If you’ve been following manga news for a while, you certainly heard about Kagurabachi and its ever-growing popularity despite a quite memeful initial release. Having recently won the Next Manga Awards, Kagurabachi is now celebrating its first anniversary with a very unusual fan character contest.
In the recently announced Mob Sorcerer Art Contest, fans can submit their original character designs to author Takeru Hokazono to include in his manga. However, here’s where things get interesting: the character will indeed be added to the canon, only to be killed by protagonist Chihiro Rokuhira on the very first page of their debut chapter!
Yeah, you heard that right. Forget about adding a neat side character that makes a fan happy for being the winner. Getting your OC mercilessly killed by the protagonist is where the money’s at. And that’s by far the best prize ever imagined for fans of the series.
Some of the comments celebrating how unhinged Hokazono is are a display of how this was the best move possible. “Hokazono is just the most based mangaka in existence, holy shit. ‘This is what I think of your fan art!’” mentioned a user on X (formerly Twitter).
Another user has compared it to the My Hero Academia‘s latest announcement following the series finale. “MHA for their special announcement had a character poll while Kagurabachi has you make an OC and then if you win the author will just have them be murdered brutally lmao”, they quoted. Ironically, the series also held a character creation contest back in 2019, where the winning character (Bubble Girl) was added to the anime and later made her debut in the manga as Sir Nighteye’s assistant.
Other series have also been mentioned among the many comments about the announcement. One of my favorite suggestions was having Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen killed by Chihiro, which is even funnier considering the latest chapters of the series.
The contest is being held in celebration of the 1st anniversary of the series, which debuted back in September 2023 to a mixed response. However, more readers have opened up for Kagurabachi recently, and I’m eager to see how the winners from this character contest will be added (and slashed) in the near future.
Kagurabachi is now available on Viz Media.