Manchuria Opium Squad gets an anime as the manga returns with a new artist after Shikako's death
Pony Canyon has announced an anime of Tsukasa Monma's 1937-set crime thriller, timed to the manga's return in Weekly Young Magazine with Tsurushima taking over the art from the late Shikako.
Twenty-two volumes into its run, and only just back from an enforced pause, Tsukasa Monma's wartime crime story Manchuria Opium Squad (Manshu Ahen Squad) has an anime on the way. Pony Canyon made the announcement on October 5 together with a first visual, which offers a peek at production material rather than finished character art.
Almost everything else is still under wraps. No format, studio, staff, cast or release window has been named; the project's official website and X account are where those details will surface once they are ready.
Poppies and desperation
The setting is Manchukuo in 1937. Isamu Higata, a young Kwantung Army soldier, is blinded in his right eye in combat and shunted off to a farm facility where his superiors mistreat him. When he finds poppies growing there, he sees a way to pay for his gravely ill mother's care: refine opium himself. That gamble sets him on a perilous course, and the series tracks the consequences for him, his family and the region.
A return under different hands
The anime news coincided with the manga's comeback in issue 45 of Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine, dated October 5, and the circumstances are unusual. Shikako, the series' original artist, was lost last November 8 to choroidal melanoma, an uncommon cancer that affects the eye. Before dying, Shikako hoped the story would be carried to its end by someone else, and the editors at the magazine promised to make that happen.
The relaunch ran two chapters at once. Chapter 216 was meant to fill 16 pages, yet only 11 were complete at the time of Shikako's death. Monma arranged a twelfth page with nobody drawn on it, and backgrounds were filled in by the assistant Shikako had relied on. Starting with chapter 217, art duties pass to Tsurushima, who knew Shikako from their time as assistants on Yasuhisa Hara's Kingdom, where Tsurushima was the more senior of the two. Tsurushima also painted a new color illustration to mark the occasion, while Shikako keeps a credit for the original art concept.
From web serial to million-seller
Monma's series began on the Comic Days app in April 2020 and moved into Weekly Young Magazine in September 2021. The 22nd collected book came out in November 2025, and more than 3.5 million copies are in circulation. Along the way it was nominated for the 47th Kodansha Manga Award and the 70th Shogakukan Manga Award. English readers can follow it on Kodansha's K Manga service, which began carrying it in September 2024.
