To say that the loss of Arakawa hurt Monthly Shonen Gangan would be putting things lightly.
To be honest, I didn't exactly want to define an entire "era" of Shonen Gangan as being "Post-Arakawa"... but the numbers don't lie. According to the All Japan Publisher's and Editor's Association/AJPEA estimations, Fullmetal Alchemist's popularity helped bring Shonen Gangan's readership to around 370,000 by 2004 (more or less holding on to what the magazine had back in the 90s, if not a bit more), and by 2010 that number had dropped to around 150,000; to be fair, all manga magazines have seen a downturn in physical readership, due to digital's rise. However, the AJPEA also estimated that by 2015 Shonen Gangan's was down to just 20,000 copies, showing just how popular & essential Fullmetal Alchemist seemingly was for readers. It is no exaggeration to say that the loss of Fullmetal Alchemist was Shonen Gangan's equivalent to when Shonen Jump lost Dragon Ball & Slam Dunk in the mid-90s, and while there were still a few big titles around in the magazine to carry some of that load, most notably Soul Eater, they weren't going to stick around forever. Much like what had happened with the Enix Family Dispute about a decade prior, Square-Enix needed to find new hit manga that would be able to keep Shonen Gangan going strong (or, at least, strong enough) in a "Post-Arakwara" world... so what stood up most notably in the first half of the 2010s? Let's find out.
Since I already brought up Soul Eater Not! last time, which debuted in February 2011, we instead begin the "Post-Arakawa Era" of Shonen Gangan with the return of artist Eita Mizuno, who was last seen working with writer Kyo Shirodaira for Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning & its spin-off Spiral Alive. Following the end of Spiral Alive in June 2008, Mizuno took a bit of a break from making new manga, outside of a one-shot that appeared in the October 2010 issue of Shonen Gangan, before making her return with a new serialization... which was an adaptation of an Umineko: When They Cry game, so let's go over that series first. Founded in 2000, the doujin circle 07th Expansion is headed up by someone known solely as "Ryukishi07" & first made waves in 2002 with Higurashi: When They Cry, a murder mystery visual novel made up of various "Episodes" that themselves are each split up into two halves, The "Question Arc" & the "Answer Arc", with each "arc" making up its own entry in the series. To keep things simple, Higurashi became a smash hit, resulting in all manner of adaptations (drama CDs, manga, anime, etc.), & in 2007 07th Expansion released Umineko: When They Cry, a new murder mystery visual novel that followed a similar release plan as Higurashi; 07th Expansion is currently in the middle of its third series of games, Ciconia: When They Cry, which debuted in 2019.
Much like Higurashi before it, Umineko: When They Cry would also be a smash hit & receive all manner of adaptations, and in late 2007 Square-Enix debuted a manga adaptation of Umineko, naturally starting with Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch. This adaptation was done by Kei Natsumi (of Ou-sama no Mimi wa Okonomimi fame) & debuted in Gangan Powered, before eventually moving over to Gangan Joker. Successive Umineko Episode adaptations would follow, drawn by a variety or artists, but none of them would appear in Monthly Shonen Gangan until May 2011 with the debut of Umineko Ep 7: Requiem of the Golden Witch drawn by Eita Mizuno, which was more of a giant flashback that detailed the history of the Ushiromiya Family that led to the murder mystery on Rokkenjima that Umineko focused on. In fact, the main character of this part of the story wasn't even the usual Battler, but instead was a detective named Willard H. Wright. To be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no familiarity with 07th Expansion's visual novels so I am absolutely not the person to really detail anything about this manga adaptation of Requiem of the Golden Witch. What I can say, though, is that this would wind up being one of the longest manga adaptations of an Umineko Episode story arc, as it ran until April 2015 & totaled nine volumes, tying Kei Natsumi's adaptation of Episode 8 that ran in Gangan Joker from 2012 to 2015. As mentioned last time, Eita Mizuno would then reunite with Kyo Shirodaira for 2015-2017's Amagai-san is Surprisingly Ordinary, and while Shirodaira would leave Shonen Gangan following that Mizuno would stick with the magazine, and we'll get to their follow-up next time, as it's one of the manga that's still running in Shonen Gangan, as of this overview.
