How A Manga that Was Axed in 5 Volumes Got Greenlit For an Anime

By now, you may have already heard of one of the most surprising developments in anime in 2025; something that was absolutely not on anybody's bingo card, least of all the series' author. BLACK TORCH, created by Heart Gear author Tsuyoshi Takaki, is a manga that had loads of potential when it came out, but its run was cut short by unfavourable reception. With only 19 chapters collected into 5 short volumes, BLACK TORCH was by no means the first title that came to mind when people thought of a series that needs to get an anime, but the announcement of an anime adaptation for the series has opened up a whole new can of worms.

Where early cancellation meant the death of a series' hopes, the BLACK TORCH anime announcement made in early March this year might just be a glimmer of hope for the titles that couldn't see their stories all the way through. But how exactly did BLACK TORCH get an anime against all odds?

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By  Naledi Ramphele

What is BLACK TORCH About?

A Supernatural Battle Shōnen

Jiro Azuma is a little rough around the edges and looks to most like a delinquent, but he's hiding a number of wild secrets: first of all, he absolutely loves animals, and like a certain Eddie Murphy role, he can talk to them! Not only that, but it turns out that Jiro is of special origins, as he is descended from a family of bona fide ninja. His love of animals often gets him in trouble, but no situation has been more troubling for Jiro than when a suspicious stray cat named Rago fuses with him, granting him exceptional power but also dragging him into humanity’s hidden battle against powerful spirits known as mononoke. As it turns out, Rago is a legendary mononoke known as the Black Star of Doom, and there are nefarious mononoke looking to use this power to achieve their own ambitions. The series was serialized in Shueisha's monthly shōnen manga magazine Jump Square from December 2016 to March 2018, and later on the digital platform Shōnen Jump+ from April to July 2018.

It had a generally positive reception, at least in the West, with critics like ANN's Rebecca Silverman giving the first volume a B rating, praising the character dynamics and art style, which she compared to that of BLEACH author Tite Kubo. However, it was also described as rushed and lacking in character development. VIZ Media's Rae First described it as "everything fans love about Shōnen Jump, in a single manga". The upcoming anime adaptation is by 100studio (Quality Assurance in Another World), which means that a relatively new studio has the gargantuan task of creating the kind of adaptation of BLACK TORCH that could open doors to the swathes of manga cancelled before they could come into their own, to have a new life. The BLACK TORCH anime has a powerhouse creative team behind it, with:

• Kei Umabiki (storyboards, Gintama) as director,
• Gō Suzuki (chief animation director, Lycoris Recoil) as character designer,
• Gigaemon Ichikawa (series composition, A Galaxy Next Door) is the series supervisor and writing the scripts,
• Yutaka Yamada (composer, Tokyo Ghoul) behind the music.

The series author, Tsuyoshi Takaki, will be heavily involved in the production of the BLACK TORCH anime, supervising the script and storyboards. He expressed elation at the project, describing it as "something better while still fully respecting the original story".

How Did This Happen?

Why BLACK TORCH Was Re-Lit

One of the most interesting things about BLACK TORCH is that it was axed after only 19 chapters, which indicates a lack of popularity in the platforms it was published on, but there was appreciation for the series both domestically and internationally. The publisher, Shueisha, saw value in packaging these chapters into five volumes, so it had to have been successful on some level domestically. Across the ocean; however, it's pretty safe to say BLACK TORCH, while criticized for lacking in character development, was very popular amongst fans internationally, with the high quality of the art and its similarities to that of Tite Kubo being major draws to the series. The anime content aggregator website, MyAnimeList, which is most likely the most popular website of its kind on the internet, paints an interesting picture of the reception of BLACK TORCH, as it has over 30 000 Members (individual profiles that have the title favourited), which puts it on a similar level as Tite Kubo's BURN THE WITCH, Shinobu Kaitani's One Outs, Shūichi Asō's The Disastrous Life of Saiki K when it comes to indicated popularity on MyAnimeList.

All that's to say that BLACK TORCH had the potential to be a beloved long-running shōnen, and the circumstances behind its cancelation are unclear, but what is evident is that the staff working on it are absolutely ecstatic to be doing so. Series director Kei Umabiki's first impressions of BLACK TORCH were that it had charming characters with great visuals as well as cool action with brash villains, further describing it as a "classic that proudly inherits the lineage of Shōnen Jump". While fans were surprised by the announcement, anime and manga fans had a generally warm reaction to the re-ignition of BLACK TORCH.

BLACK TORCH's Revival Could Be Huge

Hope For One, Hope For All?

What makes BLACK TORCH such an outlier is the fact that, in most circumstances, an anime adaptation's main purpose is to bring attention back to the source material. In fact, one could argue that the point of adaptation is to capture pockets of the market that either weren't exposed to or interested in the source material. BLACK TORCH being set for an anime seven whole years after it was cancelled is one of the strangest circumstances behind an adaptation we've seen, potentially ever. There are so many titles, both over and ongoing, that are stuck in the Hell of having no hope whatsoever of being adapted into an anime.

Titles like Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku author Yuji Kaku's Ayashimon, Toshiaki Iwashiro's Psyren, Piroshiki and Takana Hotaru's Iris Zero, Gen Oosuka's Doron Dororon, Rin Matsui's Dear Anemone, Tite Kubo's Zombiepowder; which could effectively be seen as a first draft for BLEACH (yes, even more so than the original one-shot), Kenji Ichima and Tsunehiro Date's Time Paradox Ghostwriter, Yasuhiro Kanō's Mx0, to name a few, were all extremely promising manga that couldn't get through to their end. BLACK TORCH's revival creates a situation in which other cancelled manga now have the chance to live on as anime, and that's a very exciting possibility.