#corocoro comic

This is the cover art for the complete 192-page volume of Yuki Imada's Shadow the Hedgehog manga, CoroCoro Comics announced early Friday.

The volume contains the entire six-issue manga of The Jet Black Hedgehog, a tie-in promotion for Sonic x Shadow Generations, from Sep 2024 to Feb 2025.

The volume will be released in Japan in both physical and digital formats on 28 Apr 2025. Preorders are open through various Japanese retailers.

Rough translation, from right to left:

Large text on right: "Where is the exit?" Smaller text on right: "The show everyone's talking about, with over 400 million views on YouTube!!" Large text on left: "The world-renowned dark comedy cartoon, fully adapted to comics!"

A few hours ago, the official Japanese TADC Twitter account revealed that a manga adaptation of the series would begin running in the December issue of CoroCoro Ichiban! (to be released on October 21st, 2024). It will also be published simultaneously in the online edition of Weekly CoroCoro Comic - despite the magazine's name, it will still be on a monthly schedule.

So what'll it be like? Well, while every magazine under the CoroCoro brand is generally targeted towards grade schoolers, CoroCoro Ichiban! in particular skews even younger, frequently featuring gag comedies. Furthermore, the author - known mononymously as "Sakura" (咲良) - has experience in that genre, having adapted Nintendo's ARMS into ARMS: Skillful Gag Fight! (ARMS スゴウデギャグファイト！) for the magazine between 2017 and 2018.

However, I'm reasonably confident this adaptation will retain the bleaker edges of the original series. Not only does the above promotional image explicitly call it a "dark comedy" (and further implies it'll be a faithful adaptation by using "完全," translated above as "full"), but this is the page they chose to release as a preview:

Rough translation, again:

(The bit above the logo just means "New series!") [Why is this girl running...?] Gotta hide, gotta hide, gotta hide,

(As a side note: I should mention that the above two images were both taken from the artist's later tweet about the manga, since they were higher quality. They're cropped a little more, but not enough to really infringe on their contents.)

Looking over the QRTs, both Japanese and English responses were equally surprised to learn about this. A couple of Japanese Twitter users were specifically bewildered that it was running in the especially child-focused Ichiban! - here's one as an example:

Very roughly translated:

"A Digital Circus series will run in Weekly CoroCoro Comic!" 👆 Huh?!?! Well, if it's in Weekly CoroCoro, I guess I'll check it out… "Also running in CoroCoro Ichiban! (mag for young children)!" 👆 HUH????!!!!???!!!????!!!!!!!!!?!

Finally, for completeness's sake, here's the last promotional image from the announcement:

A one-shot tie-in for Smash 64, now scanlated into English!

His creation, his entire purpose, started with her. Gerald created him as a cure for Maria after all. Because he loved Maria too much not to try.

Maria was also the first one to treat him as a person. To the government he was a weapon, to his creators a means to an end. Even Rouge and Omega’s friendship with him started as a transaction. She befriended him, spent time with him, cherished him in a way nobody before did.

This is also the reason why Amy reached him when nobody else did. She reasoned with him as equals, begged him to see that humanity did deserve a chance, and her treating him like a human, her love for the world, reminded him so strongly of Maria that the true memory resurfaced.

SxS Gens and the prologue didn’t do them justice. It framed Shadow as a beast that only Maria could tame, simultaneously negating the impact Rouge and Omega had on him.

The movie was better, showing that he was a kid done wrong by the world, but he became less complex and nuanced as a result.