But, without further ado, let's get to the notable manga that debuted during the second half of the 00s (& a couple from 2010) in Monthly Shonen Gangan, as we begin with (shockingly enough) what looks to be the first truly notable baseball manga in Shonen Gangan history!
Yeah, despite its position as (possibly) Japan's all-time favorite sport in the time since it was introduced to the nation in the late 1800s, Shonen Gangan never really had a notable baseball manga until April 2006, which is when Hajimete no Koshien/My First Koshien by Masaki Himura debuted. Himura first made her mark as the 11th winner of the "Can You Tell a Gag in 2 Pages?" project that Shonen Gangan would challenge readers with, followed by a 2nd place showing in the later expanded competition version of the project, losing to Kiichi Hotta's initial one-shot version of You & Me.. Then in 2004 Himura was a runner-up at the 4th Square-Enix Manga Awards (as well as winning the Special Jury Prize, this one chosen by Michiaki Watanabe), and after a couple more one-shots she finally made her serialized debut with Hajimete no Koshien, an expanded take on a one-shot she got published earlier that January. The manga starred Kyuto Niya, the sole student at Doi Nakano High School in Aichi who continues to play baseball as the team's captain, even if it's only by himself. However, one day Doi Nakano's principal declares that the school's team will make it to Koshien, and so Kyuto starts scouting for new teammates (& students), with the goal of eventually forming a team that can make it all the way to Koshien. Much like her gag shorts early on, Himura apparently put a bit of her own upbringing into Hajimete no Koshien, namely the idea of a poor "family" setting & finding a way to rise up from it into something greater, in this case Kuyto finding a real team to play baseball with, with the goal of making it to the apex of Japanese high school baseball, one of the legendary Koshien tournament finals.
Hajimete no Koshien would run until November 2009 & total seven volumes, and while this would be Himura's only serialization with Shonen Gangan she stuck with Square-Enix for her entire career. She would follow up her debut serialization with her next major work, 2011's Cinderella Girl & the Lonely Grim Reaper in Gangan Online, where she was the writer (under the pseudonym "Yuki Shinkiba") & the art was by Yoshie Katou, who later would do the manga adaptation of the light novel series Assassins Pride. In late 2012, though, Himura would start to experience abdominal pain & other bad symptoms, and after testing she was told that she had ovarian cancer. Cinderella Girl & the Lonely Grim Reaper was put on indefinite hiatus after Chapter 20 in early 2013 so that Himura could focus on treatment, though she also started the manga Hospitalization Note that same year in Gangan Online, where she would tell of her experience in battling her illness. Unfortunately, on June 17, 2015 Masaki Himura would lose her battle against ovarian cancer & pass away, though this wasn't publicly revealed until the publication of Chapter 20 of Hospitalization Note the following September. Himura's legacy, however, does live on to some extent, as one of her assistants during Hajimete no Koshien was Hikaru Miyoshi, who'd make their own serialized debut in Shonen Gangan one month before the final chapter of Hajimete no Koshien with the short-lived series Ultimate Dolls, though today they're most known for being the artist of the Jump Square manga Moriarty the Patriot, which is still ongoing.
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Up next we have another video game adaptation, but this time around I'll be covering the combined run of two different series. However, they're from the same overall franchise, were done by the same mangaka, and literally ran from one into the other (& back!) without any hiatus between runs. I mentioned the 2002 PS2 game Kingdoms Hearts last time as being one of the titles that helped revitalize Square's finances enough to make the merger with Enix actually happen, and the directorial debut for Tetsuya Nomura that saw his original cast led by the young Sora crossing over with various Disney characters & worlds as they fight the mysterious Heartless would go on to be a major multimedia franchise, one that's still running to this day... though, admittedly, there are wildly more spin-offs & side story entries than there are "main" numbered entries. Of course, that includes manga adaptations of the various games, all of which are done by the same artist, Shiro Amano. Getting their start back in the 90s, Amano has worked with video game adaptations dating back to the days of Square, with manga adaptations of Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, & the original Kingdom Hearts being three of their earliest. Back in those days Square worked with Enterbrain's Famitsu-branded magazines to serialize these manga adaptations, but now with Square-Enix Amano moved over to Shonen Gangan to adapt more Kingdom Hearts to manga.
Technically, Shiro Amano's first appearance in Gangan was an adaptation of GBA game Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, but that only ran for a single year between April 2005 & April 2006 for two volumes. No, where Amano truly began their long, uninterrupted run would be two issues later, in June 2006, with the debut of their manga adaptation of Kingdom Hearts II. This would tell the continued story of Sora & his friends' fight against the Heartless, while also introducing a new group called the Nobodies, which are the cast-off shells of those who became Heartless, & putting more focus on Organization XIII, who were first introduced in Chain of Memories. Unlike the prior KH adaptation's single-year run, the Kingdom Hearts II manga would have a long serialization, initially running for three years until August 2009 before going on hiatus... so that Shiro Amano could serialize another manga entry starting in September 2009 with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. This adapted the Nintendo DS spin-off that focused on Roxas, Sora's Nobody, & his time as a part of Organization XIII, eventually revealing why Roxas left the organization. Amano's 358/2 Days adaptation would itself run for three years & end in October 2012... and the very next issue Amano would resume the Kingdom Hearts II manga adaptation, which lasted for nearly another three years before finally ending in June 2015; to clarify, Kingdom Hearts III was still four years out from its eventual 2019 release when the KHII manga ended. In the end, the Kingdom Hearts II manga would total 10 volumes, while Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days would total five volumes, and Shiro Amano would eventually also make a manga adaptation of Kingdom Hearts III from 2019 to 2025 over at Gangan Online.