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Up next is a neat little entry, for a variety of reasons. Ritz Kobayashi first made their debut with a one-shot in an issue of MediaWorks' Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh in April 2002, before making their serialized debut over in Mag Garden's Monthly Comic Blade with 2003's Fatalizer... which only made it five chapters in before being cancelled. After two more one-shots in 2005, one of which based on the MMORPG Seal Online (which Kobayashi was an uber-fan of), Ritz Kobayashi moved over to Square-Enix & debuted the mahjong manga Saki over in Young Gangan in early 2006. Saki would become a massive hit & is still running in Young Gangan to this very day, where it's currently at 27 volumes, so it didn't take long for Square-Enix to turn Saki in to a proper franchise made up of various spin-off manga, starting in 2011. That year saw the debut of the four-panel gag manga Saki Biyori by Saya Kiyoshi that ran in Young Gangan alongside the main manga, where it ran until 2018, while the September 2011 issue of Shonen Gangan saw the debut of Saki Achiga-hen: episode of side-A, with Bamboo Blade's Aguri Igarashi doing the artwork. Much like how Bamboo Blade B took place in the middle-school alma mater of some of the main series' cast, Saki Achiga-hen takes place at Achiga Girls' Academy, the school where Saki's Nodoka Haramura once attended, & stars Shizuno Takakamo, who becomes inspired to start a mahjong club at the school after seeing Nodoka compete in tournaments in the main series, with this spin-off detailing the tournaments that Shizuno & her friends compete in.
Similar to how the main Saki manga received a 25-episode TV anime adaptation in 2009 that was simulcasted outside of Japan by Crunchyroll, Saki Achiga-hen would receive its own 12-episode TV anime adaptation in 2012 that was also simulcasted by Crunchyroll, before later receiving an additional four episodes in 2013 & an OVA in 2015 for a total of 17 episodes. Unfortunately, though, right as those additional four episodes of the anime were coming out the Saki Achiga-hen manga would go on hiatus after the April 2013 issue of Shonen Gangan, leaving the manga unfinished at six volumes. The reason for this was seemingly solely because Ritz Kobayashi & Aguri Igarashi decided to debut an entirely different Saki spin-off manga in Big Gangan, Shinohayu: The Dawn of Age, that was a prequel taking place a decade before Saki & detailed the prior generation's tournaments. Eventually, though, the decision was made to revive Saki Achiga-hen & in the April 2020 issue of Big Gangan the story of Shizuno & her friends continued on, where it's still running to this day (though seemingly irregularly), alongside Shinohayu, with an additional three volumes having since come out for a current total of nine volumes.
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Up next is a rather short entry, as there simply doesn't look to be that much information online about this next work, and despite it's nearly three-year serialization it's actually rather short. However, the September 2011 issue of Shonen Gangan saw the debut of Peace*2, which I imagine is meant to be written as "Peace2" due to the manga covers stating that the title is technically pronounced "Peace Peace", i.e. "Peace Squared". This was the serialized debut of mangaka Kei Narumi (not to be confused with Kei Natsumi), who had first made their debut with the one-shot The Daily Life of the Katsuragi Family, which had won the 2010 Autumn Cup & got published in an issue of Fresh Gangan. As for Peace*2, this told the story of Mamiya, a high school student who is bad at studying but loves to write erotic novels as a hobby. To help get inspiration for her work she befriends a male classmate named Segawa, who's known for his excellent grades but is also known for his love of dirty jokes. Yes, Peace*2 looks to have been a romcom with a habit of occasionally getting a little dirty-minded with its recurring cast, who all look to have some obsession with the erotic, dirty, or even sadomasochistic. As for why, despite running until July 2014, it only wound up totaling three volumes, looking up some previews from the digital option over in Japan Peace*2 looks to be a four-panel manga, which makes perfect sense for a concept like this, i.e. quick & dirty (ha!) humor that was likely placed in between chapters of more serious-minded & long-form manga in each issue, but when collected together don't actually amount to much, in terms of page length.
After ending Peace*2, Kei Narumi would make two more one-shots in 2015, both of which appeared in Monthly Shonen Gangan, before making a second serialized work, Azumi-san wa Taosenai, which ran in Gangan Online & dealt with coworkers at a department store that also ran a regular rooftop hero show; it was also a four-panel manga & totaled three volumes.
