Manga creator Izumi Matsumoto announced at his Katsucon panel on Saturday that the company Hivelinx plans to release his Kimagure Orange Road manga in English in NTT Solmare's Facebook app "ComicFriends" in April. Matsumoto and Hivelinx also plan to release the romantic comedy manga through Amazon's Kindle electronic book platform and through Apple's iBooks platform. The delivery dates will be announced on the ComicFriends page.

The original Kimagure Orange Road manga series ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1984 to 1987. The 18-volume story followed a boy with supernatural powers as he dealt with a love triangle between two girls in his high school.

The manga inspired a popular 1987-1988 television anime series, two movies, and various anime videos. AnimEigo released the television anime series, the first movie, and the later video anime series, while ADV Films handled the second movie, Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning.

Matsumoto created a one-shot "Panic in Sentō!" ("Panic in the Bathouse!") manga spinoff in his Comic On CD-ROM series and in Shueisha's Super Jump magazine in 1996. Matsumoto later dealt with a debilitating illness called cerebrospinal fluid disease, but he fully recovered by 2005 and reprinted this one-shot manga in Super Jump in 2009.

NEC BIGLOBE's app for Android devices already released the Kimagure Orange Road manga in Japanese last year.

Update: The ComicFriends app is currently only available in the United States and Japan. ANN is inquiring with Hivelinx about whether that will change in the future.