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Ushijima the Loan Shark Gets Spinoff Manga About Nikumamushi
posted on by Karen Ressler
Shogakukan's online magazine Yawaraka Spirits announced on Wednesday that Shohei Manabe's Ushijima the Loan Shark manga is inspiring an official spinoff manga. The manga, tentatively titled Nikumamushi Densetsu (The Legend of Nikumamushi), will begin on Yawaraka Spirits in February. Yū Hayato is drawing the series and Manabe is listed as the original creator.
Nikumamushi is a character from Manabe's original manga. The tagline on the above visual reads "Now, the man who most didn't want to get involved is returning."
Ushijima the Loan Shark (Yamikin Ushijima-kun) has been running in Weekly Big Comic Spirits since 2004, and the manga entered its final arc in October. The manga won in the General category of the 56th Shogakukan Manga Awards in 2011. The series was also nominated for an Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize in 2008 and 2010, as well as for France's Angoulême Comics Awards in 2008.
The manga depicts the human drama in the black market world, as seen through the eyes of the titular loan shark. Ushijima heads Kaukau Finance, an outfit that lends money at an illegal interest rate — "Togo" or 50% every 10 days.
A live-action television series adaptation ran from October-December 2010, and the first film opened in August 2012. A second season premiered in January 2014, with a second film then premiering in May that same year. The third season premiered on July 17, while the third film opened in Japan on September 22. The fourth and final live-action film, Yamikin Ushijima-kun The Final, opened in Japan on October 22.
Yūsuke Matsumoto began a four-panel comedy spinoff titled Yamikin ♥Ushijima-Kyun on Shogakukan's Yawaraka Spirits website in March 2015, and ended the series on April 18.