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We jump ahead to February 2007 for out next notable Shonen Gangan manga, in this case Tozasareta Nergal/Nergal the Sealed by Rumi Aruma, a former assistant of Natsuki Matsuzawa's. Originally a 2006 one-shot that won that year's GG Grand Prix award, this serialization focuses on Maximillian Nergal, the notorious "Dark Sorcerer" who's been imprisoned beneath Despair Hills inside of a magically sealed cell, complete with his mouth being sealed shut so as to prevent him from chanting spells, due to him being responsible for the eradication of an entire country using illegal magic. However, the truth of the matter is that Nergal is actually completely innocent & is a gentle soul who was once the "Sorcerer of the Century" who helped others, with his imprisonment being the result of a frame job. In fact, someone continues to commit crimes as Nergal using transformation magic, which results in Nergal constantly being seen as someone even more evil & powerful than he really is, though he actually is rather powerful, and his constant failed attempts at escaping Despair Hills doesn't help his image either with everyone in the prison. Essentially, Tozasareta Nergal looks to be a prison comedy manga showing Nergal's life as a prisoner, constantly getting into misunderstandings with both the guards & his fellow inmates (who see him as their "boss"), all while Nergal tries to find a way to prove his innocence. It also doesn't help that one of the inmates is, in fact, the man who framed Nergal & secretly is the main reason why Nergal's attempts at escaping keep failing. Honestly, seeing that Aruma was an former assistant of Natsuki Matsuzawa's makes sense, since this manga does sound similar to Totsgeki! Pappara-tai, in some ways.
Tozasareta Nergal would run until October 2010 & total seven volumes, though Aruma also made a spin-off in Gangan Online titled Tozasareta Nergal: Gokuchuu Enikki/Illustrated Prison Diary, which ran from 2009 to 2010. After that Rumi Aruma would make the manga I'm the Demon, and She's My Wife from late 2011 to early 2013, followed by Queen of the Circus Cat from 2016 to 2017, both in Gangan Online. Also, in 2016, Tozasareta Nergal saw a revival as an online serialization, similar to Ou-sama no Mini wa Okonomimi, but I can't tell how long the revival ran for, as it doesn't look to have ever been collected in any way.
We get our first returning mangaka of this part, but also the first farewell. In this case it's the return of Akinobu Uraku, whose debut serialization Tokyo Underground ended back in March 2005, with Uraku having shown noticeable improvement as an artist & storyteller during the run of that series. Instead of going straight into a new serialization immediately, though, Uraku instead first tested things out with a new work, making an initial one-shot that appeared in July 2006, followed by a two-part installment later that November & December. Finally, Uraku returned to proper serialization with the finalized version of the stories he had previously told in March 2007 with the debut of Onikiri-sama no Hakoiri Musume/Lord Demon Slayer's Daughter in a Box. This told the story of Chisaya, the daughter of a kitsune mother & a human father & was sealed inside a box for 300 years until a teenage boy named Ayafumi Fushio discovered the box in his family's storehouse & opened it. Ayafumi is the descendant of Yahitsu Fushio, the man who killed Chisaya's mother & later sealed Chisaya inside the box when he felt he was unable to properly integrate her into human society. Now it's up to Ayafumi to finish the job his ancestor couldn't & see if he can properly welcome Chisaya into human society. Yeah, unlike the (mostly) battle-focused Tokyo Underground, Onikiri-sama no Hakoiri Musume was instead more of an everyday life/romantic comedy series focused on Chisaya slowly acclimating herself to human life in the middle of Heisei Era Japan, though there still looked to be elements of combat by way of other mystical creatures for Ayafumi & Chisaya to fight back against, as well as attempts by demon collector Tohru Maya at capturing Chisaya for her own collection.
However, Akinobu Uraku did not serialize his new manga in a standard fashion, similar to how Tokyo Underground's first half had an alternating serialization with Mamotte Shugogetten. In this case, though, it was simply that Onikiri-sama no Hakoiri Musume was serialized at an irregular pace, so despite running for over three years before ending in November 2010 the manga only totaled 22 chapters across four volumes, i.e. only half the potential max number of chapters it could have had. To compensate for this, though, each chapter of the manga was (for the most part) self-contained, so there wasn't any sort of long-form story arc or the like that could have its pacing messed with by hiatuses. Outside of a drama CD in 2009 there was no adaptation of this manga, and after finishing this manga up Akinobu Uraku effectively disappeared from the industry completely, leaving behind no social media, website, blog, etc. whatsoever. While Square-Enix's website does offer digital previews for Onikiri-sama no Hakoiri Musume's individual volumes, neither that nor Tokyo Underground look to be available to read digitally in Japan, leaving Uraku's (relatively short) history in manga more or less to just the physical books he left behind, which in today's manga world is actually kind of shocking. It's understandable for something older, sure, but for a manga that hasn't even turned 20 years old yet it's surprising.
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It's at this point that we reach the second-longest manga that's still running in Monthly Shonen Gangan, as of this overview, though unlike Nagsarate Airantou this actually isn't an original work. Debuting back on April 10, 2004, Toaru Majutsu no Index/A Certain Magical Index by Kazuma Kamachi (story) & Kiyotaka Haimura (art) first appeared as a series of light novels released under Media Works' (now ASCII Media Works) Dengeki Bunko imprint, where it totaled 22 books, with the last one coming out on October 10, 2010, before a sequel series (A Certain Magical Index: New Testament) by the same duo added another 23 books between 2011 & 2019. Today the Toaru Series has become a bit of a massive multimedia franchise, one worthy of a "what rock have you been living under?" response if you're an anime/manga/LN fan that hasn't at least heard of the name, with too many side stories, spin-offs, & adaptations to count, both via anime & manga. For those unfamiliar with the series' general concept, Index stars Toma Kamijo, a "esper" who has the ability to cancel out out espers' powers by touching them, who one day comes across a young teenage nun named Index who has had the knowledge of over 100,000 magical books implanted into her mind. Toma, in turn, winds up becoming the protector for Index as she becomes heavily wanted by forces on both sides of the underground magic/science schism that have been in secret conflict for ages, while his own negation power is of interest to both sides, as well.
