Reborn!, Irregular at Magic High School, Duel Masters Creators Team on Horo-Beat Manga
The collaboration unites three of Shogakukan's most commercially successful manga and light novel creators on a single new property in Coro Coro Comics, a magazine that typically targets younger readers with standalone franchises rather than cross-creator projects.
Reporting from 2 sources: Anime News Network, Anime Trending.
Shogakukan's Monthly Coro Coro Comics magazine launched a new manga titled Horo-Beat on Friday, May 15. The first chapter runs 66 pages. The project brings together creators from three major franchises. Duel Masters creator Shigenobu Matsumoto is credited with the original work and handles storyboard composition. The Irregular at Magic High School light novel author Tsutomu Satou is cooperating on the scenario. Reborn! creator Akira Amano provides the original character designs. Akira Tsuruta is drawing the manga. The story is described as a "thrilling tag-team battle" manga featuring yokai and humans fighting together. It centers on Jin Narumi, a second-year middle school student who can see monsters, yokai, devils, and ghosts. He visits his friend Hinata at her temple every morning, which is overrun by these creatures. Hinata cannot see them and does not take Jin's concerns seriously. When a giant yokai attacks them, Hinata is knocked unconscious and Jin is near death. Hinata's temple cat Leo transforms into a raiju beast, and Jin teams up with Leo to defeat the yokai and save Hinata.
The Horo-Beat announcement was made through the magazine's official Twitter account on May 15, with a promotional image showing the four credited creators. The post describes the project as a "super huge new serialization" and calls the creative team "super luxurious."
Shigenobu Matsumoto, the creator of the long-running Duel Masters manga and trading card game franchise, handles the original work and storyboard composition. Tsutomu Satou, whose The Irregular at Magic High School light novel series ran 32 volumes from 2011 to 2020 before spawning a sequel series, is credited with scenario cooperation. Akira Amano, best known for the 42-volume Reborn! manga, provides the original character designs. Akira Tsuruta, the artist drawing the manga, is the least publicly known of the four collaborators.
The story's cat character Leo transforms into a raijū, a thunder beast from Japanese folklore. The magazine's website is listed as a source alongside the June issue itself. The announcement generated one forum post on Anime News Network as of publication.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.