Series centers on calligrapher Sei Handa as a teenager

Square Enix's Gangan Online website announced on Monday that Satsuki Yoshino's Handa-kun manga is getting a television anime adaptation.

The manga is a spinoff of Yoshino's Barakamon manga. Yen Press has licensed Handa-kun and is releasing it digitally and in print. The company describes the first manga volume as follows:

Handsome teenage calligrapher Sei Handa is worshipped by all his classmates as an aloof superstar--too bad Sei's inherent negativity makes him believe that everyone actually hates him...?! A youthful comedy of misunderstanding and melancholy unfolds in the first volume of this hilarious prequel to Barakamon !

Yen Press has released the first three manga volumes in print and the first four volumes digitally. Yoshino launched the prequel manga in Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine in October 2013, and Square Enix will publish the fifth compiled volume in Japan on February 12.

Yoshino launched the Barakamon (pictured at right) slice-of-life comedy manga in Square Enix's Gangan Online magazine in 2009, and Square Enix published the manga's 12th volume in September. The publisher plans to release the 13th volume on March 12. Yen Press is also publishing Barakamon, and it will publish the ninth volume in February. The manga follows the calligrapher Seishuu Handa after he moves to an island on the westernmost edge of Japan, and learns to live a rural life that he hasn't ever experienced before.

Barakamon inspired a 12-episode TV anime series that premiered in July 2014. Crunchyroll and Funimation both streamed the series as it aired, and Funimation also has the home video rights to the series.





[Via Otakomu]