The manga adaptation of I Don’t Want to Be Killed by You, My Crown Prince! is heading into its final stretch. Artist Nao Oshiba said on X on Tuesday that the series is entering its final arc and climax.
The announcement came from the artist rather than an editorial page, and it settles the question of how much story is left. Oshiba’s manga adapts Ema Okadachi’s original novel, and it has run in Kodansha’s Palcy app since December 2021. The ninth collected volume shipped on February 27, and the tenth is due on October 29. How many volumes the final arc adds is not yet clear, but the tenth book arriving this month puts the ending close.
The story
Kodansha’s K MANGA service publishes the manga in English. The setup follows Liesel, a noblewoman of modest means who is killed by her own betrothed, the crown prince, after being set up by a rival known as the Blessed One. She wakes up as a child with a second life and a plan: become a powerful magician and stay as far from the crown prince as she can. It does not go to plan. Old enemies start approaching her, and events keep drifting from how she remembers them.
The premise is familiar ground for the reincarnation genre, but the details are what carry it. Liesel’s goal is not revenge or a throne. It is staying alive long enough to avoid the man who killed her, and the story gets its pull from the fact that the people around her keep pulling her back in.
Where the story started
The source novel has its own history. Okadachi serialized the original on the user-generated site Shosetsuka ni Naro from February to March 2021, and Kodansha released a print version in December 2021 with illustrations by Makoto Senzaki. Oshiba’s manga followed the same month in Palcy. The original was a short web serial, so the manga has spent years building out a story that started life in a matter of weeks.
Why it matters
Reincarnation romance has been one of the busiest corners of web novel and manga publishing, and this one found its audience fast enough to keep a Kodansha app series running for nearly five years. Readers following the English release through K MANGA now know the story is closing out, even if the exact chapter count is still open.
Final arcs can run for a long time, so a climax announcement is not the same as an ending date. App-based manga like this one often wrap without a fixed end date, so the artist’s own notice is usually the first signal readers get. The tenth volume, out October 29, is the next concrete date to watch.
For another manga wrap-up we have tracked, see our report on Snowball Earth’s final arc and its 1 million copies.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: Art from Nao Oshiba’s I Don’t Want to Be Killed by You, My Crown Prince! manga, via Nao Oshiba / Anime News Network.
