The clock is ticking down until the premiere of BEASTARS season two and the return of BEAST COMPLEX in January. Get hyped! In the meantime, though, original creator Paru Itagaki has somehow found the time to put together a new, short series: Botabota, debuting in next week’s issue no. 2740 of Manga Goraku.
Before we say anything, however, we have to stress: this is a limited time series. The advertisement in the magazine shared via Itagaki’s Twitter account quite clearly says so, but there’s always a bit of confusion when operating through the language barrier. If Itagaki’s previous short series Paruno Grafitti is anything to go by (serialized in Kodansha’s Kiss), then it’ll stick around for fifteen chapters or so, enough to make up a single volume.
Who knows if Botabota will be the same as Paruno Grafitti, though, because Itagaki undoubtedly has more free time now that BEASTARS has ended. The premise, too, sounds a little bit more involved: the advertisement in Goraku carries the tagline ‘shocking girl’s life’ and describes it as a ‘radical story’ about a woman whose ‘cuteness stops at “that”,’ which apparently ‘goes too far.’ Hmm. Sounds interesting.
今週の漫画ゴラクさんに『ボタボタ』の予告が載ってます！！来週からスタートの連載、お楽しみに！！！ pic.twitter.com/IQq5DuvVmp
— 巴留🐺BEASTARS🆕1/8 (@itaparu99) December 18, 2020
It’s honestly pretty weird to see Itagaki drawing regular humans and not anthropomorphic animals or humans with animal features, but there we are. The author is one of many talents.
The big question posed by Botabota’s short serialization is to what extent this will impact BEAST COMPLEX. We still basically have no idea when the anthology series will return, or for how many chapters, so it’s all up in the air at this point. But if I had to make an educated guess, then I’d say that Botabota was probably put together in the couple of months following BEASTARS’ conclusion. I also bet that all of the chapters are already done.
Itagaki’s use of human characters for Botabota (at least, from what we can tell from the advertisement) also hints at something perhaps entirely different to BEASTARS for her next proper serialization. The author has always been obsessed with animals ever since she was a kid, but it’s good to challenge yourself somewhat.
Botabota will begin in the next issue of Manga Goraku for a limited time only.