OLD MAN OTAKU / MANGA NEWS • JULY 31, 2026
Horikoshi Is Coming Back—and He Brought Horror With Him
My Hero Academia creator Kohei Horikoshi will return to Weekly Shonen Jump with Don't Laugh, Shijima-san, a 61-page “boy-meets-girl horror” one-shot arriving August 10.
Kohei Horikoshi is returning to the magazine that turned My Hero Academia into a worldwide phenomenon, but he is not reaching for another superhero epic—at least not yet.
His next manga is Warawanaideyo Shijima-san, commonly translated as Don't Laugh, Shijima-san. The standalone story is scheduled for the combined Issue 37/38 of Weekly Shonen Jump, on sale in Japan on August 10, 2026. It will run for 61 pages and has been promoted with color artwork.
The official description is tiny but loaded: a “boy-meets-girl horror story.” No detailed synopsis has been released, and the identities of the central characters remain under wraps. That mystery is already doing exactly what a horror announcement should do—making fans lean closer while wondering what is hiding off-panel.
This is a return, not a new serialization—yet
The most important distinction is that Don't Laugh, Shijima-san is a one-shot. It is designed as a complete story rather than the announced launch of an ongoing weekly series.
That matters because the manga world has been waiting to see what Horikoshi would choose after ending My Hero Academia in August 2024. The superhero series ran for a decade, demanded an unforgiving weekly schedule, and became one of Shonen Jump’s defining modern franchises. A self-contained 61-page project gives Horikoshi room to experiment without immediately stepping back onto that treadmill.
One-shots can also function as creative test chambers. They allow an artist to explore a new tone, refine a visual idea, or measure reader response. That does not mean a longer version has been promised. It does mean readers should pay close attention to what Horikoshi chooses to emphasize when he is no longer required to serve the machinery of a massive established universe.
Horror is less of a left turn than it sounds
At first glance, the creator of a colorful superhero manga making a horror story feels like a hard genre pivot. Readers of My Hero Academia know better.
Horikoshi repeatedly pushed unsettling imagery into the series: Tomura Shigaraki’s disintegrating body, the grotesque construction of the Nomu, the claustrophobic terror surrounding Eri, and transformations that made superpowers look more like curses than gifts. His creature design often worked because familiar human anatomy was stretched just far enough to become wrong.
Even the core idea of Quirks carried a horror engine inside it. A power could define someone’s body before they were old enough to understand it. Society could celebrate one mutation and reject another. Identity, flesh, family inheritance, and social judgment were constantly tangled together.
Earlier work also shows that Horikoshi has never been limited to clean-cut heroes. Oumagadoki Zoo mixed comedy, animal transformations, and strange creature designs, while his career began with short-form stories long before Deku entered U.A. High School. Horror gives him a chance to pull one of his strongest visual instincts into the foreground instead of keeping it beneath superhero spectacle.
“Boy meets girl” may be the real hook
The romance-shaped phrase in the announcement is as interesting as the word “horror.” “Boy meets girl” normally promises intimacy, awkward chemistry, or emotional discovery. Pairing it with horror suggests that the relationship itself may become the doorway to something frightening.
Is Shijima the girl, the threat, the victim—or all three? Does “don’t laugh” describe a supernatural rule, a social wound, or a warning someone will ignore at exactly the wrong moment? The title invites questions without giving readers enough information to feel safe.
That balance could suit Horikoshi particularly well. His most memorable conflicts were rarely powered by spectacle alone; they worked because affection, guilt, admiration, or rejection made the danger personal. A compact story centered on two characters could concentrate that emotional pressure.
What has—and has not—been confirmed
Confirmed details are still limited: Horikoshi is the creator; the format is a one-shot; the length is 61 pages; the genre description is “boy-meets-girl horror”; and the Japanese release is tied to the August 10 combined issue of Weekly Shonen Jump.
Reports differ on the color treatment. Some describe the entire one-shot as full color, while others say it includes a color spread. Until the issue or Shueisha’s full listing settles that detail, the safest description is that the story has confirmed color material.
An official simultaneous English release has not been clearly confirmed in the reporting available at publication time. Readers outside Japan should watch the official Shonen Jump and Manga Plus schedules rather than assuming the Japanese date automatically applies worldwide.
The Old Man Otaku take
This is the smart kind of comeback.
Horikoshi could have returned with “the next My Hero Academia” and allowed every panel to be judged against a decade-long phenomenon. Instead, he appears to be choosing a smaller vessel, a darker genre, and a premise that asks readers to meet him somewhere unfamiliar.
That is good for the artist and good for the audience. A 61-page one-shot can be ambitious without carrying the weight of a ten-year franchise plan. It can end strangely. It can be cruel. It can leave questions behind. Most importantly, it can remind readers that Horikoshi is not merely the keeper of one successful universe—he is a manga creator with more than one kind of story in him.
The most exciting part of Horikoshi’s return is not that he came back. It is that he chose to come back different.