How this relates to our overview series is that in May 2007 a manga adaptation of A Certain Magical Index debuted in Monthly Shonen Gangan, with Kazuma Kamachi still credited as the sole writer, though now the art was being done by Chuya Kogino, in what looks to have been their debut; Kamachi & Haimura, themselves, were also relative newbies when Index first debuted back in 2004. From all indications this is a straight adaptation of the original light novel, hence why Kamachi is credited as the writer, and this manga adaptation is still running to this very day, currently totaling over 210+ chapters with 33 collected volumes out in Japan as of February 2026; we won't be seeing the next still-running Shonen Gangan manga until 2016. This makes the Index manga the third-longest manga in Shonen Gangan's entire history, with only Nagasarete Airantou & Violinist of Hameln surpassing it, and while I really can't tell you how much of the light novel the manga has adapted to so far there hasn't been any indication that the manga is anywhere close to ending anytime soon, so it's entirely possible that it'll eventually surpass Hameln's 37 volumes in the future; hell, if it also was to adapt New Testament then it could probably continue on seemingly forever! To no surprise, & much like the light novels & anime that accompany it, the Index manga has been receiving an English release ever since May 2015, with Yen Press continuing to release new volumes about as quickly as it can at this point, without literally catching up to Japan. As of this overview, Volume 32 is currently scheduled for August 25, 2026, putting Yen Press only one volume behind (which is essentially what they prefer); for all intents & purposes they "caught up" back with Volume 24 in September 2021.
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Up next is the debut serialization for Sota Kuwahara, who prior to this was a semi-recurring one-shot mangaka for Square-Enix from early 2005 to January 2007, getting three one-shots published during that time. She then finally made her serialized debut in May 2007 with Kurenai Ouji/Crimson Prince, which told the story of Kojirou Sakura, Prince of the Demon World (& future King) who's told to live in the human world for a while to both study abroad & steal the souls of those who are deemed to be a potential threat to the King. However, after meeting a human girl named Hana Koumeda, Kojirou's initial disdain towards humans starts to change as he slowly falls in love with Hana as they cohabitate together... though Hana also happens to be the reincarnation of the Crimson Maiden, the person who will bring misfortune upon the Demon World & is the primary target for Kojirou to steal the soul of. As one would expect, Crimson Prince was a story of star-crossed lovers, with Kojirou & Hana's relationship growing stronger over the course of the manga while others more than likely try to tear them apart, especially with Hana seemingly being the one who was meant to tear down the Demon World.
Sota Kuwahara continued to serialized Crimson Prince all the way until April 2015, when the series went on indefinite hiatus due to Kuwahara's health, which I'm sure wasn't helped by the fact that she had done other manga for both Houbunsha & Kodansha from 2009 to 2014 while also serializing Crimson Prince. It took a long time, but on September 12, 2020 the final two volumes of Crimson Prince saw release in Japan, which included two brand new chapters that brought the story to a proper conclusion & resulted in a total of 18 volumes. Yen Press would release all of Crimson Prince in English from 2015 to 2021, itself also dealing with the hiatus after catching up in 2018, but much like Corpse Princess this was a digital-only release. Today Sota Kuwahara has seemingly retired from the manga industry after finishing up Crimson Prince, though she apparently still draws the occasional illustration for NicoNico Douga.
When it came to which manga I felt was worth including in this entire overview it was occasionally tricky, because the monthly serialization pace of Shonen Gangan means that, sometimes, manga that ran for a good while in terms of literal time might only have a handful of volumes, so I tried to focus mainly on titles that had at least more than 2+ years of serialization. However, there were a few exceptions that I made for this, and this is one of them. A former assistant for Atsushi Ohkubo during the serialization of Soul Eater, Yoshiki Tonogai would win the Special Grand Prinze at the 5th Square-Enix Manga Awards in 2005 before eventually making their serialized debut in February 2006 with Higurashi: When They Cry - Time Killing Arc, one of the many adaptations of that franchise that Square-Enix published, which ended later that November. After that ended Tonogai would return in August 2007 with their first original serialization, Doubt, a suspense-thriller focused around a cellphone death game called Rabbit Doubt. In this case the manga focused on six people who find themselves locked in a dilapidated building & need to play a real-life version of Rabbit Doubt, where one of the six "rabbits" is actually the "wolf" that's aiming to kill everyone else, and the only way to win is to identify who the "wolf" is & escape the building. Naturally, this results in a mix of the group needing to both work together to figure out who the killer is amongst them while at the same time questioning each others' motives, since everyone is equally as suspicious in this scenario.
Doubt would go on to be very well received, with Tonogai's penchant for telling a suspenseful story that manages to prevent readers from easily guessing the truth working very well. In the end Doubt would only run until March 2009 & total 20 chapters across four volumes, but it made a reputation for Tonogai that they were more than happy to continue on with, and we'll go over Tonogai's follow up series later on in this part. Meanwhile, Yen Press would release Doubt in English in 2013 across two omnibuses, followed by a digital release in 2014. While not a long series in Gangan's history, Doubt definitely is still worth including in this overview as the origin for the kind of death game manga that Yoshiki Tonogai would become known for.
