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Initial D's Shigeno Launches Sailor Ace Baseball Manga
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
This year's 26th issue of Kodansha's Young Magazine is revealing on Monday that Initial D manga creator Shuuichi Shigeno is launching a new series called Sailor Ace in the following issue on June 1. The first chapter will include four color pages.
The tagline on the announcement reads "Gyaru is [playing] baseball!?" (Note: gyaru or gal is a term used to describe a type of street fashion where women in their teens and 20s bleach their hair and wear highly decorated nails and a lot of makeup).
The "tenacious youth" manga centers on a gyaru who has a gifted right arm who becomes part of a women's baseball club.
Shigeno launched the Amazing Hana (Takane no Hana) manga in Young Magazine in March 2014 about a middle-aged, divorced manga creator who can't get his works to sell. Kodansha published the second and final compiled volume of that series on December 5.
Shigeno ended his Initial D manga in Young Magazine in July 2013, and Tokyopop published the beginning of that manga in North America. The manga inspired several television anime series (including the four-episode Final Stage depicting the manga's final battles that aired in 2014), a live-action film, several original video anime projects, and a successful game line. The manga is inspiring a new trilogy of anime films, the second of which will open on May 23.