Manga published 2 chapters in June 2025 before going on hiatus
Image via Amazon
©Daruma Matsuura, Shogakukan, VIZ Media LLC
This year’s ninth issue of Shogakukan’s Big Comic Superior magazine published the 86th and latest chapter of Daruma Matsuura’s Steel of the Celestial Shadows (Taiyō to Tsuki no Hagane) manga on Friday, signaling its return from a hiatus since last year.
The manga went on hiatus after its 83rd chapter published in February 2025. The manga then returned in June with chapters 84 and 85, before it went on hiatus again. Matsuura stated then in an X (formerly Twitter) post that the manga’s return with chapter 84 was the start of a new arc.
The series previously entered a hiatus in 2021 so Matsuura could do research for the series.
Viz Media publishes the series in English and describes the story:
It is said that a samurai’s spirit rests in their sword—and Konosuke can’t even pick one up thanks to a cruel curse that repels anything made of metal that gets near him. Destitute and hopeless, he decides to end it all. But when a beautiful and mysterious woman saves his life and his soul, it is the beginning of Ryudo’s journey into a strange world of magic that exists a step away from his own.
Matsuura launched the manga in June 2020. Shogakukan published the 10th compiled book volume in March 2025. Viz shipped the ninth volume in English on February 17.
Matsuura launched her Kasane manga in Evening in April 2013 as her debut work, and ended it in August 2018. Kodansha published the manga’s 14th and final volume in September 2018. The manga was nominated for the Kodansha Manga Awards and the Manga Taisho Award in 2015.
Kodansha Comics began releasing the manga digitally in English in 2017. The manga inspired a live-action film adaptation that had its first screening at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland in July 2018 and won the audience award in the international competition category. The film opened in Japan in September 2018 at #9.
Sources: Big Comic Superior issue 9, Daruma Matsuura’s X/Twitter account