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As I mentioned last time, Masahiro Totsuka was a mangaka that seemingly loved to make manga in a rather non-traditional fashion, like making an entire series in advance before it even debuted or serializing two chapters at a time, and even if it was seemingly made traditionally the man just seemed to like keeping himself busy. I say this because while making Material Puzzle Totsuka also debuted the manga Bamboo Blade over in Young Gangan in 2004 (a series that will have some relevance later in this part, a few entries down the line), and literally two issues before ending Material Puzzle, in Februrary 2008, Totsuka was already debuting his next Shonen Gangan manga, Kiyomura-kun to Suginokouji-kun ro. Yes, it was the return of "KiyoSugi", the aforementioned debut serialization that Totsuka had made the entirety of in advance prior to its debut back in mid-2000, and this wasn't even the first return of this series, as from 2002 to 2005 Totsuka had serialized Kiyomura-kun to Suginokouji-kun yo over in Gangan Powered; again, KiyoSugi yo was made alongside both Material Puzzle & Bamboo Blade. As for KiyoSugi ro, this was like KiyoSugi yo in that it was a direct continuation of the silly & wild lives of Ono Kiyomura & Takachino Suginokouji, two high school students who are also a part of the soccer team... though soccer only rarely plays any real factor in the story, & instead the focus is primarily on Suginokouji pulling Kiyomura into all manner of bizarre situations & shenanigans. Thankfully, by this point Kiyomura has essentially become an unkillable young man after all of Suginokouji's antics.
However, now with other works under his belt, Masahiro Totsuka would start to create more of an overarching & shared world between his works, namely with KiyoSugi & Bamboo Blade. Namely, Muroe High School from Bamboo Blade gets referenced in Chapter 2 of KiyoSugi ro, while Chapter 14 deals with the production of a play-within-a-play that was first introduced in Bamboo Blade, with Totsuka even stating that the story of this production would be continued in Bamboo Blade, which eventually happened in Chapter 95 of that manga. This even spread over to the TV anime adaptation of Bamboo Blade, as both Kiyomura & Suginokouji make a cameo appearance in Episode 16 (& even did the next episode preview, which I'm sure likely confused those who only ever saw the anime), followed by another cameo during the ending sequence of the anime's final episode, where they fight two members of Bamboo Blade's supporting case. Even Material Puzzle featured a visual cameo by Kiyomura, though that was solely done as a reference, not a full crossover. In the end, KiyoSugi ro would be the last & longest part of the entire franchise, running until June 2012 for six volumes, which when combined with KiyoSugi to's four & KiyoSugi yo's two results in a total of 12 volumes. As mentioned last time, Totsuka was also making different two Material Puzzle sequel manga for Shonen Gangan while also making KiyoSugi ro, as well as Bamboo Blade over in Young Gangan... and yet another manga that we'll get to in a moment!
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The month after the debut of KiyoSugi ro saw the debut of the next notable Shonen Gangan manga... and it definitely sounds like a bit of an oddball. There doesn't look to be much info about Tomoyuki Maru's early days, outside of them making their first appearance with the one-shot Olive & Daisy, which appeared in the February 2007 issue of Shonen Gangan; no idea if it won a competition to get published. A year later, in March 2008, Maru made their serialized debut with Tripeace, which starred an "extreme amnesiac" named Nana who travels the world until coming across a horrible tragedy in the small country of Cantor, brought about by war. Disgusted with what he saw, Nana decides to make it his mission to eliminate "war" from the world & joins the war mediation organization Tripeace as a low-ranking member. What makes Tripeace (the manga) such an oddball really comes down to the one skill Nana is talented at, which in turn became his way of dealing with the various missions Tripeace (the organization) sends he & his friends on: Crossdressing. Yeah, this is a manga all about a young man who wants to bring about the end of all wars... by dressing up like a woman, a skill that Nana is so talented at that he can even change his voice perfectly when taking one either of his two usual personae, Nanako & Nanami. I'm not shaming the idea of crossdressing, but it's just such an unexpected concept, is all I'm saying. From what I can tell, Tripeace does go in unexpected directions as the story goes on, especially when it comes to Nana's true identity & how it relates to his fellow operatives at Tripeace, so there definitely looks to be more to the manga than simply a man bringing peace to the world via crossdressing.
Anyway, Tomoyuki Maru would make Tripeace until September 2011, when it came to an end with a total of 11 volumes. Afterwards Maru would seemingly disappear from manga for eight years before returning in 2019 over at Gangan Online, where they've become known mainly for doing manga adaptations of light novels. Currently Tomoyuki Maru is doing the manga adaptation of Hoshokusha-kei Mahou Shojo/Predator-Type Magical Girl, which debuted in late 2024 & is currently at three volumes.
The same issue where Tripeace debuted also saw the debut of another notable Shonen Gangan manga, this one a four-panel series. After graduating from Tokyo Animator College the man known only as "Hiroyuki" first tried working as an animator, but after a brief stint decided to instead make manga, first as a doujin artist. Hiroyuki would take that experience into consideration when he made his professional debut with the manga Doujin Work, which he made for Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara from 2004 to 2008, totaling six volumes; it also received a 12-episode TV anime adaptation in 2007. While finishing up Doujin Work, though, Hiroyuki would also debut for Shonen Gangan in March 2008 with The Comic Artist and His Assistants, which technically debuted first in Issue #3 of Young Gangan earlier that same year, but ran in both magazines (more or less) simultaneously; it later also ran in Gangan Online starting in 2010. This series followed the work life of mangaka Yuki Aito, creator of the (in-universe) manga Hajiratte Cafe Latte that runs in Monthly Shonen Gongon. Alongside Yuki are his three assistants (Sahoto Ashisu, Rinna Fuwa, & Sena Kuroi) & his editor (Mihari Otosuna) who all try to make sure Yuki continues to get his manga out on time... but there's a big problem: Yuki is immensely perverted & seemingly has no concept of personal space, especially when it comes to Ashisu, who often has to deal with the various awkward situations Yuki winds up putting her in.
