Minami Mizuno has a new manga. Shueisha’s Cocohana announced in its December issue on Wednesday that Fujikawa Minori wa Erabenai (Minori Fujikawa Cannot Choose) will start in the magazine’s next issue, which goes on sale November 28.
The series is a love story about a woman stuck between two relationships: one she has never gotten over and one that is only beginning. That is the whole premise the announcement gives away. No page count, no volume plan, and no word yet on an English release.
Cocohana is a josei magazine, aimed at adult women, and that detail matters for anyone who has followed Mizuno’s career. Her last four serializations all ran in Shueisha’s Bessatsu Margaret, a shōjo magazine for a younger readership. Fujikawa Minori wa Erabenai appears to be her first series in Cocohana.
What she finished last
Ao Haru Sō e Yōkoso (Welcome to Apartment Aoharu) ended in November 2025. It launched in Bessatsu Margaret in February 2023, which makes it a short run by her standards.
Before that came Hiiragi-senpai to Ofutari-sama (Together With Upperclassman Hiiragi), serialized from December 2021 to November 2022. Shueisha published the third and final volume in December 2022.
Koi o Shiranai Boku-tachi wa (We Who Know Nothing of Love) had a longer life. It began as a one-shot in Bessatsu Margaret in January 2018, started full serialization that June, and ran until May 2021. Eleven volumes, the last of them in June 2021.
Rainbow Days is still the one people know
Mizuno launched Rainbow Days (Nijiiro Days) in the February 2012 issue of Bessatsu Margaret and ended it in March 2017 at 15 volumes. It follows four high school friends and the romances they stumble through, which explains why it translated so easily to screen.
Shueisha bundled a drama CD with a limited edition of volume seven in October 2014, then an original anime DVD with volume 13 in September 2016.
The television anime premiered in January 2016, and Funimation streamed it as it aired. That adaptation is the reason her name carries weight outside Japan, and it set a pattern she has followed since: finish a series, take a short break, start the next one. Each of her last three launches came within a year of the previous ending.
Why a new series from her is worth noting
Mizuno is reliable in a way that does not generate much noise. She starts a series, ends it, and moves on, which is rarer than it sounds in a magazine ecosystem full of long-running titles and quiet cancellations. Four completed works across thirteen years, three of them finishing on her own schedule rather than getting cut.
The move to Cocohana also puts her in front of a different audience. Bessatsu Margaret readers who grew up with Rainbow Days are now in their twenties and thirties, and Cocohana is where a fair number of that readership ends up. Whether the magazine is betting on that overlap or simply on her name, the timing is sensible.
Late November is turning into a busy stretch for established creators rather than debutants. Haruko Ichikawa’s Cosmic Mimimi starts three days earlier, on November 25, and Natsume Ono’s KORORE follows in Monthly Big Gangan in February 2027.
For now, that is all there is: a title, a date, a one-line premise, and a creator who has done this four times already.
Source
Anime News Network — Rainbow Days’ Minami Mizuno Launches New Fujikawa Minori wa Erabenai. Manga
Featured image: Announcement art for Fujikawa Minori wa Erabenai, via Cocohana magazine and Anime News Network.
