After the superb Sengoku Youko anime series ended earlier this month, and with its second cour not arriving until July, I just wasn’t ready to stop thinking or learning about Tama, Jinka, Shinsuke or Shaukuyaku, and the myths and legends-infused world they live in.
That’s when I grabbed every English copy of Satoshi Mizukami’s Sengoku Youko manga series the anime is based on, as I wanted to see if they carried on from the anime series or stopped right at it.
The Sengoku Youko manga currently has six copies out in English via TokyoPop (I picked mine up on Amazon), with many more to come as the Japanese original series ended at Volume 17 back in mid-2016.
Of course, my goal was to read beyond the first season of the Sengoku Youko anime to find out what happens next.
If you only want to read up to the anime, though, you won’t want to inadvertently read a manga volume that will reveal the cour 2 secrets.
Here then is what volume of the Sengoku Youko manga the anime ends at, and what chapter you can read up to without any spoilers being revealed.
Which chapter/volume to read in the Sengoku Youko manga if you want to read to the end of Season 1 of the anime?
You will remember Episode 13 of the Sengoku Youko anime series ends after a battle between the Mountain God, Tama, Jinka and Shinsuke vs. Yazen and Tama’s mother Kuzunoha.
Jinka then ate the Mountain God’s flesh causing him to become immensely powerful, but also to lose his sanity.
Tama tries to stop Jinka, and promises him, “even if you won’t ever be human again, I’ll always be by your side”, but then Tama and Shinsuke are pulled away from the fight area by the Mountain God, who knows Jinka will decimate the entire area killing everyone and everything in it.
She then announces she has completely lost track of Jinka, with no idea where he could have gone.
Meanwhile, five mysterious people also show up at the same time.
The scene then changes to Tama saying goodbye to the Mountain God’s helper Rinzu, and heading out alone to find Jinka.
The episode ends with the Mountain God about to wake up “the fledgling demon god” Senya, as she believes he is the only one who can stop Jinka before he destroys everything and everyone.
In the manga, all of these events end in Chapter 35 (ie: the end of the first arc) meaning, if you only want to read up to where the Sengoku Youko anime ends, you will need to buy Sengoku Youko Volume 6, and read to the almost-last chapter.
That volume of the manga then continues with events after the first cour of the anime with Chapter 36 — “The Night Parade of One Thousand Demons“.
So, if you don’t want to know anything that happens after the anime ends, avoid reading the last chapter of Volume 6.
And there you have it — where to read to in the Sengoku Youko manga series if you only want to read as far as the anime.
The first six volumes of Sengoku Youko are available on Amazon, with Volume 7 hopefully on its way soon.
Volume 7 of the manga, by the way, has not yet had a publishing day announced so, if you don’t plan on reading the dodgy “fan based” manga translations you will find all over the Internet, then you can’t read further than this anyway.
As I soon discovered.
As for the anime series based on the manga, all 13 episodes are streaming via Crunchyroll. For fans of mythological shounen anime, it’s a must watch.
