Masaki Andō's Mojiponika! is ending. The author announced on Friday that the comedy manga will finish in the next issue of Kodansha's Afternoon magazine, which goes on sale November 25.
What Mojiponika! is about
The series is built on a strange premise that turned out to work. Tsumugu is the son of an embroidery shop owner. Gina, a foreign exchange student with a deep passion for kanji characters and yakuza films, pays him a large sum to stitch kanji onto her tokkōfuku, the traditional uniform mainly worn by gang members. Before he met her, Tsumugu had never thought much about the characters he could not read. Gina's enthusiasm drags him into the language, and he starts working out what the characters actually mean.
That is a narrow hook, and it is the reason the manga reads the way it does. The comedy comes from Gina treating kanji as a serious passion rather than a school subject, and from Tsumugu slowly realising that not being able to read something was never a neutral fact about him. The uniform detail earns its place too: a tokkōfuku covered in stitched characters gives the series a visual it can put on a cover, and embroidery work is a craft you can actually watch someone improve at.
Andō launched Mojiponika! in Afternoon in May 2025. Kodansha shipped the first collected volume in October 2025 and the third on August 21. With the final chapter landing in the November 25 issue, the collected run will likely close at three or four books.
Who is Masaki Andō
Andō is better known for Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki, which ran in Ichijinsha's Comic Rex from May 2016 to September 2022. That series studied regional differences around Nagoya, Aichi, through a cast that mostly argued about local food and local habits. Ichijinsha published the 13th and final volume in December 2022. The title character was appointed a Nagoya Tourism Cultural Exchange Mission Ambassador in March 2017, which is the sort of thing that only happens to a mascot with genuine local traction.
Yatogame-chan also got four anime seasons. The first premiered in April 2019, a second season of 12 episodes followed in January 2020, a third arrived in January 2021, and a fourth in April 2022. Crunchyroll streamed all four as they aired in Japan.
Why the ending matters
That history explains why Mojiponika! drew attention at launch. Andō has a track record with short, talky comedies about people being intensely specific about something. Monthly Afternoon gives an author roughly one chapter a month, so an eighteen-month run in that slot gets planned rather than stretched.
When the final chapter arrives
For readers, the practical bit is the deadline. The final chapter arrives in the issue dated November 25, and Kodansha has not announced a fourth volume or a digital schedule for the ending. If you have been reading in collected volumes, expect three or four books to be the whole thing.
Mojiponika! is also part of a busy few weeks for manga endings. Boichi's The Marshal King closed on October 16, Yasuki Tanaka's Ghost Fixers finished the same day, Bagudan wraps on November 24, and The Coppersmith's Bride has three chapters left. That is four series ending within about two months.
Source: Anime News Network — Masaki Andō's Mojiponika! Manga Ends on November 25
Featured image: Mojiponika! manga illustration, via Anime News Network.
