The Record of a Fallen Vampire Gets a Surprise Sequel, 19 Years After It Ended

Nineteen years is a long time for a manga to stay finished. "The Record of a Fallen Vampire" wrapped its ninth and final volume in April 2007, and for most of two decades it's sat exactly where a lot of mid-2000s Square Enix manga end up: fondly remembered by the readers who found it, largely invisible to everyone else. That's what makes the news out of Monthly Shonen Gangan's October issue genuinely surprising — the series is getting a direct sequel, with the original writer-artist team back in place, nearly two decades after they closed the book.

For readers who've never heard of "The Record of a Fallen Vampire," that unfamiliarity is basically the point of this piece. Here's what the original series actually was, and what's now confirmed about the sequel bringing it back.

What's actually been announced

According to Anime News Network's coverage of the October issue of Monthly Shonen Gangan, a new manga titled "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" — rendered in English as "The Record of a Fallen Vampire: A Dog's Song for Dogs" — is launching in the magazine's next issue, out October 9, 2026. The creative team is the same one that produced the original: writer Kyo Shirodaira and artist Yuri Kimura.

That's the confirmed core of the announcement. Square Enix and Monthly Shonen Gangan haven't stopped there, either — the same October issue is teasing a further "important announcement" about the series, to be revealed specifically in the October 9 issue alongside the new chapter's launch. What that second announcement actually is hasn't been reported anywhere yet, and it's not worth guessing at. It could be anything from an anime adaptation to a reprint campaign to something else entirely tied to the franchise's return — the only honest answer right now is that Monthly Shonen Gangan is deliberately holding something back for the same day the sequel debuts.

The original series, for readers who missed it

"The Record of a Fallen Vampire" began serialization in December 2003 in what was then simply called Shōnen Gangan, the same magazine hosting its sequel today. It ran for a little over three years before concluding with its ninth and final compiled volume in April 2007 — a complete, self-contained run rather than an open-ended series that got cancelled or quietly shelved.

The story is built around Akabara "Red Rose" Strauss, a former vampire king who lost both his kingdom and his queen, Adelheid, thousands of years before the story begins. Hunting him is a supernatural entity called the Black Swan, which reincarnates once every fifty years into a young human girl carrying the power to destroy both Strauss and his lost queen. The nine original volumes track the arrival of the Black Swan's 49th incarnation, and whether this cycle will finally be the one that ends Strauss's long, grinding quest — a quest that's tangled up with his feelings for a human woman named Stella, adding a genuine emotional core to what could otherwise have been a straightforward monster-of-the-week vampire-hunt structure.

Genre-wise, it's squarely dark fantasy and supernatural adventure, built around dhampirs — half-vampires caught between two warring sides — and a broader war between vampires and humanity that Strauss's personal story sits inside. It's the kind of premise that reads as fairly familiar on paper — doomed immortal king, cyclical reincarnating nemesis, forbidden human romance — but the specific mechanics of the 50-year reincarnation cycle and the way the story ties Strauss's political downfall to his personal loss gave it a shape that set it apart from other vampire manga of its era.

A quietly well-traveled series in English, despite the obscurity

Part of what makes "The Record of a Fallen Vampire" an odd fit for "forgotten series" framing is that it wasn't actually hard to find in English. Viz Media released all nine original volumes in English between 2008 and 2010, giving it a full print run in North America not long after its Japanese conclusion. Yen Press later put out its own English edition in 2014, and the series has since been available digitally through Manga UP! Global as well. That's three separate English-language releases across roughly fifteen years for a series most manga readers today would draw a blank on — a sign that its relative obscurity has more to do with the sheer volume of manga that got licensed and forgotten during that stretch of the industry than with any lack of access.

Kyo Shirodaira's name carries more weight now than it did in 2003

The other reason this announcement is worth paying attention to is who's writing it. Kyo Shirodaira wrapped "The Record of a Fallen Vampire" back in 2007, but he's spent the years since building a much higher profile — most notably as the creator of "In/Spectre," the mystery-adjacent supernatural series that went on to receive a full television anime adaptation. A writer returning to an old, comparatively under-the-radar series after establishing a bigger name elsewhere is a different situation than a creator revisiting their only hit. It raises the profile of "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" beyond what a straightforward sequel to a 2000s Square Enix manga might otherwise get, simply because more readers now know Shirodaira's name from "In/Spectre" than ever picked up the original vampire series when it was running.

Yuri Kimura's return as artist matters too, for a more straightforward reason: sequels that bring back the original art team tend to read as continuations of a specific visual identity rather than reboots or reimaginings. Nothing about the announcement suggests "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" is a soft reboot or a spinoff handled by a different team — it's being positioned as a direct follow-up from the same two people who made the original.

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What the title itself suggests, cautiously

"Inu ni wa Inu no Uta," translated as "A Dog's Song for Dogs," is a distinctive enough subtitle that it's tempting to read into it. Dhampirs and the broader vampire-versus-human conflict were already core to the original series' setup, and a title built around dogs and songs could plausibly connect to that framework in some way once actual chapters are out. But that's speculation, not confirmed plot information — nothing in the reporting so far describes what "Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" actually covers narratively, whether it picks up immediately after the original's ending, jumps forward in time, or follows entirely new characters within the same world. Until the October 9 chapter is actually available and outlets have had a chance to read it, the title is the only real clue on the table, and it should be treated as exactly that.

What's still unknown

A few things are worth being explicit about rather than glossing over. There's no announced English-language release for "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" yet — no publisher, no digital platform, no timeline. Given that Viz Media, Yen Press, and Manga UP! Global have all handled the original series in English at different points, there's a reasonable pool of past licensors who could plausibly pick up the sequel, but none of that has been confirmed, and it shouldn't be presented as likely without an actual announcement behind it. Similarly, whatever the "important announcement" teased for the October 9 issue turns out to be is genuinely unknown right now — it hasn't leaked, and there's no reporting speculating on its contents in any sourced way worth repeating here.

Why a 19-year gap is unusual, even in manga

Manga sequels and revivals aren't unheard of — plenty of series get follow-ups, spinoffs, or "part two" continuations years after their original run ends. What makes this one stand out is the specific combination of factors involved: a complete, already-concluded nine-volume series with a clean ending, the exact same writer-artist pairing returning rather than a different team picking up the IP, and a gap of nearly two decades rather than the handful of years that usually separates a series from its follow-up. Most manga that get revived this long after concluding do so because a publisher wants to capitalize on nostalgia or an anniversary; nothing in the current reporting frames "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" that way, which makes the teased "important announcement" all the more worth watching for context on why now, specifically, is the moment Shirodaira and Kimura chose to come back to this story.

What to watch for on October 9

The next real checkpoint here is straightforward: October 9, 2026, when the debut chapter of "Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta" actually publishes in Monthly Shonen Gangan, alongside whatever the magazine's teased "important announcement" turns out to be. Until then, what's solid is the title, the launch date, the returning creative team, and the nearly two-decade gap since the original series closed its story. Everything about how the sequel actually connects to Strauss, Stella, and the Black Swan's cycle — or whether it moves in an entirely different direction under a returning creative team with a much bigger name now than it had in 2003 — is worth waiting on rather than guessing at.