Manchuria Opium Squad is returning to serialization. The manga’s official X account announced on Monday, September 28, 2026, that the series will resume in the 45th issue of Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine, which ships on October 5, 2026, with manga artist Tsurushima taking over the artwork.
Tsurushima was a senior colleague of the late artist Shikako while both worked as assistants on Yasuhisa Hara’s Kingdom. The announcement was also shared by Hara on his own X account, where he said Shikako had expressed, before their death, the hope that an artist from the Kingdom manga would take over the art for Manchuria Opium Squad. Hara praised Tsurushima for taking on the responsibility of continuing the series’ drawings.
How the return will work
The series resumes on October 5 with two chapters, and the first of them carries some weight. Chapter 216 was originally planned as a 16-page chapter, but Shikako completed 11 pages before their death. Writer Tsukasa Monma arranged the 12th page, which features no characters, and the assistants who had been supporting Shikako drew the background art. That gives readers a final stretch of pages that includes the artist’s own work.
From chapter 217 onward, the manga moves forward under Tsurushima’s art. Weekly Young Magazine’s editorial department said the resumption was made possible by the efforts of many people, naming Shikako’s family, Tsurushima, Monma, the production assistants and the readers who waited for the series to come back.
The story behind the hiatus
Shikako died on November 8, 2025, due to choroidal melanoma, a rare form of cancer that develops in the eye. At the time, the Weekly Young Magazine staff said they would respect the artist’s wish that someone complete the manga in their place. That wish is what the October 5 return fulfills.
Monma and Shikako first serialized the manga on Kodansha’s Comic Days service from April 2020 to September 2021, after which it moved to Weekly Young Magazine starting with the magazine’s 43rd issue of 2021. Kodansha shipped the 22nd compiled volume in November 2025, and publishes the series in English on the K MANGA app.
Who is taking over the art
Tsurushima is not a newcomer to Kodansha’s pages. With writer Ryūki Ōnuma, they launched Shikyuuji: Kōkō Kyūji ni Asu wanai in Young Magazine in June 2023; the series later moved to Kodansha’s YanMaga Web site in December 2023, where it ended in January 2024. More recently, Tsurushima drew Gokuaku Tensei (Extremely Evil Reincarnation), which ended with its fourth volume, shipped by Kodansha on July 17.
That track record matters for a series that has to change hands mid-story. Tsurushima is a working artist with a completed serialization behind them, not an unknown quantity, and the connection to Kingdom means the two artists shared a professional lineage rather than being paired by a publisher looking for any available hand.
Why it matters
Manga rarely get a second life after an artist dies, and continuation by a successor is one of the hardest cases in the industry to get right. When a creator passes, a series usually stops, is left unfinished, or is handed off in a way that quietly changes the work into something else. Manchuria Opium Squad is an unusual case where the intent to finish was written down, the successor was identified in advance, and the writer who owns the story has stayed in place to carry the narrative to its conclusion.
For readers, the return means a story that has been paused since late 2025 now has a date on the calendar again, and it comes with a visible handover rather than a silent one. The first chapter back will contain the original artist’s final pages, which gives the transition a natural break point before Tsurushima’s run begins with chapter 217.
The resumption also fits a broader pattern of manga coming back from health-related and production pauses. Earlier this month, Go! Go! Loser Ranger! returned from its health hiatus, and we track endings, licenses and publication changes in our manga endings and licenses hub.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the manga’s official X account and Oricon News
Featured image: Cover art for Tsukasa Monma and Shikako’s Manchuria Opium Squad, via Anime News Network.