We now jump ahead from late 2011 to mid-2013! It's definitely a wild thing to do for an overview series like this, but to put it simply... there was really nothing truly worth of note that debuted between September 2011 & May 2013. There were some anime & game adaptations (Guilty Crown, an adaptation of the Index movie, two different Final Fantasy Type-0 manga, & Robotics;Notes), but beyond those almost none of the new manga that debuted in Shonen Gangan during that time actually wound up being what I'd consider "long-runners" for the magazine, with the exception of Renaissance Eve & Kuro no Tantei, which both achieved two-year runs; that being said, I never stated that this was a definitive & complete overview of Shonen Gangan. Really, this period of time was mostly the magazine being stuck in a holding pattern, relying most on what waws already established, but luckily things would change in 2013. Therefore, the next notable Shonen Gangan manga would debut in May 2013, & that was Chichi to Ko/Father and Son by a person who went solely by the mononym Uchiko. This told the everyday life of Yoichi Hisaka, a former-delinquent-turned-high-school-teacher who is raising his five-year-old kindergartener son Sho, whose penchant for breaking things have earned him the nickname "The God of Destruction". Yoichi's wife (& Sho's mother) Mami is alive & well, but is notorious for never staying in a single place for longer than an hour (& has an extremely poor sense of direction, so she often finds herself lost somewhere in the world), so Yoichi is more or less left to raise Sho by himself; despite this, Sho only refers to his father as "Yo-san", while his barely-around mother is "Mommy".
It's easy to tell that Father and Son was a simple slice-of-life comedy detailing the trials & tribulations of (what amounts to) a single father having to raise his child, while also showing the lives of Yoichi & Sho at their respective high school & nursery school, as well as their extended family & neighbors at points. Considering the pseudonym "Uchiko" was written in a way to could be read as "My Child", I imagine the creator of this manga was likely going off of their own personal experiences, to some extent. To be fair, it's a bit of a novel thing to serialize in a shonen manga magazine, but Gangan has always tended to have an older readership than its competition, and that's probably what allowed Father and Son to run all the way until April 2018 & total 10 volumes; it also was serialized over at Gangan Online for most of the manga's run, which I'm sure also helped. As for what Uchiko did after Father and Son ended... there doesn't look to be anything else, with Uchiko disappearing from manga after telling the story of Yoichi & Sho. At least Father and Son did receive an official English option via Crunchyroll Manga back in the second half of the 2010s that covered the entire manga (something that CR Manga didn't always offer), though a physical release never happened here.
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After the debut of Father and Son in May 2013 there literally wouldn't be another new manga debuting in Shonen Gangan until five months later, in October. However, that lack of new titles would be made up for by the October 2013 issue featuring three, though we'll only be focusing on one of them. Sure, there was Toaru Nichijou no Index-san/A Certain Ordinary Life with Ms. Index, a spin-off of A Certain Magical Index that ran until June 2016, but the longest-running of the October 2013 debuts was actually Kyou no Kerberos/Today's Cerberus, the Gangan debut of Ato Sakurai. A former assistant to The Law of Ueki's Tsubasa Fukuchi, Sakurai made her serialized debut back in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 2008 with the series Artist Acro, which had a respectable run 2+-year run (which included being moved over to digital serialization in Club Sunday) that ended in 2010 & a total of nine volumes. Following that Sakurai moved over to Square-Enix with a couple of one-shots that got published in Shonen Gangan, the second of which in June 2013 would wind up being expanded on for Today's Cerberus, the story of Chiaki Mikado, who as a little boy was bitten by the mythical three-headed beast Cerberus, who mistook Chiaki's attempt to rescue it as an attack, which resulted in a piece of his soul being lost. Eight years later, Chiaki is now a listless high school student when one day Cerberus returns to him, having been shipped over by his father. However, instead of the three-headed dog it's usually known as, Cerberus now takes the form of a teenage girl with three different personae: The innocent (& kind of ditzy) Kuro, the tsundere & delinquent Shirogane, & the apprehensive & mask-adorning Roze (which also happens to be the "head" that bit Chiaki all those years ago).
Yes, once again Shonen Gangan had a romantic comedy manga where a seemingly normal(-ish) teenage boy winds up being surrounded by multiple ladies, just as we saw with the likes of Mamotte Shugogetten & UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie before it; hey, Shonen Jump is known for its many battle manga, so this is Shonen Gangan's recurring genre, I guess. Over time the three "heads" of Cerberus would find a way to each have their own bodies, with Kuro being the "main" girl that Chiaki enters a proper relationship with. Today's Cerberus would run until June 2018 & total 12 volumes, outlasting both Valkyrie & Shugogetten (at least, the initial series for the latter), and while it never received any sort of adaptation (or at least never an anime) it did get a complete official English release by Yen Press from 2015 to 2019, both physically & digitally.