Yes, The Comic Artist and His Assistants was very much a series focused more on being an ecchi comedy series than a real look at the life of a mangaka, but then again this was a four-panel manga series. In the case of its serialization I imagine this manga worked well in between chapters of more serious, dramatic, & action-packed series, though maybe as a collected release the repeated, perverted humor would start to wear thin a bit. Regardless, The Comic Artist and His Assistants would run for a little over four years before ending in July 2012 & totaling 10 volumes, though from 2013 to 2014 Hiroyuki would make a sequel (The Comic Artist and His Assistants 2) in Young Gangan that added one more volume. A drama CD adaptation would come out in 2011, followed by a TV anime adaptation (comprised of 12-minute episodes) in Spring 2014, plus six OVA episodes later that same year. While the manga has yet to see official English release, Sentai Filmworks did simulcast the anime adaptation, before releasing it on sub-only DVD & BD in 2015. As for Hiroyuki, he'd go on to create other manga that'd receive an anime adaptation, namely Aho Girl & Girlfriend, Girlfriend, while also still making the occasional doujin manga. He also remains in a fun (not really) rivalry with his older sister Koji Megumi, who's also a mangaka, with Hiroyuki making "silly" manga, while Megumi makes "serious" manga.
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We jump ahead to the end of 2008 for our next notable manga (since we already went over the two Material Puzzle sequel manga when covering the OG series), and it's the Square-Enix debut for someone who had been in manga for a good while, by this point. A former assistant to Yowoko Nihonbashi, Yuko Osada (also known as "Yu-Ko Osada" & "Youkow Osada") first made his debut in 1996 & within that first decade was known mainly for the series Toto!: The Wonderful Adventure (which he did with Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine) & the Raoh-focused Fist of the North Star spin-off Ten no Haoh/Legends of the Dark King (which he did with Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch). After finishing those series up Osada would then move over to Shonen Gangan & in December 2008 debuted Run day Burst, a racing manga starring Barrel F. Wrench, a semi-incompetent mechanic who finds himself entering the Run day Burst, a multi-continental race involving around 500 vehicles, with the winner receiving the Daligadrigo, a jewel worth 1 billion gears (a currency that Osada likes to use in his works). Helping Barrel out are Trigger F. Throttle, who acts as the driver, & Cylinder, a female police officer who becomes the bodyguard for Barrel & Trigger due to the RdB being more or less an "anything goes" race with just a single rule: "It must run on tires".
Truly, Run day Burst definitely had a unique element to it by being a wild & crazy racing manga, though the series also became more than a bit notorious for its heavy usage of titillation, in particular a common gag where bare breasts wind up being covered by engine cylinders (&, one would hope, at least one gag where Cylinder herself covered the breasts... because I like a good pun). Run day Burst would run (ha!) in Shonen Gangan until June 2011, where it was moved over to Gangan Online before ending later that November & totaled eight volumes. Yuko Osada would stick with Square-Enix after Run day Burst ended, though this would be his only Shonen Gangan manga. Instead, Osada would move over to Young Gangan for 2012-2013's Kid i Ruck!, which only lasted three volumes, before then moving over to Big Gangan (a spin-off sister magazine to Young Gangan that launched in 2011) for his next series, 2013's Shiori Experience, which he's making with writer Kazuya Machida. As of today Yuko Osada is continuing to make Shiori Experience, which is about a high school English teacher being forced to become a music legend in a year by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix (or else she'll die), & currently it's at 25 volumes. Considering the literal usage of Hendrix I don't ever expect Shiori Experience to see an official English release, while Run day Burst has also never seen an English release, despite not having anything preventing it from being licensable.
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We return, once again, to Masahiro Totsuka with our next notable Shonen Gangan manga... and it's here where we have to first quickly go over Bamboo Blade. Debuting in Young Gangan back in early 2004, Bamboo Blade told the story of an all-girls kendo team at Muroe High School that's formed & led by coach Toraji "Kojiro" Ishida, who mainly only agreed to form a team so that he could beat his old high school chum's kendo team at a rival school & win free food for a year at the friend's family-owned sushi restaurant. Since he was "busy" making both Material Puzzle & KiyoSugi yo at the time, Totsuka was only the writer for Bamboo Blade, so the art was drawn by Aguri Igarashi (who we'll get to in more detail next time...). However, Totsuka clearly still wanted to draw a Bamboo Blade manga of his own, so in February 2009 Shonen Gangan saw the debut of Bamboo Blade B, which Totsuka himself made with his staff at Studio Neko. I should note, however, that with the debut of Bamboo Blade B, Totsuka was now working on four different manga at the same time, as the original Bamboo Blade was still running in Young Gangan (it wouldn't end until mid-2010), while Shonen Gangan was already serializing both KiyoSugi ro (which ended in mid-2012) & Material Puzzle: Zero Kreuz (which would move to Gangan Online in late 2009)! Truly, Masahiro Totsuka seemingly refused to just make manga in any "traditional" way, and even if it was done "traditionally" he seemingly wanted to make as many manga at the same time as inhumanly possible.
Anyway, while the "B" in Bamboo Blade B was intended to mean "Boy" (as in having a male lead), this manga would instead star Yu Okido, a tall first-year female student at Hirin Junior High. Due to her uncommon height Yu is constantly asked by various sports teams at the school to join them, and while she has some kendo experience from when she was a kid she has no interest in joining any sports team. However, after joining the Home Ec Club with her friend Nana Kiba they realize that another club member, Suzuri Kawakami, is also on the girls' kendo team, which in turn eventually leads to Yu joining the team as well. As to be expected, Bamboo Blade B took place in the same world as the OG series (which Totsuka would retroactively refer to as "Bamboo Blade A", for "Atomic Fire Blade"), with Hirin Junior High being the alma mater for some of the cast of the OG series; however, from what I can tell, there wasn't much in the way of direct crossover between the two manga. By the time this manga debuted the OG Bamboo Blade had received a TV anime adaptation (which would later see English release via FUNimation), & the OG manga was only a few months away from its official English release via Yen Press, but Bamboo Blade B would never see either an anime adaptation or an official English release. Meanwhile, in Japan, Bamboo Blade B would see its end in December 2012, totaling 12 volumes (two short of tying the OG manga)... but not before Totsuka would debut two more Bamboo Blade manga! Yeah, in May of 2013 Big Gangan saw the debut of Bamboo Blade C, which looked to be a direct sequel to the OG manga (but was now drawn by Jingu Takao), followed by the debut of BB Deformed (an SD gag spin-off drawn by Studio Neko's Azumi Saki) later that October; both of these would end in the same in the same issue of Big Gangan in mid-2106.
