Manga Mavericks Books has announced two new manga licenses during its panel at Anime NYC 2026, expanding its upcoming English-language catalog with the sci-fi action manga Midnight Robot and the boys’ love slice-of-life series Arai-kun & Haruma-senpai. The announcements bring two very different stories to the North American market, with both titles previously available in Japanese through their creators’ work.
Midnight Robot by Yohei Sajita is scheduled to launch in print and digital formats in May 2027. Meanwhile, Akahachi’s Arai-kun & Haruma-senpai will arrive first as a digital release in December 2026 before receiving a print edition in June 2027. The publisher also shared new information about its efforts to recover and restore lost color pages from The Sword of Paros for its upcoming English release.
Midnight Robot and Arai-kun & Haruma-senpai Lead Manga Mavericks Books’ New Licenses
Midnight Robot, Volume 1 will be released for readers aged 13 and above at a print price of $19.99 and a digital price of $6.99. The 236-page volume will mark the first-ever print release of the series worldwide, with Manga Mavericks Books publishing it in an A5 format while retaining its distinctive red-and-black two-color palette.
The story follows Fumiko Daidouji, whose estranged father suddenly returns with a bizarre gift: a screw embedded in her cranium. Although Fumiko initially believes her father has lost his mind, she soon discovers that a mysterious organization is searching for the screw in order to summon a giant robot.
Fumiko is then pulled into a much larger conflict involving the possible destruction of the world, a parallel cosmos, and the mysterious Midnight Robot connecting them all. Sajita originally began Midnight Robot as a self-published manga in 2015 before Hayakawa Publishing started serializing it on the Hayacomi web manga platform in 2024.
Sajita said the prospect of English readers discovering the series was deeply emotional.
“The notion that people will be able to read Midnight Robot in English has me overcome with emotion,”
the creator said, adding that the manga was created with the goal of delivering something that could excite younger readers while also
“standing up to adult scrutiny.”
The second new license, Arai-kun & Haruma-senpai, tells a softer story centered on a slow-burn romance between shy underclassman Ao Arai and charismatic upperclassman Haruma Ohara. Their relationship begins after a chance encounter in an elevator, leading to exchanged contact information and increasingly frequent meetings around campus.
The 152-page manga will be released digitally for $6.99 in December 2026, followed by a $14.99 print edition in June 2027. Originally self-published by Akahachi in 2022, the boys’ love manga will also receive an A5 print release for readers aged 13 and above.
Akahachi said an English edition had been a long-time dream, revealing that readers had requested one for years.
“For Arai-kun & Haruma-senpai, I’ve been getting requests for an English edition for years,”
the creator said.
“And now, at last, Manga Mavericks Books has made this dream come true.”
Manga Mavericks Books also provided an update on The Sword of Paros, announcing that it has been recovering and restoring color illustrations from the manga’s original serialization in Monthly Asuka between 1986 and 1987. Several color pages have already been found and restored, including a previously lost page that will be included in the English release.
The publisher is now seeking leads on several missing issues of Monthly Asuka and is offering a name credit and complimentary copy of The Sword of Paros to anyone whose lead directly results in the procurement of one of the required issues before September 15, 2026. Pre-orders for all three upcoming releases are now available through the Manga Mavericks Store.