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Up next is an admittedly bizarre one, as we'll be going over a spin-off of a long-running manga from the Gangan family that was still running when this spin-off debuted in Shonen Gangan, though since we're focusing on Shonen Gangan that means that we'll be covering the spin-off first, as the main series it spun off from wouldn't move over to Shonen Gangan until just shy of a year after the spin-off debuted in Shonen Gangan first... got it? Satsuki Yoshino first made her mark in 2005 by winning the Encouragement Award as part of Square-Enix's monthly New GI Gangan Cup for a one-shot, which then led to her debuting Seiken Densetsu: Princess of Mana, a manga-only entry in Koichi Ishii's beloved Mana Series of action RPGs, in Gangan Powered in 2006. While making Princess of Mana, Yoshino also continued to make one-shots, and in April 2008 a one-shot called Barakamon ran in Gangan Powered. Barakamon would be very popular & get two additional one-shots in October 2008 & April 2009, and around the same time the third one-shot was ready to be published Barakamon would debut in Gangan Online as a proper serialization. Barakamon would continue to be immensely popular as a digital serialization, so it was decided that a print serialization would also happen... but not before Yoshino decided to instead debut a spin-off via print first!
Yes, what we're focusing on first is the November 2013 debut of Handa-kun in Shonen Gangan, which was a prequel that detailed the life of Barakmon's main character Seishu "Sei" Handa back when he was a shy second year high school student, six years prior to the events of the main series. Compared to Barakamon, which was more of a laid-back slice-of-life series, Handa-kun was pretty much a gag comedy manga, with a main gag being that (despite his shy demeanor) Sei had a literal "Handa Army" that was obsessed with him & did everything they could to protect Sei. Satsuki Yoshino made Handa-kun while also making Barakamon, with both eventually being in the same exact magazine (we'll get to that in a bit, don't worry), but eventually called it an end for the prequel series in July 2016... before the very next issue began what Yoshino called Handa-kun Bangai-hen/Extra Edition, which ran from August to October that same year & gave the manga a total of seven volumes. Yen Press would release all of Handa-kun from early 2016 to late 2017, both physically & digitally. Similar to Barakamon, Handa-kun would eventually get a TV anime adaptation during the Summer of 2016, which got both a simulcast stream & physical release from FUNimation. As for Barakamon itself... give it another three entries.
After Handa-kun's debut (plus, Yoshiki Tonogai's Secret, too) the next new manga to debut in Shonen Gangan wouldn't happen until half a year later, but it'd be one that would be a rather long-running one, at least when compared to most other manga in the magazine. Using a nickname she's had ever since she was a child, "Mochi" allegedly first made her mark in manga at age 17 (i.e. either late 2000 or early 2001) when she won an award at the 3rd Enix New Century Manga Award for a one-shot she made while attending the now-defunct Tokyo Game Designers Academy. This then led to Mochi making her serialized debut in November 2001 with Papampa over in Monthly Stencil... which had recently been devastated by the Enix Family Dispute's mass exodus of mangaka, and when Stencil itself was shuttered after the September 2003 issue Papampa was one of the titles that did not see a new life elsewhere. Still, Mochi continued working with Square-Enix & eventually saw a major success in 2007 when she debuted Cuticle Detective Inaba in G Fantasy, which would run for a solid decade before ending in 2017, & in 2013 received a TV anime adaptation. While serializing Inaba, though, Mochi decided to also debut a new series in Shonen Gangan in May 2014, which became The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horns. This manga starred Arsenio Grazia Valderas, a half-demon servant of the herbal witch Betty whose own master, the Great Witch Vivian, is suffering from an incurable disease. Wanting to make Betty happy again, Arsenio decides to head to the Demon King's castle in order to gather the ingredients that can create a mythical cure for Vivian's disease, and over the course of the story finds allies who accompany him on his journey.
For what honestly sounds like a rather straightforward & simple story, The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horns would actually have a notably lengthy serialization, likely due to Mochi's habit of serializing multiple manga at once, as while making Cuticle Detective Inaba she also made ZOO ~Kemono Kingdom~ for Kodansha's Monthly Aria, and after finishing Inaba she then debuted 2018's Recuerd of the Theocracy for P Fantasy, G Fantasy's pixiv-based offshoot. Still, The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horns would itself be a long series, eventually ending in January 2022 after 93 chapters across 16 volumes, second only to Inaba's 19 volumes (+ 1 fan book), making it one of the longest manga to have debuted during this "Post-Arakawa Era" of Shonen Gangan. This would be Mochi's only manga to ever appear in Shonen Gangan, though she's still working with Square-Enix to this day, as she's currently making the manga 404 Demons over at G Fantasy. While a physical English release for The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horns has yet to happen, the manga was eventually added to Square-Enix's digital Manga Up! service in 2024.
