Hi Score Girl Creator Launches a New Ghost Story Manga

The November issue of Asahi Shimbun’s Nemuki+ magazine revealed on Tuesday that Rensuke Oshikiri is starting a new manga called Kasaneya Tarō Kaii Roku, which translates to Tarō Kasaneya’s Mysterious Record. It begins in the magazine’s January 2026 issue, shipping on December 12.

The series has a fun hook. It follows Tarō Kasaneya, a writer of ghost stories who keeps having strange and spooky tales land in his lap. The twist is that, despite his line of work, Tarō is actually quite a coward at heart.

Oshikiri is a versatile creator. His science fiction adventure Geniearth ran in Weekly Shōnen Champion from 2021 to 2022 and is being brought to English by Titan Manga.

He is best known, though, for Hi Score Girl, the beloved gaming romance he ran in Square Enix’s Monthly Big Gangan from 2010 to 2018, followed by the spinoff Hi Score Girl DASH. Square Enix publishes the series in English.

Hi Score Girl also became a popular anime, with two seasons and extra episodes that streamed worldwide on Netflix, so Oshikiri’s new project arrives with plenty of goodwill behind it.

My take: A jittery ghost story writer who is scared of his own genre is a delightfully funny premise. Oshikiri has great range, and I am happy to follow him from gaming nostalgia into something a little spookier.