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Yen Press Licenses '86—Eighty-Six' Manga for December Release

Yen Press announced on Monday that it has licensed Motoki Yoshihara's manga adaptation of Asato Asato's 86—EIGHTY-SIX light novel series. The company will release the manga's first volume physically and digitally in December.

Yen Press also revealed that it will release the first volume of Shiro Amano's Kingdom Hearts III manga physically and digitally in November. Yen Press began publishing the manga on Amazon, Apple, Comixology, Kobo, and BookWalker in May 2019, starting with the manga's "chapter 0 prologue" chapter.

Yoshihara launched the 86—EIGHTY-SIX manga in Square Enix's Young Gangan magazine in 2018. The manga's second compiled book volume shipped in Japan in September 2019.

Yen Press is publishing the light novel series in English, and it describes the story:

The San Magnolia Republic has long been under attack by unmanned weapons from the neighboring Empire. Against this onslaught, the Republic has also deployed similar weapons, narrowly avoiding great loss of life and impending disaster-or at least that's how it seemed.

The truth is that it has never been possible to have no casualties. Young men and women drawn from the Republic's supposedly non-existent 86th district are organized into the "86 unit" and then ordered to pilot the "unmanned weapons" before heading to battle.

Asato launched the novel series under Kadokawa's Dengeki Bunko imprint in April 2017. Shirabi (The Ryuo's Work Is Never Done!, Myriad Colors Phantom World) is drawing the illustrations, and the artist I-IV (Aldnoah.Zero, Re:CREATORS) is in charge of mechanical design. The eighth volume shipped on May 9. The light novel series also inspired a Gakuen 86 (Academy 86) manga spinoff by Suzume Somemiya that debuted in Kadokawa's Monthly Comic Alive magazine on June 27.

The novels are inspiring a television anime adaptation that will premiere this year.

Source: Press release (link 2)