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The same issue that saw the debut of The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horns also saw the proper serialized debut for what was originally a series of one-shots that dated back three years prior. In 2002 Karino Takatsu started putting out four-panel manga via her own website under the name Gahako, and that eventually led to her getting a professional manga job with Square-Enix in 2004 when she debuted the manga Working!! (or Wagnaria!!, in some official English releases) in Young Gangan, which was a four-panel manga about the unusual employees of the family restaurant chain Wagnaria. Then, in 2007, Takatsu also debuted Servant × Service in Young Gangan's "Special Issue" (before eventually moving over to Big Gangan), a four-panel manga about civil service workers in a health & welfare department; both Working!! & Servant × Service would receive their own TV anime adaptations. While working on both of those series, then, Takatsu would have a one-shot published in Shonen Gangan titled Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai, with the title being a pun as while it could literally be translated as What Do You Want From My Girlfriend?, the "Yokai" part of the title is also meant to be a reference to the fact that this story took place in a school where humans & yokai co-exist. Therefore, a more accurate translation that captures the intended pun would probably be something like What Do You Want From My Ghoulfriend?... yes, I know, it's a terrible pun, but it's the closest thing I could think of that worked.
Anyway, Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai starred Atsushi Fukuzumi, a human high school student who one day confesses to his yokai classmate Muku Shiroishi, who's a "snow spirit" (i.e. a yuki-onna). However, Muku literally melts when her emotions get too "warm", so she instead asks if they can just be friends, which Atsushi agrees to. As stated, this manga was initially a four-panel manga one-shot that appeared in October 2011, but it was so well received that Takatsu would make an additional four one-shots in December 2012, January 2013, February 2013, & finally April 2014. Around the time of that fifth one-shot Takatasu was also starting to wind down on both Working!! (its initial run, at least) & Servant × Service, so in the May 2014 issue of Shonen Gangan Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai debuted as a proper monthly serialization, allowing the story of Atsushi & Muku's relationship to continue growing from simple friendship to proper romance, all while they & their friends find themselves is all manner of situations, both comedic as well as the occasional serious moment, like occasionally having to deal with exorcists & the like, with Atsushi protecting Muku & her yokai family. In the end, Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai would run until May 2020 & total seven volumes, and in true Karino Takatsu fashion she also made the manga Dustbox 2.5 for Young Gangan while also making this series. After finishing Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai, though, Takatsu would debut another series for Shonen Gangan... and we'll get to that at the end of the next, & final, part of this entire overview series. Yen Press would give Ore no Kanojo ni Nanika Yokai an official English release, where they went with the wildly different (but still fitting) name of My Monster Girl's Too Cool for You (pun!), publishing the entire series as a digital-only simulpublication starting in 2015; there is no physical release, or even a collected digital release, in English.
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OK, so now's the point where we go over Barakamon by Satsuki Yoshino. As mentioned earlier, Yoshino got her start back in 2006 making the Princess of Mana manga, before getting the initial one-shot for Barakmon published in Gangan Powered in April 2008. Good reception then resulted in two more one-shots being published in October 2008 & April 2009, and with Gangan Powered shuttering right as that April 2009 issue got published a proper serialization for Barakmon then started up in Gangan Online around that same time, i.e. February 2009. Barakamon told the story of Seishu Handa, a young but extremely talented calligrapher who finds himself in hot water when he punches out the elderly curator at an exhibition that included his work, because the curator dismissed Seishu's work as being too much "like a textbook". Afterwards, Seishu's father decides to send him off on a retreat to Goto Island in Kyushu, the southernmost part of Japan, and shortly after arriving Seishu meets a young girl named Naru Kotoishi, who continually visits Seishu to play games with. The focus of the manga was to show Seishu changing from an easily angered young man prone to violence to a much calmer & more reasonable person, with both Naru & the more laidback environment of Goto Island acting as the vectors that allowed Seishu to becoming a better person.
Barakamon's success would result in the creation of a prequel manga called Handa-kun, which debuted in Shonen Gangan in November 2013, but in August 2014 the decision was made for Barakamon itself to also start being serialized in Shonen Gangan, alongside Handa-kun; it also continued to run in Gangan Online, as well. Barakamon would eventually come to its end (in both Gangan Online & Shonen Gangan) in January 2019 after 134 chapters across 18 volumes, with Satsuki Yoshino deciding to stick with Shonen Gangan for her next two serializations, 2019-2020's Yoshinozuikara & 2020-2022's Eighteen. After both of those came to an end, however, Yoshino decided to revive Barakamon exclusively in Shonen Gangan for one last mini-run that ran from May to October 2023, adding an additional nine chapters that gave the manga a final total of 145 chapters across 19 volumes. Yen Press would release the Barakamon manga from 2014 to 2019, covering all 18 volumes (plus a bonus "18+1" book featuring gag scenarios), but has yet to release Volume 19. Meanwhile, the 2014 TV anime adaptation of Barakamon was co-simulcasted in English by Crunchyroll & FUNimation, while the latter also released it on home video.
