A month ago we got the news that the insanely-difficult-but-still-addicting Play Station 4 title Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be making the jump to print content, by way of a spin-off manga featuring one of its NPCs. Yen Press, which holds the English-language rights to the manga, has just announced on their Twitter account that the first chapter of Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying will be made available in their website for free! The spin-off manga is set to make its debut on May 27 (which is today—or depending on your timezones), the same day that the manga will be released in Japan courtesy of Kadokawa’s Comic Walker magazine.
To refresh your memory on this exciting spin-off manga, the story will be following (the best) NPC Hanbei the Undying, who acts as the protagonists’ training partner in the game. Shin Yamamoto, who wrote the Monster Hunter: Flash Hunter manga, will be illustrating the series and is also credited with organizing the manga. Gaming company FromSoftware, the developers of the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice game, will be supervising the story.
Yen Press has earlier posted a teaser to the spinoff manga’s story:
”The Sengoku Era…A time when losing a battle meant losing it all. The Sword Saint, Isshin Ashina, aims for world domination…That is, until he encounters a certain Samurai…”
The game from which the manga is based was earlier reported to have sold 2 million copies in just 10 days after its release. It is described in Activision’s website as such:
”Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, and published by Activision, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a third-person, action-adventure game with RPG elements. The single-player game puts players in the protagonist role of a hard-hearted warrior whose mission is to rescue his master, a young lord who is the descendant of an ancient bloodline, and exact revenge on his arch nemesis. Set in the re-imagined world of late 1500s Sengoku Japan; a brutal, bloody period of constant life-and-death conflict, in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice you are the “one-armed wolf,” a disgraced and disfigured warrior rescued from the brink of death.
In the game, players come face-to-face with larger than life foes; unleash an arsenal of deadly prosthetic tools and powerful ninja abilities to blend stealth, vertical traversal, and visceral head-to-head combat in a bloody confrontation.
Take revenge. Restore your honor. Kill Ingeniously.”
Source: Crunchyroll News