And, with that, we've finally reached the end of Masahiro Totsuka's time with not just Monthly Shonen Gangan but with Square-Enix, in general, as after ending Bamboo Blade C & BB Deformed in mid-2016 he hasn't made another manga for the company since, instead working with various other publishers. Still, there's no doubt that Totsuka is one of the most prolific & important mangaka in the history of Gangan... and quite possibly the most workaholic of them all, too.
We enter into 2009 with the return of another prior mangaka, though this time it's under a new pen name. After finishing the manga adaptation of Star Ocean: Blue Sphere in April 2005, Aoi Mizuki didn't go straight into a new serialization, instead making a couple of one-shots in 2006 & 2007 before being hired to do illustrations for the light novel L: The Presumably Magnificent Legend of Flatland the Swindler in 2008 for Kadokawa, though she only did so for the first two books before being replaced by Yuzu Mizutani. Following that Mizuki decided to return to Square-Enix & Shonen Gangan, though now changing her nom de plume to Shiwo Komeyama for the March 2009 debut of her first original serialization, Bloody Cross. An expansion of the one-shot she made in 2007, Bloody Cross told the story of Tsukimiya & Hinata, two half-blood angels who both have a cross-shaped mark of their bodies, one that brands them as "cursed" & will kill them if the curse is properly activated; the only way to stave off the curse is to drink the blood of demons. The only thing that can remove their marks is "God's Book of Prophecy", and during their search for the Book they get involved in the Crusades, a war between the pure angel Tsuzuki & the fallen angel Satsuki, who are actually brothers, as both are also looking for "God's Legacy" (of which the Book is a part of) so as to become the new God. Meanwhile, there are also two other forces, Arcana & Kamuhaburi, who each want to acquire God's Legacy for their own purposes.
Without a doubt, Bloody Cross was very much a series that played immensely loose with Christian mythos, iconography, & concepts for the sake of telling its own tale. However, that's likely what kept readers interested in the series, allowing it to run for 42 chapters before ending in August 2015 & totaling 12 volumes. While it has yet to receive any sort of adaptation in general (drama CD, anime, etc.) it actually did receive an English release via Yen Press, which put out all 12 volumes physically between late 2013 & later 2016, and during that release a digital version was eventually added as well. This actually isn't the last we'll see of Shiwo Komeyama, as her follow up to Bloody Cross would also be notable in its own right in Shonen Gangan history, and we'll cover that work next time.
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The next manga is an interesting case for this series of overviews, as it actually didn't debut in Shonen Gangan originally. However, unlike Susume! Dynaman from the very first part (which wound up running in two magazines concurrently), this series actually outright moved over to Shonen Gangan completely, where it wound up having a good run in its own right. There doesn't look to be much to say about Junichi Odaka aside from the fact that they had two one-shots published by Square-Enix in the first half of 2005 before making their serialized debut in the Autumn 2005 issue of Gangan Powered (which was quarterly at the time) with Isoshime! Nioka-sensei/Work Hard! Mr. Nioka. This was primarily a four-panel manga starring Takashi Nioka, a man who absolutely hates children & takes joy in tormenting them, so to continue the torment that brings him joy he gets himself a job as a teacher at a local middle school. Unfortunately for Mr. Nioka, his straightforward attitude actually winds up making him popular with both students & teachers, while his handsome face (whenever he takes off his glasses) results in numerous female students & teachers confessing their love to him! Therefore, instead of being the mean teacher that he was hoping to be he's instead become one of the most beloved teachers at the school, not helped by the fact that he's a massive baseball fanatic (which, in turn, means that students who play baseball are actually an exception to his hatred of kids).
Isoshime! Nioka-sensei would run in Gangan Powered, which would switch over to a bimonthly publication in 2006, all the way until the magazine itself was cancelled in early 2009 (just like what happened to You & Me.). All but three of the series running in Gangan Powered were allowed to continue in other Square-Enix magazines, with Isoshime! Nioka-sensei moving over to Shonen Gangan, with it first appearing there in April 2009. Two more Gangan Powered manga would join this one in the same magazine (Artelier Collection & Jushin Enbu: Hero Tales, the latter being another series Hiromu Arakawa was making alongside FMA), but neither would continue to run for as long as Isoshime! Nioka-sensei, which continued on until October 2013 & totaled eight volumes; technically, it ran for longer in Shonen Gangan than it did in Gangan Powered. While primarily a four-panel manga, though, Odaka did make two exceptions where they told a traditional, story-based chapter, one of which was in the August 2010 issue of Shonen Gangan. After finishing Isoshime! Nioka-sensei, Junichi Odaka would make a few more one-shots for Shonen Gangan, but in 2015 moved over to Young Gangan, where they've since made two more serialized manga, the second of which (Sorehodo Himade wa Arimasen./I'm Not That Idle.) has been running since early 2018.
