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Dear Boys Act 4 Manga Gets Digital Prequel Manga

The digital edition of the March issue of Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Magazine began serializing a spinoff manga of Hiroki Yagami's Dear Boys Act 4 manga on Wednesday. The manga, titled Dear Boys Shōnan Dai Sagami Special Selection, will only be available in the digital edition of the magazine. The story is set two years before the story of Dear Boys Act 4, when Ayumi Fuse was still a first-year high school student.

Yagami launched the Dear Boys Act 4 manga in Monthly Shonen Magazine last October. The story is set one year after Kazuhiko and Mizuho High School's inter-high victory, and is set in the famous Shōnan Dai Sagami High School, Mizuho's rival school. The manga centers on Fuse, the school basketball team's ace who aims for the nationals, and a new freshman protagonist.

Yagami's original Dear Boys manga focuses on Kazuhiko Aikawa, a transfer student to Mizuho High School. A lack of players and a coach quitting due to conflict with a student leaving the team have left the Mizuho High School basketball team gutted. Aikawa joins, and brings the team back to competitive shape through his love of the game. Eventually, the manga shares its focus between the Mizuho High School team and the teams and players of other schools.

Yagami launched the first Dear Boys manga in 1989 and ended it in 1997. The series has 40 million copies in print. The Dear Boys: The Early Days prequel manga followed from February to May 1997. Yagami launched the sequel manga Dear Boys Act II in 1997 and ended it in 2008. The sequel won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen manga in 2007. Yagami launched Dear Boys Act 3 in December 2008 and ended it in December 2015.

Yagami launched the Dear Boys Overtime sequel manga in Monthly Shonen Magazine in February 2016, and ended it in January 2017. Kodansha shipped the third and final compiled volume in February 2017.

The first manga inspired a 26-episode television anime series that premiered in Japan in 2003. Bandai Entertainment released the anime (retitled as Hoop Days) in English in 2005.

Yagami ended the Tokiwa Bowl no Megami-sama (The Goddess in Tokiwa Bowl) bowling manga on July 6.

Source: Monthly Shonen Magazine issue 3 digital edition