We move into 2015 for our next notable work, and it's another new debut. Makoto Morishita first made their entrance in manga back in 2011, while still attending Osaka University of Arts, by winning the runner-up prize for a one-shot in the 17th Square-Enix Manga Awards. Morishita then made another one-shot that appeared in the February 2013 issue of Shonen Gangan, & looks to have either made a follow up to that one-shot for the December 2013 issue, or it was simply reprinted due to popularity. Regardless, Morishita would finally make their serialized debut (I imagine after graduating) in February 2015 with Im - Great Priest Imhotep (or simply Im in Japan), an expanded take on that 2013 one-shot that starred the titular 27th Century BC high priest, chancellor, & polymath of the Old Egyptian Kingdom, now resurrected as a young man in modern day Japan. Yes, this is the same Imhotep that was the namesake of the iconic Universal Monster from the 1932 film The Mummy (played by Boris Karloff), its 1999 remake (played by Arnold Vosloo), & the 2001 sequel to said remake (also featuring Vosloo). However, "Im" in this manga is no villain, but rather is the hero who's made it his mission to hunt down Magai, dangerous beings that impersonate the gods so as to cause destruction. Im also winds up befriending Hinome Hawakata, a young girl who seems hapless but deep down may have some power of her own. As the manga continued on, though, the focus on fighting Magai would change over to Im having to deal with reincarnations of other ancient Egyptian figures, including Ramses II, Cleopatra, & even King Djoser, the man Im served back in the day & still has strong feelings towards.
In some ways, Im - Great Priest Imhotep sounds like your usual action-focused shonen manga, but its strong focus on ancient Egyptian mythos & historical figures no doubt gave it a strong sense of uniqueness (I mean, by this point the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga had long ended over in Shonen Jump), and that's likely what allowed Makoto Morishita to continue making the manga until August 2018, when it ended with a final total of 11 volumes. Yen Press would release the entire manga in English, first as a digital-only release from 2017 to 2018, before re-releasing it physically throughout 2020 & 2021. While it has yet to receive an anime adaptation, it actually did rank #1 on AnimeJapan's Most Wanted Anime Adaptation Poll back in 2019, so you never know... Anyway, following Im's finale Makoto Morishita would debut two serializations, 2019's Demon and Song over in Gangan pixiv & 2021's The Fledgling Demon Lord's Starter Shop over in Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Magazine, and it still actively making both series as of this overview, with the latter even already surpassing Im in length (currently at 12 volumes); Demon and Song is available in English via Manga Up!, while The Fledgling Demon Lord's Starter Shop is over at K Manga.
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As we move closer to "modern" Shonen Gangan I imagine those who read these overviews will probably start to be more & more familiar with certain titles due to them having had anime adaptations within the past decade or so, and I feel this is a good example of that. Known simply as "matoba", this mangaka got their start over in Gangan Online with the series Hoshi no Ko! in 2010, and after ending that in 2011 made two more manga in Saezuri Shojo, Shinshin Kamakura (2011-2013 for Houbunsha's Manga Home) & Majo no Shinzou (2012-2016 for Gangan Online). As they were nearing the end of Majo no Shinzou, about half a year away, matoba made their Shonen Gangan debut in August 2015 with As Miss Beelzebub Likes it., a workplace comedy starring Mullin, a demon who's been newly assigned as the Head Attendant for Beelzebub, a fallen angel who oversees the operation of Pandemonium, the administrative center for the entire Demon Realm. However, instead of being traditionally fearsome & imposing... Beelzebub here is actually a complete ditz of an airhead who only has her current position because Satan suddenly disappeared, and if this wasn't her job she'd instead just spent the rest of her days enjoying fluffy things. As I said, As Miss Beelzebub Likes it. was a comedy series detailing Mullin's attempts at trying to be the assistant to someone who really shouldn't have the job they have, and who instead loves to tease & embarrass Mullin for her own enjoyment... though, eventually, she also falls in love with Mullin, but her own inexperience with men male demons makes her incapable of understanding how she truly feels.
As Miss Beelzebub Likes it. would run until June 2020, also getting republished in Gangan Online throughout its run, totaling 83 chapters across 12 volumes. Yen Press would release the manga in English, where the title was altered just slightly to As Miss Beelzebub Likes (because I guess the word "it" might imply something *gasp* dirty?!), putting out all 12 volumes between 2018 & 2021. The series would also get a TV anime adaptation in 2018, which was simulcasted by Crunchyroll before eventually getting a home video release on Blu-Ray from Discotek Media in 2022; the anime would keep the word "it" in the title, despite the manga already seeing English release by then. Four months after ending As Miss Beelzebub Like it. matoba would debut their next work, and we'll cover that one next time.
