Hiromasa Okujima’s Babanba Banban Vampire is heading into its final stretch. Retail listings for the manga’s 15th compiled volume describe the story as entering its “final stage” when the book ships on December 8, 2026.
The wording comes from retailers rather than an official statement from the publisher, so the exact shape of the ending — how many chapters remain, and whether the series wraps up inside volume 15 or continues briefly past it — has not been formally confirmed by Akita Shoten. A final-stage note on a volume listing is usually a dependable signal, but the precise end date should be treated as provisional until the publisher makes it official.
What Babanba Banban Vampire is about
The series is a comedy built on a deliberately absurd premise. Dark Horse Comics, which licensed the manga for English release, describes it as follows:
An unassuming worker in a long-established public bathhouse is really the lustful 450-year-old vampire Ranmaru Mori! The heir to this esteemed Koi No Yu Bathhouse, Rihito Tatsuno, is a fifteen-year-old virgin—who is about to fall in love for the first time with a girl in his class! Ranmaru begins to weave a desperate plan to prevent Rihito from losing his virginity and to make him fall for Ranmaru instead, so the bloodsucker can eventually have pure, eighteen-year-old virgin blood for his own vampiric self!
That mix of bathhouse slice-of-life and vampire-romance farce has been the engine of the title since it began, and it is the reason the franchise has been able to expand well beyond its original magazine audience.
Publication history
Okujima launched Babanba Banban Vampire in Akita Shoten’s Bessatsu Shōnen Champion magazine in October 2021. The series has run for roughly five years, with Akita Shoten publishing the 14th compiled volume on August 6. If the December 8 release is indeed the last, it would complete the run at 15 books — a substantial, mid-length serialisation rather than a rushed cancellation.
English-language readers have a separate schedule to watch. Dark Horse Comics holds the license and will release the first volume in English on November 10, meaning the English edition is only just beginning while the Japanese edition approaches its close.
The anime and live-action film
The manga’s profile grew sharply with its anime adaptation, which premiered in Japan on January 11 and streams on Netflix. That global streaming placement gave the title a reach its print run alone would not have produced.
A live-action film followed a messier path. It was originally scheduled for a February 2025 release, but was postponed over “various circumstances,” and the preview screening planned for January 2025 was cancelled. The film eventually opened in July 2025 and ranked at number 5 in its opening weekend in Japan.
Add those together and Babanba Banban Vampire sits in the relatively rare position of a comedy manga that has been adapted into an anime, a live-action film and a multi-language print release within the same five-year window.
Why it matters
Manga endings are worth tracking carefully because they reshape what a franchise can do next. Once a serialised story is complete, the natural follow-ups become sequels, spin-offs, films or longer anime runs that adapt material left unanimated. With a Netflix anime already in place and a live-action film released in 2025, the end of the manga removes the main constraint on where the anime can go next.
It is also another entry in a busy period for endings and cancellations this season, alongside titles such as Hirayasumi, which wraps up on October 19, and the vampire manga The Record of a Fallen Vampire getting its own TV anime in 2027. For fans of the genre, the vampire corner of the manga industry is unusually active right now.
Akita Shoten has not yet announced a formal conclusion date for the series. The 15th volume is listed for December 8, and further official details are expected closer to release.
Source: Anime News Network, citing retailer listings.
Featured image: Cover art for Hiromasa Okujima’s Babanba Banban Vampire, via Anime News Network / Akita Shoten.
