Rei Mikamoto’s Blood Friend ends in the next issue of Monthly Comic Beam, on December 11. The December issue of the Kadokawa magazine carried the announcement on Thursday, which gives readers roughly one month’s notice and no reason for the decision.
That’s a short run. Mikamoto launched Blood Friend in Comic Beam in December 2025, and Kadokawa shipped the first collected volume on June 12 of this year. One year of serialization, one volume on shelves, and then it’s over.
What the manga is
The setup is a haunted house story with children in it, which is the worst possible combination. An old western-style mansion on the outskirts of a town is rumored to be haunted. A group of elementary school students go there for a test of courage, the kind of pointless dare kids actually do.
One of them, a girl who has been hit with a terrible premonition, tells the group something flat and final: “One of us will never come back.”
ANN describes the series as violent horror, and Mikamoto’s track record supports the description. This is not a ghost story where the tension comes from whether something is there.
Mikamoto’s horror pedigree
Mikamoto’s best-known work in English is probably Reiko the Zombie Shop, which Dark Horse Comics published for six volumes in North America. It also became a three-part live-action video series in 2004.
Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw ran in Comic Beam from 2009 to March 2017 and closed at 13 volumes. It got a live-action film in Japan in 2016, then two more live-action adaptations in 2019, which is an unusual amount of screen attention for a manga about a schoolgirl with a chainsaw. A sequel, Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw reflesh, ran from September 2018 to November 2019. It was originally announced with the romanized subtitle “refresh,” a spelling that got corrected later.
There’s more. Kyonyū Dragon became a live-action movie in 2010, and Funimation released it in North America in 2011. Iron Ghost no Shōjo ran in Comic Beam from July 2017 to July 2018 and finished at two volumes.
So Mikamoto has spent the better part of two decades in Comic Beam, and Blood Friend is the shortest thing on that list. Whether that’s a planned short series or a cut, the announcement doesn’t say. Kadokawa’s notice simply states the ending and the issue.
Comic Beam’s niche, and why short runs happen there
Monthly Comic Beam is a small-circulation magazine with an outsized reputation. It publishes work that doesn’t fit anywhere else, and it has a long history of series that run for a year or two, build a cult following, and stop. That model doesn’t leave much margin. A horror manga with one volume out and no anime in sight has to find its readers almost immediately.
Comic Beam titles do travel when something catches on. Hideki Arai’s SPUNK! is getting a live-action film from Keisuke Yoshida, which is the kind of attention that keeps a back catalogue alive.
For Western readers, this matters more than it might seem. Blood Friend hasn’t been licensed in English, and a series that ends at one or two volumes before any English publisher picks it up is much less likely to get one. Yen Press, Viz and Seven Seas all watch Japanese sales and completion status when they choose titles. A finished two-volume horror manga from a niche magazine is a hard pitch, even with Mikamoto’s name on it.
That’s my read on the situation, not anything Kadokawa said. The publisher hasn’t commented on licensing, and no English edition has been announced.
What happens on December 11
The final chapter runs in the next issue of Monthly Comic Beam. A second collected volume hasn’t been dated, and Kadokawa hasn’t said whether the December chapter will fill one. Given the June release for volume one and a December ending, a second and final book in 2027 is plausible.
Short runs close quietly all year. Urban Myth Dissolution Center: Parallel File ended in Ribon recently as well. The difference is that Ribon is a magazine most Western readers can name. Comic Beam’s endings rarely get past the people already reading it.
Readers who want to follow the ending can find Comic Beam through Japanese digital storefronts and the publisher’s own platform. Readers outside Japan will mostly be waiting on a license that may not come.
Why it matters
Mikamoto is one of the few horror manga artists with a genuine live-action track record, and Blood Friend was the first new serial from that artist in years. It’s ending quietly, in a magazine announcement with no press release attached, and that’s how most manga endings actually happen. The loud ones get trailers. The rest get a line in the next issue.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Monthly Comic Beam.
Featured image: Cover of the first Blood Friend volume by Rei Mikamoto, via Anime News Network.