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2015 was admittedly kind of quiet with debuts of long-runners in Shonen Gangan, so we're jumping ahead to the final year we'll be covering in this half, 2016, & we begin with one of the longest to come from this era. There actually isn't a lot to go off of for this mangaka, but Ryosuke Asakura (the younger brother of Shizumu Watanabe, a mangaka known mainly for their work with Kodansha) first seemed to make their splash in manga when they were chosen to draw the manga adaptation of A Certain Magical Index: The Movie – The Miracle of Endymion in 2013 over in Shonen Gangan, which they did from that March to November. After that ended Asakura would eventually return to Shonen Gangan in January 2016 with what looks to be their first original series, Val × Love, which told the story of Takuma Akutsu, who all his life was shunned by his classmates because of his scary-looking face & taller build, which in turn also made him attract all sorts of delinquents & gangsters, eventually giving him immense social anxiety. However, after he winds up protecting a classmate named Natsuki Saotome from harm he finds out that Natsuki & her eight siblings are actually the Valkyries of Norse mythos who fight for Odin, and because of his good deed Takuma has now been given a mission by the Allfather to protect Earth from those who wish to destroy it... by showing his "love" to all nine of the Saotome Valkyries, who now live in the same house as him.
Yes, as is the seeming long-time tradition over at Shonen Gangan, Val × Love was another entry in the magazine's history of harem-style manga, with Takuma needing to foster relationships with each of the Saotome siblings, some of which aren't exactly interested in Takuma at first, so that the ladies can properly protect the planet from possible destruction; naturally, Takuma winds up having the strongest feelings for one of the Valkyries, in particular, over the course of the story. That being said, the manga also made sure that Takuma also grew as a person himself, going from an anxious wreck due to how he treated growing up to a much more confident & loving person, one that the Valkyries could readily trust in completely. But, yeah, this was very much a fanservice-oriented harem manga mixed with a more traditional shonen action series, and that's likely what allowed Val × Love to have a rather respectable seven-year run before ending in April 2023 after 90 chapters across 16 volumes, tying The Witch's Servant and the Demon Lord's Horn in (tankouban) length, with the two being (currently) tied as the second-longest original manga that debuted during this specific "era" of Shonen Gangan, though they are on the verge of being bumped down to third-longest due to a couple of still-running manga eventually surpassing them in length, soon enough. Yen Press would release the entire manga in English from 2018 to 2024, while the TV anime adaptation from 2019 would be simulcasted by Hidive, followed by a physical release on Blu-Ray by Sentai Filmworks in 2020. After ending Val × Love, Ryosuke Asakura would debut the manga The Last 9 Days of Anastasia in Shonen Gangan in March 2024, but that series ended in October 2025 after only three volumes. Asakura also made the manga Shikizaki Shimai wa Abakaretai for Young Jump from 2021 to 2023, while also making Val × Love.
For our penultimate entry in this part we see the return of Shiwo Komeyama (neé Aoi Mizuki), who had finished Bloody Cross the prior August. After taking the usual time off for mangaka between works Komeyama made her return to Shonen Gangan in March 2016 with Umeidou Hiyo to Danna-sama no Yabou/Hiyo Umeido & Master's Ambition, a "high fantasy comedy" about Leonhardt Vanilla, a minor nobleman in the Kingdom of Macaradure who recently received a promotion & decides to buy a mansion with some of the money he's earned from said promotion. However, the mansion doesn't come with any maids, so Leonhardt contacts the local maid agency, who send over Hiyo Umeido, a quirky maid who claims to have come from the future, complete with various futuristic-looking gadgets at her disposal; yes, she's essentially a human maid version of Doraemon. Hiyo's gadgets do come in very handy, like when robbers break into the mansion, but at the same time Leonhardt is extremely worried that Hiyo's gadgets might be discovered by others, so he orders her to keep quiet about them... but this is a comedy manga, so naturally a recurring element of Umeidou Hiyo to Danna-sama no Yabou was Hiyo using her futuristic gadgets in order to either just help out with work or go as far as manipulate her master, her superiors, & even (according to what I can find out about the manga) other nations!
