News
Elex Media Licenses Survival Game Club!, Shinobi no Kuni Manga
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Indonesian publisher Elex Media Komputindo announced last week that it has licensed Hidekichi Matsumoto's Survival Game Club! (Sabagebu!) manga and Mutsumi Banno's Shinobi no Kuni (Land of Ninjas) manga.
The story of the original "high-school gun girl action" manga revolves around Momoka Sonokawa, a girl who transfers into a certain girls' high school. The club she ends up joining at school is the "Sabagebu!," a club that conducts airsoft survival games. "For high school girls, everyday is survival."
Matsumoto began the manga in 2011 in Kodansha's Nakayoshi magazine, and ended it in December 2016. Kodansha published the manga's 13th and final compiled book volume in April last year.
The manga inspired a 12-episode television anime series and an OVA episode in 2014.
Shinobi no Kuni is based on Ryō Wada's 2008 novel of the same name. The novel also received a live-action film adaptation that opened in Japan last July. The Japanese Film Festival in Indonesia screened the film in the country last November, and it describes the story:
Once upon a time, there is a lazy man named Mumon who loves joining competitions to get gifts for his wife. Besides, he is the best Iga Province Shinobi. One day, to get a gift, Mumon killed a shinobi from another province—different clan/family. He does not realize that his deed affected to new big war between Shinobi Corps of Iga Province and Nobukatsu Oda Corps of Ise Province.
Banno launched the manga in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine in 2009, and ended it in 2010. Shogakukan published four compiled book volumes for the manga. Shogakukan also published an additional fifth volume containing anthology stories that were never serialized. While Banno provided the illustration for the first four volumes of the manga, Ashibi Fukui also joins as illustrator in the fifth volume.
