Vertical Licenses Tonari no Seki-kun School Comedy Manga

North American publisher Vertical announced on Anime News Network's ANNCast podcast on Friday that it will release Takuma Morishige's My Neighbor Seki (Tonari no Seki-kun) comedy manga this fall.

The original manga revolves around a girl named Yokoi who sits next to a boy only known as “Seki-kun.” During class, Seki-kun continues to not pay attention and instead creates amazingly throrough little distractions, such as a detailed golf course with the course's hole being a dent in his desk, or an entire dramatic war being played out by paper shogi pieces.

Vertical's Ed Chavez told ANN that the company has been working on the project for two and a half years. The company originally planned to release a collection of the best stories from the manga, but he said the property "took on a life of its own" in Japan in the last few years since Media Factory did additional marketing for the series. Chavez said Vertical will release a new volume in North America "every two months or so."

Morishige began his manga in Media Factory's Comic Flapper magazine in 2010. The manga was nominated in the 5th Manga Taisho Awards in 2012. Kadokawa shipped earlier this month.

The manga is inspiring an anime series by Shinei Animation starring Kana Hanazawa and Hiro Shimono. Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs in Japan.

Chavez also told ANN, "...there's a bunch of weird little side stories to the author, and we're kind of working on seeing if we can do some more with him and maybe some of his family members, so it should be a pretty cool project." Morishige's older sister is Akiko Higashimura, the manga creator of Kuragehime (Princess Jellyfish), Omo ni Naitemasu, and Kakukaku Shikajika.