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1st New Twelve Kingdoms Novel Story in 6 Years Slated for 2019

Shinchosha's official website for Fuyumi Ono's The Twelve Kingdoms novel series revealed on Wednesday that Ono has finished the first draft for the newest work in the series. The work is slated for 2019. The draft for the "epic" story is 2,500 Japanese manuscript pages long, and it centers on the Kingdom of Tai. (Ono uses standard Japanese manuscript pages which can each have up to 400 characters on it. The final published volume or volumes in print will have a different number of pages.)

Wednesday is also December 12 or 12/12, which Shinchosha's staff called "The Twelve Kingdoms Day."

Ono originally planned to publish the new work in 2016. Publisher Shinchosha reported that year that the new work's manuscript was already over 1,000 pages long.

The Twelve Kingdoms depict a fantasy world inspired by classical Chinese literature, where a girl named Yoko Nakajima finds herself after being transported from Japan. She becomes embroiled in the politics of the kingdom of Kei, as well as the other kingdoms.

Ono began writing the light novel series in 1992, and has published 12 volumes in Japan. Ono originally concluded the series in 2001 with the Kasho no Yume book. Ono published a collection of short stories set in the same world titled Hisho no Tori in 2013. While Kodansha published the original novel series' run, Ono published Hisho no Tori in Shinchosha's Shinchou Bunko line. Tokyopop released the first four volumes of the series in English between 2007 and 2010.

The novel series inspired a 45-episode anime series in 2002. Media Blasters originally offered the series in North America in August 2003 and then in a complete collection release in 2009. Media Blasters released the series on Blu-ray in 2011.

Source: The Twelve Kingdoms official website