Astrea Record, Fujino Ōmori’s prequel to Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, is getting a new DanMachi manga. Square Enix’s Young Gangan announced in its 19th issue that artist tawaketch will launch a manga adaptation of the story’s “Deep Floors” arc on October 2 [1]. The story began as a mobile game event, became a three-volume light novel series, and now comes full circle into comics.
Young Gangan Unveils the Astrea Record Manga
Young Gangan comes out twice a month, so the manga should move at a steady pace once it starts [1]. Anime News Network, which reported the announcement on September 21, has not said how many chapters the adaptation will run to or whether it will cover the rest of the trilogy after the Deep Floors arc.
For tawaketch, the job is to turn a story that has so far existed as game scenes and prose into panels, working from character designs that fans already know from the novels’ illustrations [2].
Astrea Record from Mobile Game to Spinoff Novels
Astrea Record started life inside a mobile game [1].
In 2020, the mobile game title Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Memoria Freese introduced the Astrea Record scenario as its special third anniversary event. Written by Fujino Ōmori himself, it is a prequel about the goddess Astrea and her familia, the band of adventurers who fought to keep order in the labyrinth city of Orario years before Bell Cranel arrived [2]. Longtime fans already know how it ends. The Astrea Familia’s only survivor is Ryu Lion, the elf waitress at the Hostess of Fertility, and her grief for her lost companions runs through the main series. The prequel is set in Orario’s so-called Dark Era, when criminal familias known as the Evils terrorized the city and the Astrea Familia, named for the goddess of justice, stood against them. The main novels have already told what came after: the familia was wiped out in a trap in the Dungeon, Ryu hunted down those responsible, and Mia Grand eventually took her in at the tavern where Bell first meets her.
That makes Astrea Record an unusual kind of prequel: a story whose tragedy is the point, told for readers who already know which characters will not survive it. Ōmori later turned the event into a light novel series of its own [1].
DanMachi Manga Follows the Light Novel Trilogy
The first volume came out in October 2022, under the main series’ full Japanese title, Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darō ka, with art by kakage rather than Suzuhito Yasuda, who illustrates the main novels [1]. The different artist gives the prequel a look of its own.
The whole trilogy came out fast: the third volume shipped in December 2022, just two months after the first [1]. For a light novel series, where gaps of a year between volumes are normal, that is quick, and it means the manga is adapting a finished story rather than chasing one that is still being written [2].
Traffic between games, novels and manga now runs in every direction; The Apothecary Diaries went from novels to a game with five curses to solve, while Astrea Record went the other way, from a game to books. The new DanMachi manga is the next step, with tawaketch taking over from kakage as the story’s artist [1].
Yen Press Releases the Spinoff in English
English readers can already read the whole story. Yen Press publishes the Astrea Record novels in English and released the third and final volume in November 2024 [1]. Yen Press also publishes the main DanMachi novels and several of its manga spinoffs in English, so an English edition of the new manga would be the obvious next step, though nothing has been announced.
The wider franchise gives it a large audience to draw on. Ōmori’s main light novels, illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda, have been running since 2013, and J.C.Staff’s anime adaptation has run for five seasons since 2015 [2]. Astrea Record joins a crowded shelf of spinoffs. Sword Oratoria, which follows Ais Wallenstein and the Loki Familia, got its own anime in 2017, and the Familia Chronicle side novels have already given Ryu a story of her own. The Astrea manga will be the first to show, in comic form, the familia she lost.
Tawaketch Takes on the Deep Floors Arc
The Deep Floors arc takes its name from the lowest levels of Orario’s Dungeon, where monsters are strongest and only the best adventurers go [1]. For tawaketch, that means large monster fights and a cast of Astrea Familia members whose fates many readers already know.
That foreknowledge shapes how the story reads. Because the main series has already told readers what happened to the Astrea Familia, the adaptation’s tension will come less from what happens than from how the artist stages it [2].
From a 2020 game event to a 2022 novel trilogy to a 2026 manga, Astrea Record has now been told three times. The first chapter of the DanMachi manga appears in Young Gangan on October 2 [1].
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network. (2026, September 21). Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Novels Get New Manga. Anime News Network. [Article Link]
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network Newsroom. (2026, September 21). Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Novels Get New Manga. Anime News Network. [Article Link]
