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Knight in the Area Duo Kaya Tsukiyama, Hiroaki Igano Launch New Manga

This year's 13th issue of Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine revealed on Monday that illustrator Kaya Tsukiyama and author Hiroaki Igano will launch a new manga series titled Kami-sama no Koibito (God's Lover) in the magazine's 14th issue on March 4. The first chapter will feature an opening color page.

Tsukiyama posted a picture preview of the manga on Twitter on Monday.

The "real VR suspense" manga takes place in the near future, where an "illusionary Showa Era year 64" is constructed in VR (Showa 64 equates to 1989, which is both the final year of the Showa era and the first year of the Heisei era). In this VR world filled with nostalgia, the protagonist gets caught up in an unprecedented "crime," and will question if this world that we see is the real one, and if VR is a manipulated deception.

The editorial department of Weekly Young Magazine stated on Twitter in December that Tsukiyama was preparing a new manga series and was seeking a regular assistant.

Tsukiyama and writer Yuya Aoki (GetBackers) published the two-chapter manga "Living Iron" in 2017.

Aoki (under the pseudonym Hiroaki Igano) and Tsukiyama previously collaborated on the The Knight in the Area soccer manga, which launched in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2006, and ended in 2017. Kodansha published the manga's 57th and final compiled book volume in 2017. The spinoff manga Area no Kishi Bangai-hen: Enokō Early Days about the high school days of Coach Iwaki debuted in 2007, and Kodansha's Manga Box app released the series. The original manga also inspired a four-panel gag comedy manga.

A television anime adaptation premiered in 2012, and Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired.

Igano — under the penname Tadashi Agi (The Drops of God) — revealed in October that he would launch two new works in 2019. His other pseudonyms include Ryō Ryūmon (Bloody Monday), Seimaru Amagi (Kindaichi Case Files original idea), and Yuma Ando (Psychometrer, Psychometrer Eiji, Sherlock Bones).

Sources: Weekly Young Magazine issue 13, Kaya Tsukiyama's Twitter account