega)

Creator: yoruhashi

Debut Date: Spring 2027

Synopsis: To save Princess Lorana from a sleeping curse cast by an evil dragon, Rega, captain of the kingdom’s knights, faces down a wicked wyrm within an ancient forest. Drawing upon his devotion to the princess, who rescued him from a life of slavery many years ago, Rega slays the monster, freeing the princess from her sleep. But the moment she awakens, the girl begins casting wicked magic, slaying Rega’s fellow knights and cursing the land, creating a “sleeping forest” which corrupts familiar figures into dark, monstrous forms. Stunned at this horrific sight, Rega looks up to see a crooked, crescent-moon smile in the night sky. Could this be the mastermind behind the corruption? And were those tears Rega saw in the princess’s eyes as she gleefully destroyed the kingdom she called home?

Title: I Love You, Please Dump Me (Yume to Koi de wa Tsuriawanai)
Creator: Shizuku Torii
Debut Date: Spring 2027
Synopsis: “Love makes people go crazy.”

Hikaru’s always been told to be wary of love—it can make you do stupid things. Like abandon your dreams, or worse, fail your exams! Which is exactly what happens when she falls in love at first sight with Kairi Kira. The problem is, Hikaru’s dreams of one day living it up in an expensive penthouse apartment relies on her first achieving academic success. Which is why she’s going to have to nip this little love problem in the bud. If Kairi rejects her and breaks her heart, she’ll be able to get over her feelings and focus on her grades. Except Kairi insists on becoming her girlfriend, which is definitely not part of the plan! But this should be fine, right? She just has to get used to splitting her time and attention. Or… she could, if Kairi would let her!

Title: I Loved Him First! (Ore ga Saki ni Suki datta!)
Creator: toreta
Debut Date: Spring 2027
Synopsis: Makoto, an ex-yakuza, has harbored feelings for his best friend Ayato since high school but has always been afraid to confess his love and risk ruining their friendship. Instead, he resigns himself to the role of best friend to the bitter end…that is, until Ayato tells him he’s dating—a guy. Makoto does a total 180 and vows to win over Ayato’s heart by any means necessary—after all, he thinks, “I loved him first!”

Source: Press release

Disgaea Mayhem manages to bring the Disgaea formula into the action RPG format successfully, but by the slimmest margin and missing many of the key features that make Disgaea soar.

For background’s sake, I’m a long-time Disgaea enjoyer. Not to age myself too much, but I bought a physical copy of the first Disgaea on PS2 from my local Circuit City (which was the style at the time) and fell in love with the series immediately. The irreverent humor, the colorful characters, the depth of systems, outrageous level design – it was beautiful. I would sink countless hours into the first game, and then hoover up any new release from NIS, whether it was from the mainline series or its various offshoots like Phantom Brave and Soul Nomad. I adore these games, and I will admit up front my bias that I want NIS to succeed and continue to bring its unique titles out for future generations.

Which is to say that I was initially quite curious about Disgaea Mayhem. The NIS team venturing into novel territory and developing an action RPG holds promise to me. Technically, they have succeeded! For a first foray into the space, it feels… fine. It’s fine.

All of the essentials are here. You have light and heavy attacks, guarding, running, jumping, a selection of skills limited by cooldowns, the whole nine yards. Your hero can equip any gear feasible within the standard Disgaea confines (1 weapon + 3 others of any description), with each weapon type having its own unique attack ranges, cooldown abilities, and so on. Typical Disgaea structure where each chapter has a series of isolated episodes, with each one being a field or level that you clear before moving on. Toss in a few cutscenes between chapters, lather, rinse, repeat.

There are a few interesting wrinkles in the mix, to be sure. Outside of the obligatory block/guard button you can hold, there is the defensive mechanic of Countering. Essentially, if you use one of your cooldown-based abilities at precisely the moment an enemy attacks you, you negate the attack’s damage completely, and your attack goes through. It’s a very simple take on the ” best defense is a good offense ” idiom that fits nicely into Disgaea‘s over-the-top ethos. It also nicely weaves in the traditional counter system from the mainline titles in a novel way, as those were built for turn-based combat. This goes for average enemies and bosses alike, allowing you to be aggressive from the jump and steamroll opposition once you learn their attack telegraphs.

Amongst the more pedestrian cooldown skills are Ultimates. These are what they sound like: gigantic attacks on substantial cooldowns that involve a big, showy cutscene. N.A. jumps in the air, you place the AOE on whatever zip code you want deleted, and proceed to hit every enemy in that region with an unskippable cutscene to the tune of four quadrillion damage.

Additionally, you’ve got the buddy and Magichange system. As you head into battle, you can bring along a little monster companion gathered from the game’s bestiary (and customized to the nines as you would expect) and use it in the levels. They provide additional damage and draw some aggro while also allowing you to shift into a new weapon mode with its own set of cooldowns and big Ultimate attacks. It gives you another set of options to play with and another avenue for advancement and customization.

For the out-of-combat considerations, I could just say “It’s Disgaea.” Those who know will understand, but I’ll elaborate if you’re new here. Disgaea Mayhem has a hub world with various vendors and activities to pursue. Shopping for more gear and consumables, levelling up customer rank to access better stuff. Hop into the Item World where you can delve into an instanced dungeon within each item in the game to battle through waves of enemies and level them up (yes, you heard right, every sword and cape and piece of gum has a dungeon within it that you teleport into to battle monsters and level up the item back in the “real world”). There’s the Dark Assembly where you can pass laws that increase your powerful item access, boost XP or monetary payout from levels, and more – and if you don’t like the look of how the assemblymen will vote, you can bribe them or pummel them into submission to get your way.

