Blood Friend, Rei Mikamoto's manga, ends in December

Rei Mikamoto will end Blood Friend in the next issue of Kadokawa's Monthly Comic Beam magazine, which comes out on December 11. The announcement appeared in the publication's December edition.

The series debuted just a year ago, in December 2025, and says goodbye without having had time to build an extensive catalog. Kadokawa published the first compiled volume on June 12, 2026.

A horror story about children and a haunted mansion

The premise of Blood Friend is the kind that hooks you fast. On the outskirts of a town stands a Western-style mansion with a reputation for being haunted. A group of elementary school students gathers there for a test of courage, the kind done in Japan at night that almost always ends badly.

One of the girls, gripped by a bad feeling, warns the group that one of them will not come back. From there, Mikamoto develops a violent horror that fits his track record.

The official description defines it as a bloody horror work, and knowing the author, it's no surprise. Mikamoto has spent more than a decade building a name in Japanese horror and gore.

Mikamoto's history in horror

Mikamoto is best known for Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw, the manga he launched in Comic Beam in 2009 and finished in March 2017 with thirteen volumes. The work had a live-action adaptation in 2016 and two more in 2019, plus a sequel manga titled Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw reflesh, which ran between September 2018 and November 2019.

He is also the author of Reiko the Zombie Shop, of which Dark Horse Comics published six volumes in North America and which had a three-part video adaptation in 2004. His manga Kyonyū Dragon hit theaters in 2010, and Funimation distributed the film in North America the following year.

His most recent work before Blood Friend was Iron Ghost no Shōjo, published in Comic Beam between July 2017 and July 2018, with two compiled volumes.

With Blood Friend, Mikamoto closes a brief cycle within the same magazine that has housed almost his entire career.