It was revealed on the official website of Shueisha that Momoko Sakura‘s popular shojo manga, Chibi Maruko-Chan, will be getting a new volume after four years of its conclusion.

The new volume (Vol. 18), will be drawn by Momoko Sakura’s assistant Botan Kohagi at Sakura Production, and will release on Oct 25, 2022. Volume 17 of the manga was published on Dec 25, 2018.

The decision to continue Chibi-Maruko Chan manga was decided by Sakura Production along with Ribon magazine’s editorial department. They wanted to carry on the legacy of Sakura, “who had begun to draw the scripts she had written little by little in manga form, and deliver them to everyone in a new form”.

The 18th volume will include seven new stories, such as “Tennyo no Hagoromo Densetsu no Maki” and “Halloween Party Oyarou no Maki,” based on Momoko Sakura’s script, which she exclusively wrote for the anime series.

A frontispiece for Tennyo no Hagoromo Densetsu no Maki was also revealed.

Chibi Maruko-chan is a shōjo manga series written and illustrated by Momoko Sakura.

The series depicts the simple, everyday life of Momoko Sakura, a young girl everyone calls Maruko, and her family in suburban Japan in the year 1974. Maruko is a troublemaker, and every episode recounts Maruko’s trouble and how she and her friends succeed in solving the situation. The series is set in the former of Irie District, Shimizu, now part of Shizuoka City, birthplace of its author.

The first story under the title “Chibi Maruko-chan” was published in the August 1986 edition of the shōjo manga magazine Ribon. Other semi-autobiographical stories by the author had appeared in Ribon and Ribon Original in 1984 and 1985, and were included in the first “Chibi Maruko-chan” tankōbon in 1987.

The author first began writing and submitting strips in her final year of senior high school, although Shueisha (the publisher of Ribon and Ribon Original) did not decide to run them until over a year later. The author’s intent was to write “essays in manga form”; many stories are inspired by incidents from her own life, and some characters are based on her family and friends. The nostalgic, honest and thoughtful tone of the strip led to its becoming popular among a wider audience.

Chibi Maruko-chan was adapted into an anime television series by Nippon Animation, which originally aired on Fuji Television and affiliated TV stations from Jan 7, 1990 to Sep 27, 1992.

It has also spawned numerous games, animated films and merchandising, as well as a second TV series running from 1995 to the present.

Maruko’s style and themes are sometimes compared to the classic comic Sazae-san. In 1989, the manga tied to receive the Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo. As of 2006, the collected volumes of the manga had sold more than 31 million copies in Japan, making it the fifth best-selling shōjo manga ever.

Source: Shueisha, Comic Natalie

(c)Sakura Productions/Shueisha Inc