Yeah, after two relatively serious manga in both Star Ocean: Blue Sphere & Bloody Cross, it's definitely a wild change in tone to see Shiwo Komeyama make a bit of a wacky comedy with Umeidou Hiyo to Danna-sama no Yabou. In fact, it would have been amusing if Komeyama had somehow managed to swap places with her twin sister (& fellow Square-Enix mangaka) Kanoto Kinatsu to make this series... especially since Kinatsu wasn't actually making any manga during this time. Anyway, Umeidou Hiyo to Danna-sama no Yabou would wind up having a 5+-year run in Shonen Gangan, eventually ending in August 2021, but likely due to its nature as a (mostly) four-panel comic it wound up only totaling 40 chapters across four volumes; it was also republished in Gangan Online throughout its run. Interestingly enough, after the end of this series Shiwo Komeyama has seemingly disappeared from manga, having not made anything new since... but just shy of a year later, in June 2022, Kanoto Kinatsu suddenly returned to manga under the name "Kinatsu k" with the series Seikatsu Mahou wa Hazure Skill Janai/Lifestyle Magic Isn't a Useless Skill, written by light novel author Ninja Monja, over in Kadokawa's Comptiq magazine.
Hmmm... maybe my joke about Komeyama & Kinatsu swapping places wasn't as absurd as I thought?
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We end the first half of Shonen Gangan's "Post-Arakawa Era" with our first manga from this "era" that, alongside Nagasarete Airantou & A Certain Magical Index from the prior "era", is still running in the magazine to this very day (as of this overview, at least), something that we'll see a whole lot more of next time. Three issues after the debut of Umeidou Hiyo to Danna-sama no Yabou we saw out next notable Shonen Gangan manga debut, and it marked the manga debut of a man known only as "Looseboy", who first got his start as a writer with the doujin circle Circle Mebius by working on the 2004 doujinshi Natsu no Tomoshibi. Looseboy would make one more doujinshi with Circle Mebius before getting hired by adult game company AKABEiSOFT (now known professionally as AKABEiSOFT2), which he is still associated with to this day & wrote five of their games for (with a sixth currently in development, it looks like). In 2015 Looseboy expanded into light novel writing with the series The White Butterfly Chronicles -How to Break Out of Prison, How to Make You Smile-, which he wrote for Shueisha's Dash X Bunko line, and in June 2016 (shortly before the release of the third & final White Butterfly light novel, Looseboy made his manga debut in Shonen Gangan with the debut of Talentless Nana, with artwork by Iori Furuya... who I seriously can't find any info about whatsoever.
This manga takes place in a world where monsters known as the "Enemies of Humanity" have started to appear, and in turn children with special powers known as "Talented" have appeared to deal with the Enemies. To properly train them for battle all Talented are gathered together & sent to a special school located on a deserted island, so that they can focus solely on getting powerful enough to kill the Enemies, without being distracted by the outside world. One of the students at this school is Nana Hiiragi, who looks to have mind-reading abilities, while her extroverted personality allows her to make friends easily. In reality, though, Nana is actually a "Talentless" government assassin who's been sent to the school to kill all of the Talented, as the government feels that the Talented are the real Enemies of Humanity. Despite her lack of supernatural "talents", Nana is immensely clever, skilled, & observant of her surroundings & how other people see her, so while covertly killing the Talentless she also does everything she can to maintain the facade that everyone thinks she is. However, one of the students named Kyoya Onodera (whose power is immortality) is suspicious of Nana, while Nana herself eventually befriends one of her classmates in Michiru Inukai (whose can heal others, at the expense of her own lifespan). Naturally, this results in Talentless Nana almost acting as a sort of spiritual successor to Yoshiki Tonogai's Shonen Gangan trio of Doubt, Judge, & Secret, as the story is all about what kind of amounts to a death game, with a focus on social manipulation, except in this case it's kind of like an asymmetrical multiplayer game, since it's about the singular Nana covertly taking on the numerous Talented.
As I said, Talentless Nana is still running in Shonen Gangan as of this overview, with Volume 14 having come out in Japan in December 2025. Manga Up! & Crunchyroll do simulpublish the manga in English, but there currently is no physical release. The 2020 TV anime adaptation, however, did get simulcasted by Crunchyroll, followed by a physical release on Blu-Ray in 2022.
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And with that we reach the end of the fifth & penultimate part of this overview of Monthly Shonen Gangan's history, by way of (most of) its most notable manga serializations. The loss of Fullmetal Alchemist was definitely a blow to Shonen Gangan's popularity, there's no doubt about that, but it did manage to find itself a solid & reliable cadre of manga to keep the magazine afloat for the next five years, and as we see with Talentless Nana we're now right on the verge of seeing how the current magazine looks today. So let's finish this series off next time, as we take a look at the manga that currently comprise (about half of) the modern Monthly Shonen Gangan, plus a handful of titles that debuted between 2016 & 2022 but have since ended.
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