Why, some would say it’s even more humane than most current political systems…

Those systems are tried and true Disgaea staples. The NIS team has been iterating on these ideas for over twenty years now, and they work just as brilliantly as they always have. There is no end to the joy of playing a goofball scenario, teleporting into the pocket dimension that exists within a pair of pants to battle hordes of demons and level up the stats of the pants, then bullying the political monsters at the assembly to do my bidding. I fell into the steady rhythm without missing a beat.

And there is a simple novelty in seeing these characters realized in a 3D battle space. Seeing a giant Prinny penguin leap through the air and circle strafing around it to do a big anime super move on its flank is fun. It’s fun! I like seeing my favorite tactical blorbos in this new way.

But… there are a few catches. There always are.

First, let’s address some of the structural issues.

The game is just painfully short. I know that’s an odd thing to say for something that has theoretically infinite content, but it’s rather light on anything beyond the procedural generation and number-go-up mechanics. Main stories have never been the only draw for Disgaea, but I rolled credits on the finale in under six hours. That’s… nothing. Literally nothing for these games, which even at the short end usually take a few dozen hours to complete.

The characters are razor thin. N.A. is affable enough, and Tichelle is a cutie pie. But their entire dynamic is: Tichelle yells about flan, N.A. shrugs and goes “what have I gotten into?!” and we queue the laugh track. There aren’t even that many other characters to speak of in the tale, which means a lot is riding on these two, and they aren’t given much to work with. Sure, the series has always been zany and off-kilter, but at its best, it also had a lot of heart. Big rosters of interesting characters with enough charm and depth to make for memorable laughs and a few touching moments. Maybe it wasn’t Hemingway, but it wasn’t completely forgettable either.

The combat is just okay. I was not expecting Devil May Cry or anything, but this was even simpler than a lot of musou/Warriors titles. The levels are just empty corridors where you walk up and smash a set number of enemies, the rest disappear in a poof, then you move on to the next zone and clear a set number of enemies all over again. At the end of the level, there’s a boss who is 95% of the time just an oversized version of another enemy model, they say a few lines of dialogue, then you bonk them, and that’s it. There are a handful of maps that have a minor jumping puzzle or environmental hazard to navigate, though those too are minor annoyances at best.

The nicest thing I can say about the visuals is that they are… acceptable. They make a bad first impression – particularly N.A.’s run and walk cycles, which look and feel incredibly stiff. But they do grow over time, and the actual cooldown-based attacks look really good. Still, the drab, repetitive battlefields and small handful of enemies do little to inspire (and often can’t be seen due to all the stuff happening on screen).

The real Achilles’ heel of this title is the lack of a true party dynamic. A major part of Disgaea has always been managing the absurd roster of characters. The real secret sauce all along was that Disgaea was about the battles, sure, but it was just as much about the back-end optimization. You were always looking for a new way to crack the game wide open, to get a particular skill set or ability baseline on a given character, to eke out another iota of power from gear, etc. Spread across the dozens of characters you would end up making, Disgaea was often more of an RPG party management sim that just happened to have a tactical layer bolted on. You were always thinking of new strategies, finding new activities, fiddling with gear across two dozen characters, and it was way more fun than it had any right to be.

Disgaea Mayhem has N.A. and only N.A. Sure, the monster buddy is there, but it’s more like having 1.5 characters rather than 2 on the field. It’s fun to watch big attacks and watch numbers go up, sure. Yet there’s something hollow about only doing that with one character, especially from a series that has excelled at this choose-your-own-sicko-mode level of complexity.

The lack of geo-squares and unique objectives is also quite telling. Disgaea was never a terribly challenging game, but story missions would often have unique conditions put in place by colored tiles that would alter things in ways mere numbers couldn’t account for. No matter how powerful your characters were, you couldn’t do much if the entire map was covered in an “Enemies are invulnerable” condition that could only be switched off if you ran the gauntlet and busted the pylon making the rule. Disgaea Mayhem lacks that entirely, opting for the same “Kill X enemies in this area” objective over and over again.

All of these caveats for a (at the time of writing) US$60 asking price are a bit steep. While that’s no longer full price in the current industry norms, it’s not a budget title either. Calling it a tech demo seems dismissive. But it’s hard not to think of Disgaea 6‘s rocky start for the 3D era of the company, which blazed a trail for Disgaea 7‘s far more fully featured arrival. Disgaea Mayhem is not a bad title, and it’s a game you could theoretically spend infinity hours in getting your attack skills to do damage totals only expressible in scientific notation. Yet it’s hard not to feel as though buying this is more about funding a promising sequel down the road than it is about enjoying Disgaea Mayhem on its own merits.

Cast

Headmaster: Masako Nozawa (Sentai Daishikkaku)

Sentarou Daimounji: Jun Fukuyama (Grand Blue)

Tsubasa Kurenai: Minami Tanaka (Kill Ao)

Mayumi Tanaka (Dandadan)

Saori Hayami (Sakamoto Days)

Produced by MAPPA, the first season premiered in Fall 2024, followed by a second season in Fall 2025. Netflix streamed the anime worldwide with subtitles.

Rumiko serialized the manga in Weekly Shounen Sunday magazine in August 1987 and ended in February 1996. Shogakukan published the manga in 38 volumes from April 1988 to June 1996 and later released it in two new editions in 2002–2003 and 2016–2018.

VIZ Media licensed the manga in English and released 21 volumes from May 1993 to March 2003. In May 2003, the company began publishing a second edition and released the 36th and final volume in November 2006. VIZ Media also released a 2-in-1 omnibus edition between March 2014 and March 2017.

Source: Comic Natalie