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We return one last time to writer Kyo Shirodaira, who had already made a name for himself in Shonen Gangan with both Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning & Record of a Fallen Vampire, with what would be his last major work for the magazine; not his last manga, in general, but his last notable one. This time around it was Zetsuen no Tempest/Blast of Tempest, which Shirodaira co-wrote with newcomer Arihide Sano, while the artwork was done by Ren Saizaki, a former student of Reborn!'s Akira Amano who previously had a couple of one-shots published in both Akamaru Jump in 2005 & Shonen Gangan in 2007. Blast of Tempest told the story of Yoshino Takigawa, whose childhood friend Mahiro Fuwa had his stepsister Aika murdered one year prior. Mahiro was then contacted by Hakaze Kusaribe, the former leader of her clan of sorcerers who now wishes to prevent her brother Samon from awakening of the "Tree of Exodus", which can bring about destruction, and in return Hakaze will help figure out who killed Aika. Yes, while Mahiro & Hakaze are technically the "main" characters, the manga actually follows the perspective of Yoshino, and this was done as part of Blast of Tempest's larger allusions & homages to the works of William Shakespeare, namely Hamlet & The Tempest, with the main characters all being direct references to the primary characters of both plays
Compared to both Spiral & Record of a Fallen Vampire, Blast of Tempest was definitely much more action-focused than mystery-focused, though there was still a focus on mystery when it came to the death of Aika & what exactly the Tree of Exodus (& the similar Tree of Genesis that Hakaze was protecting) is truly capable of. In the end, Blast of Tempest would be the middle-length of Kyo Shirodaira's three major works with Shonen Gangan, ending in November 2013 after 44 chapters (plus six bonus chapters) across 10 volumes. After this ended Shirodaira would make one more manga for Shonen Gangan, 2016-2017's Amagai-san is Surprisingly Ordinary (which reunited him with Spiral's Eita Mizuno), but beyond that has worked mostly with Kodansha, primarily with the series In/Spectre. As for Arihide Sano, they'd write one more manga with Shonen Gangan (2017-2018's Good Morning, Beethoven) before seemingly leaving the industry altogether, while Ren Saizaki has seemingly never been seen again after Blast of Tempest's finale. As for Blast of Tempest itself, it'd actually first see English release via its 2012-2013 TV anime adaptation, which was first simulcasted via Crunchyroll before being given a physical release via Aniplex of America. The manga would eventually see official English release in 2023 when Square-Enix added it to its Manga Up! digital service, though it still hasn't seen any sort of physical release in English, as of this overview.
Timing can be a funny thing, and this next manga is a perfect example of that. In October 2005 the late Stan Lee, legendary comic book author & co-creator of too many iconic superheroes to name, publicly stated his interest in producing an anime, and Masahiko Minami (co-founder of anime studio Bones) responded back, resulting in a four-year process that eventually resulted in the creation of "a new superhero for the 21st Century"; during that same time, Stan Lee would also team up with Shaman King's Hiroyuki Takei to create the manga Karakuridoji Ultimo. So in September 2009 Monthly Shonen Gangan saw the debut of the manga Heroman by Tamon Ota, who dated back to the mid-90s but had mostly just drawn one-shots (& a one-volume manga adaptation of Fatal Fury Special). This told the story of Joey Jones, a mild-manner teenage kid living in Center City who wishes to become a "hero" like the toy robot Heybo is meant to represent. Joey manages to find a broken-down Heybo (since he couldn't buy one himself), and when it gets struck by a bolt of lightning the Heybo turns into a giant robot, one that Joey names Heroman & can control via a gauntlet over his left hand, which also grants Joey powers of his own, like super speed & force fields. The timing is perfect, too, as Earth is about to be invaded by insectoid aliens called the Skrugg, who were accidentally summoned to Earth by Joey's teacher, Prof. Denton. The manga would run until November 2011, totaling five volumes.
That 100% sounds like a Stan Lee creation for sure, but I did state that Lee's intention was to create an anime, and that would happen on April 1, 2010 when the Heroman TV anime debuted in Japan, which told a similar (but still different) story as Ota's manga across 26 episodes. However, here's where "timing" comes into play, because during the interim between the Heroman manga's debut & the Heroman anime's debut something major happened: Marvel became the property of Disney on December 31, 2009. Therefore, while not originally intended to be so, Disney became the owner of the Heroman IP, and while Crunchyroll was able to simulcast the anime as it aired (& has managed to continue offering it) it may likely never receive a physical release due to Disney. However, the manga did manage to see a physical English release by way of Vertical, which released all five volumes from late 2012 to mid-2013. Vertical seemingly was able to get away with licensing the manga due to Disney not really enforcing its ownership over Heroman until it was already too late to stop the manga deal from closing, but the chances of it ever being re-released are slim, especially since Marvel pretty much only works exclusively with Viz today when it comes to manga, not Square-Enix.
Like I said, timing can be a funny thing.
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And with that we now move into 2010, the year where Fullmetal Alchemist saw its end later that July &, with it, the end of what I'm arbitrarily calling Shonen Gangan's "Rebirth Era". However, there were two more notable manga to cover that debuted prior to FMA's final chapter, and we begin with the return of Yoshiki Tonogai. After ending Doubt in March 2009, Tonogai took about a year off (similar to what he had done after finishing Higurashi: Time Killing Arc) before returning to Shonen Gangan in February 2010 with his third serialization, and the one that'd be his longest, Judge. Similar to Doubt, Judge was another death game manga, though not directly related to his prior work in terms of story or shared universe, in this case telling the story of Hiroyuki Sakurai, a young man who has a crush on his childhood friend Hikari. However, Hikari is dating Hiro's older brother Atsuya, but when Hiro confesses his feelings to Hikari it messes with a planned date she had with Atsuya, the result of which indrectly results in Atsuya being hit by a truck, killing him. Hiro is racked with guilt over the moment, and two years later finds himself handcuffed in a dark building with a rabbit mask over his head... alongside seven other people with similar animal-themed heads and a dead boy, all of which are in a courtroom. Each of the animal heads (&, in turn, the people) represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins (gluttony, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and anger), with Hiro's rabbit representing envy, & they are tasked by a mysterious person, represented by a stuffed toy, that every 12 hours these people will have to take a vote to see who will be sacrificed, until only four survivors remain.
