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Sakamichi no Apollon Manga Gets Spinoff Series in March

This year's March issue of Shogakukan's Monthly Flowers magazine revealed on Saturday that Yuki Kodama will start a spinoff manga of her Sakamichi no Apollon manga in the magazine's May issue on March 28. Monthly Flowers published the last chapter of Sakamichi no Apollon on Saturday, and Shogakukan published the manga's eighth volume (pictured at right) in November.

Kodama's original manga follows a naive boy and a scruffy boy in a provincial town in Nagasaki Prefecture in the late 1960s. In the early summer of 1966, Kaoru transfers to the local high school from Yokosuka. Thanks to his family's nearly constant cycle of moving from town to town, Kaoru has only known school as a difficult place for readjusting everytime. However, on his first day at this new school, he meets a boy and begins a new direction in life. The manga won the General Category in this year's Shogakukan Manga Awards.

The manga will receive a television anime adaptation on Fuji TV's late-night Noitamina programming block in April. The series will reunite Cowboy Bebop's director Shinichiro Watanabe (Macross Plus, The Animatrix's "Kid's Story," Samurai Champloo) and composer Yoko Kanno (Macross Plus/Frontier, Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex).

The March issue of Monthly Flowers also published the last chapter in Michiyo Akaishi's (P.A.: Private Actress, Alexander Daiou - Tenjou no Oukoku) Akatsuki no Aria manga. Akaishi will start a new manga this spring.

Source: Comic Natalie via Manga-News