The Lycoris Recoil short films are getting their own manga. Monthly Comic Flapper’s official X account announced on Thursday that Yasunori Bizen will launch an adaptation of Lycoris Recoil: Friends are thieves of time. in the magazine’s February 2027 issue.
Bizen confirmed it on their own account and added a detail worth knowing: this is a short serialization, running about six months. Not an open-ended run.
The timing is odd in a good way. Bizen’s manga adaptation of the original Lycoris Recoil anime ended in the same magazine’s December issue, on the same day the new series was announced. One Lycoris manga closes, another opens.
What the short films are
Friends are thieves of time. is the six-episode short series that debuted on Aniplex’s official YouTube channel in April 2025. Aniplex USA streamed it on its own channel, and Crunchyroll carried it too.
The shorts are a spin on the premise. Instead of the TV anime’s plot, they center on the daily lives of the characters at Café LycoReco. Smaller stakes, shorter episodes.
That is exactly the kind of material that suits a six-month manga. The shorts were built as small comedic pieces, and a monthly magazine gives Bizen room to stretch each one without having to invent a plot.
Anime-to-manga adaptations have been landing steadily this fall. Witch on the Holy Night is getting one from Shikimori’s Keigo Maki, drawn by an artist most readers know from a different series.
The main manga just wrapped
Bizen launched the Lycoris Recoil manga in Monthly Comic Flapper in September 2022. Kadokawa shipped the ninth compiled volume on August 21. Yen Press released the fifth volume in English on June 23, which puts the English edition about four volumes behind the Japanese one.
Count it out: September 2022 to December 2026 is four years and three months, spread across nine volumes. That is a long life for a tie-in series, and it explains why the magazine is keeping a Lycoris title on the schedule rather than letting the slot go.
The franchise has more print than most people realize. Asaura’s spinoff novel Lycoris Recoil: Ordinary Days passed 250,000 copies in circulation back in 2022.
Where the anime stands
For anyone who has not seen it: the TV anime premiered in July 2022. Crunchyroll streamed it as it aired and produced an English dub, and Adult Swim’s Toonami block aired it in January 2024.
Shingo Adachi directed, his first time in the chair after years as character designer and chief animation director on Sword Art Online and Wagnaria!!. Imigimuru, the creator of This Art Club Has a Problem!, designed the characters. A-1 Pictures animated it, Ben-To author Asaura wrote the story, and Kimika Onai designed the café uniforms.
Why it matters
Lycoris Recoil has been quiet since the shorts. There is no second season, no film, and no announced continuation of the main story. A six-month manga of the shorts keeps the franchise in print and in front of readers while whatever comes next is decided. It also keeps the property in a magazine that has carried it since 2022.
Fans have spent years asking for more anime. This is not that. It is still something, and the short-format nature means it will not overstay.
There is a pattern here that manga readers will recognize. When an anime original gets popular, the tie-in manga often outlives the show’s production schedule, and publishers fill the gap with side stories rather than waiting. That is what this is: a bridge, officially produced, with the original magazine and the same artist who drew the adaptation.
English release status
The practical detail for readers outside Japan: Monthly Comic Flapper is not published in English. Yen Press has handled the main manga, so a collected English edition of the new series would most likely come from them. Nothing has been announced.
The February 2027 issue is the Japanese release, and the serialization should run about six months from there. If a collected volume follows, expect it well after that.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Monthly Comic Flapper’s official X account.
Featured image: Lycoris Recoil: Friends are thieves of time. key visual, via Anime News Network / Aniplex of America.
