Crossed Hearts Licenses New Manga and Zombie Villainess Novel
A brand new California based publisher called Crossed Hearts has announced its first manga license. The company has picked up Mai Ando’s You’re Way Too Cheeky, Chigaya-kun! (known in Japanese as Namaiki sugiru yo, Chigaya-kun) and plans to bring it to English readers in May 2026.
The manga follows a composed senior named Natsune and a playful junior archer named Chigaya who seems to have made it his personal mission to tease and fluster her at every opportunity. Both characters are part of the archery world, and the story plays with that setting in some charming ways. The manga launched on the GANMA! app back in November 2024, with the first collected volume out in June and the second arriving in November.
Crossed Hearts also revealed a second license on October 15: The Abandoned Villainess Became A Zombie, a Korean novel series by author Dodo. The English edition is slated for spring 2026. The original web novel ran to 170 chapters on Kakao Page and has since been collected into four volumes.
That second title takes a darkly comedic approach to the zombie apocalypse genre. A reader wakes up inside a story as its villainess, immediately gets bitten, and discovers she has become a zombie who somehow does not die. She hides her condition and survives alongside the people who originally abandoned her, only to find that everyone around her inexplicably starts falling for her. It is very much not the outcome she planned for.
Crossed Hearts publishes Japanese manga, Korean webcomics, and Asian novels for a global audience. The company launched its website this month and is already taking preorders that come with access to Limited Editions at no extra charge.
My take: It is genuinely encouraging to see a fresh, independent publisher out of California coming in with real enthusiasm for Asian comics. Both of these debut licenses have personality and a sense of humor, and the zombie villainess novel in particular sounds like a delightfully chaotic read.
