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Elex Media Licenses Barakamon Manga's Handa-kun Spinoff

Indonesian publisher Elex Media Komputindo announced on Wednesday that it has licensed Satsuki Yoshino's Handa-kun manga. The company didn't state a release date for the manga, but mentioned that the first volume is in the editing stages.

The manga is a prequel spinoff of Yoshino's Barakamon manga, once again focusing on Sei Handa, but during his high school years. Handa is popular amongst his classmates as a handsome but coolly detached master of calligraphy, which leads everyone to keep him at a distance as an object of praise. However, Handa's extremely negative point of view leads him to conclude that everyone just hates him.

Yoshino launched the prequel manga in Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine in October 2013, and ended it last June. Square Enix published the manga's seventh and final compiled book volume in September. The manga inspired a television anime adaptation that premiered last July. Animax Asia began airing the anime in Southeast Asia on January 18.

Yoshino launched the original Barakamon slice-of-life comedy manga in Square Enix's Gangan Online magazine in 2009, and Square Enix published the manga's 15th volume last June. Elex Media is also publishing the manga, and it published the 13th volume on December 28. The manga follows the 23-year-old calligrapher Seishū Handa after he moves to an island on the westernmost edge of Japan, and learns to live a rural life that he hasn't ever experienced before.

Barakamon inspired a 12-episode television anime series that premiered in July 2014. Animax Asia aired the anime in Southeast Asia as it aired in Japan.

[Via Kaori Nusantara]