The December issue of Futabasha's Monthly Manga Town magazine has announced on Thursday that the magazine will continue running new installments of the late Yoshito Usui's Crayon Shin-chan comedy manga until the March issue, which will ship on February 5, 2010. Authorities determined that Usui died from injuries sustained from a fall at Arafune mountain on September 11.
The magazine had planned to end Crayon Shin-chan this month with the last of two installments that Usui had submitted before his passing. However, several new manuscript pages were discovered, so the magazine's editorial department decided to extend the manga's run by three months.
Crayon Shin-chan follows the exploits of Shinnosuke Nohara, a mischievous (fictional) kindergartner in Usui's own hometown of Kasukabe. Usui launched the manga in Futabasha's Weekly Manga Action magazine in August 1990, and he continued to work on the series after moving it to Monthly Manga Town and other Futabasha magazines. Shin'ei Doga has been adapting it into a top-5-rated television anime series since 1992, and the television series has itself inspired 17 anime films with the 18th slated for next spring.
Hiroshi Hayakawa, president of the TV Asahi network, said at a September press conference that his company aims to continue airing the Crayon Shin-chan anime after Usui's passing. The first new episodes began airing in October 16. CMX Manga has been releasing the original manga in English in North America. Funimation has been adapting the television anime into dubbed English, and America's Adult Swim network used to run episodes every Sunday morning.
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