There Will Always Be a Way!

And now for something totally unexpected. In what amounts to the most delayed release ever, here are Shounen Oujo chapters 32, 33 and 34, the most recent chapters released for the series as of when the latter part of 34 was released way back in June 2017.

The reason why I didn't release these before was mainly because I was waiting to see if the series would come back from its most recent hiatus and then release volume 6, but that just never happened. On top of that, Comic It, the magazine that Shounen Oujo was serialized in from 2015 to 2017 after it transferred from Sylph, was discontinued with the release of its final issue in February 2018, and then the website stopped hosting anything in November 2018.

In addition to that, the author Utako Yukihiro replied to someone on Twitter back in December 2018 who was asking about the status of Shounen Oujo. And this is what she said:

"Thanks for the reply! I'm sorry for making you wait for Shounen Oujo for a while now. The serialization has currently been halted, and it's continued to be difficult to get it restarted, but please look forward to it once it restarts...!"

The tweet seems to imply that the series may restart someday, but seeing as how it's been nearly 2 years since a new chapter was released, if it does ever come back, it may not be for a while still, if ever. Yukihiro has other manga and projects that she's involved in, so she's just been busy with other stuff.

It's a shame that even after working on this series on and off for about the past 7 and a half years that it still hasn't been completed, and that's despite how it seemed to be reaching a climax at the end of volume 5. This has always been a series that's been in the back of my mind, hoping to see more of it someday, and Yukihiro's above tweet is the only reason why I still have a little bit of hope that it will eventually continue.

If it does come back, new chapters will probably appear on the series' pixiv comic, Comic Walker and Niconico Seiga pages, the latter of which even has the latter half of chapter 34 (sometimes listed as 34.5). Of note at the end of that chapter was that there's a notice saying that it was planned to continue in volume 22 of Comic It released back in August 2017, but I can fully confirm that this did not happen, and that the latter half of chapter 34 was the last chapter released in June 2017.

So hopefully this will not be the last post for Shounen Oujo, but even if it is, I'll just say that I really loved this series. The art and story are phenomenal and it continued to be gripping with the introduction of new characters and situations going from volume to volume, in addition to the characterization and backstories given to some of the key characters. It had a lot of potential that was thankfully fulfilled in the chapters that have been released, and if ever a series deserved a proper ending, then this is the one. A lot of the series that I've worked on have either ended prematurely or were just simply axed, but none have I wanted to continue more than this series. So if you're a fan of the series, please enjoy these last few chapters for now and then maybe we can celebrate the series getting more chapters in the future.

Shounen Oujo ch. 32: Mediafire, Drive
Shounen Oujo ch. 33: Mediafire, Drive
Shounen Oujo ch. 34: Mediafire, Drive