VIZ Media thrills manga and gaming fans with the announcement of the acquisition of the publishing rights for a new manga series based on Nintendo’s hit game title SPLATOON.
The SPLATOON manga series, created by Hinodeya Sankichi, is scheduled to launch exclusively in print in late 2017 and will be rated ‘A’ for All Ages.
Splatoon is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii UTM and was released worldwide in 2015. The game was co-created by Shintaro Sato, a member of the Animal Crossing team, and centers around characters known as Inklings, which can transform between humanoid and squid-like forms, and hide or swim through colored ink sprayed on surfaces using shooters, blasters, or chargers and slosher, or brush-based weaponry. Splatoon has won multiple awards including a 2015 British Academy Children’s Award, IGN’s Best of 2015, and a SXSW Gaming Award in 2016. A sequel game title, SplatoonTM 2, will be released this year for the Nintendo Switch platform.
In the SPLATOON manga series, four Inklings that can switch between human and squid forms get caught up in a Splatoon Turf War that launches them into all-new adventures inspired by the hit Nintendo video game!
Manga creator and artist Sankichi Hinodeya first appeared in a bonus issue of Square Enix’s Gangan Powered magazine with the series Maho Bozu Sankyu (Magical Monk Sankyu). In 2015, Hinodeya created the manga adaptation of SPLATOON, which is currently serialized in Japan in Corocoro Comic Magazine.