Much as before, Judge was a thriller that delved into the darkness within the human heart, only this time the focus was on what each of the "players" had done in the past that was deemed truly sinful & worthy of punishment by the person running the "game"; plus now there was the whole courtoom/judge, jury, & executioner aesthetic to the proceedings. This time around, though, Tonogai took more of his time to tell this story, resulting in a ~2.5-year serialization that didn't end until September 2012 after 32 chapters across six volumes, making this Tonogai's longest single manga to date. After another year-long hiatus Tonogai would return to Shonen Gangan again with yet another (somewhat) death game-focused manga, 2013's Secret, which focused on a group of high school students who survived a bus crash that killed the rest of their class, though their counselor says that three of them were directly responsible & will turn over his evidence in a week if the guilty parties don't confess. I'm not covering this one in greater detail mainly because of its similar themes as Doubt & Judge, as well as the simple fact that Secret was shorter than either of its spiritual predecessors, only totaling three volumes. Tonogai would make one last return to Shonen Gangan in 2016 with Are You Alive, Honda-kun?, a romantic comedy that took place during a zombie apocalypse & also totaled three volumes before ending in early 2018. After that Tonogai left Square-Enix & would make his next manga, 2019's Dead Company (another death game manga), over at Gentosha's Comic Boost. After finishing that series, though, Yoshiki Tonogai has seemingly more or less retired from manga, though he did contribute to an official Higurashi manga anthology book in 2021, calling back to where he got his start. As for English releases, Yen Press would release both Judge & Secret from 2013 to 2015 (just as it had previously done with Doubt & Higurashi: Time Killing Arc), while TokyoPop would bring over Dead Company between 2023 & 2024; Are You Alive, Honda-Kun? remains without an official English release, however.
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Finally (& mercifully), we end this look at Shonen Gangan's "Rebirth Era" with one last manga, and is yet another debut serialization, just two months prior to the end of FMA, which itself was a debut serialization; fitting, too, since FMA was cited as an influential work for this mangaka. Unlike numerous people before them, Shinta Fujimoto didn't seem to have a one-shot that won an award (or even just runner-up position), so their first appearance in manga looks to have been the May 2010 debut of Red Raven, a series where mafia rule has taken over the country the story takes place in. To deal with the increased violence, the government establishes the titular Red Raven, an organization that aims to put an end to the mafia's control by ruthlessly executing their enemies. However, in opposition to Red Raven is a group called the White Mafia, which brings in weapons known as Sccaggs that only make things more difficult for Red Raven. The manga's focal point is Andy, a 15-year old newcomer to Red Raven who was previously experimented on by the now-destroyed Sccaggs Family (the namesake of the weapons White Mafia sells), turning him into a human Sccagg, & he has made it his mission to destroy any & all remaining Sccaggs. Influenced by the likes of FMA & Soul Eater, as well as non-Gangan manga like King of Bandits Jing & Dogs: Bullets & Carnage, Red Raven definitely seemed to have an interestingly unique motif within Shonen Gangan, what with its "the mafia runs the land" concept & more than wild arsenal of weaponry; Andy himelf used a guillotine, for example.
That's likely what allowed Fujimoto to make the manga for about a good 3.5 years, with Red Raven ending in December 2013 after 44 chapters across nine volumes. Following that, Fujimoto would move over to Young Gangan, with his follow up being the (immensely fitting) second manga adaptation of light novel series (& TV anime) Baccano! from 2015 to 2017. After finishing that Fujimoto would then debut the manga Dead Mount Death Play in Young Gangan, which is written by Baccano!'s Ryohgo Narita & still running to this day, currently at 16 volumes; it also received a TV anime adaptation in 2023. While both Shinta Fujimoto's Baccano! manga & Dead Mount Death Play have received English release by Yen Press ever since 2018, Red River has yet to be licensed for English release, though it was released in both Indonesia & France back in the 2010s.
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Red Raven would be the very last manga to debut in Shonen Gangan before Fullmetal Alchemist's final chapter was serialized in the July 2010 issue, though in that very issue the series Sky Blue by Daiki Kobayashi would debut alongside FMA's finale; unfortunately, Sky Blue only lasted a little over 1.5 years, ending in March 2012. As I said at the beginning of Part 1 of this "era" of Shonen Gangan, Fullmetal Alchemist kind of became the representative work when it came to Enix needing to redefine itself after the Enix Family Dispute, a manga that Enix (&, later, Square-Enix) could use as a beacon to show that, despite the troubles that came about from the founding of Mag Garden (& later what would become Ichijinsha), the company was still sticking with manga & could continue to offer titles that would bring in readers. Sure, early on in this "Rebirth Era" there was still an appeal to the past with the return of works like Papuwa, Flash! Kimengumi, & more KiyoSugi, as well as the continued appearance of video game adaptations, but as time went on Shonen Gangan would re-establish a new catalog of original works that helped keep the magazine unique against the competition. Not just that, but this "era" still lives on, in some way, via the continued serialization of both Nagasarete Airantou & A Certain Magical Index's manga adaptation, which is definitely impressive.
When we return in May we'll finish up with the last two parts, which show how Monthly Shonen Gangan responded to a magazine without Fullmetal Alchemist (&, later, Soul Eater & Corpse Princess), as well as how the magazine looked from the entirety of the 2010s to the early 2020s, including a look at what are currently its other actively long-running manga.
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