The creator of one of my favorite offbeat horror manga says the series isn't ending, Google just decided it was

Mieruko-chan cover
(Image credit: Yen Press / Tomoki Izumi)

Mieruko-chan is a delightfully twisted comedy horror manga about a girl who can see and hear spirits – often deeply warped and grotesque spirits – but must pretend she can't in order to avoid their attention. It's hit volume 10 in the original Japanese manga, the English translation is up to nine official volumes, and there's more to come. So you can imagine the surprise of creator Tomoki Izumi when readers started asking him about the end of the manga, only to find that Google was to blame. 

In a (machine translated) tweet, Izumi notes that "I often wondered why people thought Mieruko-chan was finished, and when I looked into it, I found that Google had ended it on its own," sharing a screenshot of search results indicating that the manga had ended with volume 10. 

Judging from the UI, the error seems to have come from a "related questions" result in Google, with this summary (again, per machine translation) specifying "All volumes (Volumes 1-10 complete)." In replies to Izumi's tweet, several readers said they were relieved to hear that the abrupt ending was just a mistake. 

It's unclear from this screenshot whether this was a run-of-the-mill error or specifically the result of Google's dalliance with AI search summaries, which have burped up countless falsehoods already. The important takeaway is that, no, Mieruko-chan wasn't canceled and isn't over. 

Published in English by Yen Press, Mieruko-chan stars Miko Yotsuya, the titular "girl that sees them." While driven by lighthearted and comedic scenes featuring Miko and her friends, the series stands out thanks to the repulsive creatures which frequently infest panels. It's something I find myself reading just to see what abomination comes up next. It received an anime adaptation in 2021 from studio Passione which, while inexplicably horny compared to the tamer, more comedy- and tension-focused manga, did give us some solidly animated creature designs. 

After 45 years, Osamu Tezuka's classic manga gets revived as Unico: Awakening, with a new ending authorized by Tezuka's estate.

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.