Two manga in Akita Publishing’s Monthly Champion RED are ending together. Saint Seiya Dark Wing, the spinoff that retells the war with Hades through the eyes of an ordinary high school student, and Takahashi and Mimori’s comedy Garagarapon will both run their final chapters in the magazine’s January 2027 issue, which goes on sale on November 19 [1].
Champion RED Announces November Serialization Finales
For Dark Wing, the finale closes a run of almost exactly six years. Garagarapon, which launched in November 2023, ends after three [1]. The magazine listed both endings in its note on series concluding with that issue [2].
Saint Seiya Dark Wing Reinterprets Classic Mythos
Saint Seiya Dark Wing debuted in Monthly Champion RED in December 2020 [1]. Instead of Seiya and the Bronze Saints fighting for Athena, it follows Shōichirō, who in the words of its English publisher “was just another high school student. Now, he’s Wyvern, one of the dreaded Judges of the Underworld, chosen to battle against the forces of Athena in a war that transcends life and death” [1].
It starts on a school trip. An ambush sends Shōichirō and his classmates into the land of the dead, where the forces of Hades have already begun their assault. He is not the only one with a divine role: Cattleya, the reincarnation of Athena herself, fights to defend the living, while a darker conspiracy slowly comes to light [1].
Titan publishes the manga in English. In Japan, Akita Publishing released the eighth compiled volume on December 19 [1]. The chapters published since then, plus the finale, should make up at least one more volume, although no date for a final book has been announced.
The Wyvern title carries weight for longtime fans. In Masami Kurumada’s original Hades chapter, the Wyvern Surplice belongs to Rhadamanthys, one of Hades’ three Judges of the Underworld alongside Minos of Griffon and Aiacos of Garuda, and one of the hardest enemies the Bronze Saints face. Dark Wing hands that armor, and the side of the war that comes with it, to a teenager who never asked for either.
Garagarapon Concludes Run by Takahashi and Mimori
Garagarapon is the smaller and much newer of the two. Takahashi and Mimori launched it in Champion RED in November 2023, and Akita Publishing shipped its second compiled volume on January 20 [1].
The announcement does not say why it ends after three years. In monthly magazines that can mean anything from a story that always had a planned length to a series that did not find enough readers, and neither Akita Publishing nor the creators have explained which applies here.
Readers at least get some warning. Advance notice like this has become more common, as with the Lycoris Recoil manga, which announced its ending two chapters ahead; Garagarapon’s readers have roughly two months.
Kurumada Legacy Inspires Generations of Spinoff Projects
Dark Wing is one of many offshoots of Kurumada’s Saint Seiya, which ran from 1986 to 1990 in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump [1] and made mythological armor (the “cloths”) and the inner energy called cosmo a fixture of 1980s shōnen manga. The original has since inspired TV anime, original video anime, films and a long list of spinoff manga [1].
Toei Animation’s TV series ran from 1986 to 1989, and the Hades chapter that Dark Wing draws on was only animated later, as a run of OVAs released between 2002 and 2008. Champion RED has been a home for Saint Seiya spinoffs for most of its history, going back to Megumu Okada’s Saint Seiya Episode.G in the magazine’s early years; Chimaki Kuori’s Saintia Shō, about Athena’s female guardians, also ran there and was adapted into an anime in 2018. The franchise is still alive outside manga, too, with Toei’s CG remake Knights of the Zodiac on Netflix in 2019 and a Hollywood live-action film of the same name, starring Mackenyu as Seiya, in 2023.
What set Dark Wing apart from most of those spinoffs was its angle. The usual formula tells another story about Athena’s Saints; Saint Seiya Dark Wing put its hero in Hades’ ranks, while keeping Athena at the center of the plot through Cattleya [1]. It is not the first spinoff to revisit the war with Hades: Shiori Teshirogi’s The Lost Canvas (2006–2011) told the previous Holy War, set in the 18th century, but from the side of Athena’s Saints. Dark Wing flipped that point of view and moved the war into the present day, with a school trip as the way in.
Monthly Champion RED Prepares Winter Lineup Shifts
Two endings in one issue free up pages, and new launches usually follow a clear-out like this, but the report does not mention any replacements [2].
On the anime side, autumn is a season of turnover too, as the Crunchyroll Fall 2026 anime schedule shows. For manga readers, the practical question is when the last volumes of both series will be collected, and neither date has been announced yet.
The finale of Saint Seiya Dark Wing has a lot to settle: Shōichirō’s place among Hades’ Judges, Cattleya’s fight as Athena, and the “darker conspiracy” that the English edition has been teasing since the first volume [1].
Both final chapters arrive in the same issue on November 19. Akita Publishing has not said whether it will mark the double send-off with color pages or extras [2].
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network. (2026, September 21). Saint Seiya: Dark Wing, Garagarapom Manga Both End in November. [Article Link]
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network Newsroom. (2026, September 21). Monthly Champion RED November Serialization Concluding Announcements. [Article Link]
