Saint Seiya: Dark Wing Is Ending in November — Right in the Middle of the Franchise's 40th Anniversary
Covers Saint Seiya: Dark Wing's confirmed premise, including its Hades/Athena story split and the identity of its protagonist's Specter form. No details from any unreleased final chapters are included here. If you haven't read it, stop here.
Akita Shoten's Champion RED magazine has confirmed that two of its series are ending within a month of each other — and one of them happens to carry the Saint Seiya name. According to Anime News Network, the magazine's November issue announced that both "Saint Seiya: Dark Wing" and the unrelated "Garagarapom" will conclude in the January 2027 issue, which releases November 19, 2026. The two series have nothing to do with each other beyond sharing a magazine and an ending date, but Dark Wing is by far the more notable of the pair, given its status as an officially licensed piece of the Saint Seiya franchise closing out in the exact year that franchise turns 40. Here's what's actually confirmed about both endings, and how they land against that anniversary backdrop.
What Champion RED actually announced
The core of the news is simple and comes from a single source: Champion RED's November issue stated that Dark Wing and Garagarapom will both end in the January 2027 issue, set to hit shelves November 19, 2026. No reason was given for either ending. That's worth stating as plainly as the announcement itself did — there's no language in the reporting suggesting this was a planned conclusion reached on the creators' own terms, and nothing suggesting a cancellation driven by sales or editorial pressure either. Champion RED simply said both series are ending on that date, and that's the extent of what's been disclosed.
It's also worth noting upfront how thin the English-language sourcing on this is right now. As of this writing, Anime News Network appears to be the only major English outlet that has picked up Champion RED's announcement, relaying what the Japanese magazine itself said rather than adding independent reporting on top of it. That's not unusual for a mid-tier magazine's serialization news, but it does mean there's a single point of sourcing behind everything here, and readers should weigh that accordingly until other outlets catch up.
The series at the center of it: Dark Wing
"Saint Seiya: Dark Wing" — full title Saint Seiya: Meiō Iden – Dark Wing — is an officially licensed spin-off of Masami Kurumada's original Saint Seiya, written by Kenji Saitō with art by Shinshū Ueda. Unlike a fan work or an unrelated series riding on the name, this is a sanctioned extension of Kurumada's mythology, built to run alongside the main franchise's other spin-offs and side stories.
The premise centers on Shōichirō, a high schooler who ends up chosen as one of Hades's 108 Specters — specifically taking on the identity of "Wyvern" — after a school trip goes sideways and drags him and his classmates into the underworld. From there, the story splits Shōichirō's own class between Hades's forces and Athena's, which lets the series pull directly on the Gold Saint hierarchy and the Athena-reincarnation mythology that's been core to Saint Seiya since the original manga. It's a structure that gives Dark Wing a reason to exist beyond just trading on the name: rather than retelling the original Saint Seiya's own Hades arc, it tells an adjacent story from the perspective of ordinary students suddenly pulled into that same cosmic war, split across enemy lines by circumstance rather than by choice.
How long Dark Wing has actually run
Dark Wing began serialization in Champion RED back in December 2020, running as a monthly title ever since. By the time of the ending announcement, the series has run somewhere north of 50 chapters, collected across 8 tankōbon volumes — the most recent of which shipped December 19, 2025. Three additional chapters remain uncollected as of the announcement, meaning readers following along in print are currently a few chapters behind wherever the story is about to wrap.
That puts Dark Wing's total run at just under six years once it actually closes out in the January 2027 issue — a respectable length for a licensed spin-off property, and long enough that its ending represents a real conclusion to a specific storyline rather than a quick cancellation of something still finding its footing.
An active English release, mid-run
One detail that makes this ending land a little differently than most magazine cancellations: Dark Wing has an active Western print release that's barely gotten started. Titan Comics licensed the series for English publication on March 6, 2025, and Volume 1 actually shipped to English-language readers on September 16, 2025 — just over a year before the Japanese original's ending was announced. That confirms Titan has an ongoing English print run for the series, one that was still in its early volumes when the news of the Japanese conclusion broke. English readers picking up Volume 1 now are getting in on a story that already has a confirmed finish line on the Japanese side, even if Titan's own release schedule hasn't caught up to it yet.
Garagarapom, the other series ending the same week
The second series named in Champion RED's announcement, "Garagarapom," has no connection to Saint Seiya beyond sharing the same ending date and magazine. It's written by Yousuke Takahashi with art by Mimori, and debuted in Champion RED back in November 2023 — a considerably shorter run than Dark Wing's. Garagarapom has been collected into 2 volumes so far, with the second shipping January 20, 2026. Beyond that, no additional detail on the series' premise or the reasoning behind its ending has been reported. It's a smaller story riding alongside the more notable Dark Wing news mostly by coincidence of timing.
Landing in the middle of Saint Seiya's 40th anniversary
What makes Dark Wing's ending worth a closer look, beyond the spin-off's own run, is the timing. 2026 is Saint Seiya's 40th anniversary — Kurumada's original manga ran from December 1985 through December 1990, having launched in Weekly Shōnen Jump back in 1986. That anniversary has been a genuine occasion for the broader franchise this year rather than just a round-number footnote: Champion RED itself has announced six major franchise projects specifically to mark the 40th anniversary, including special calendar posters and related campaigns tied to the milestone.
Dark Wing ending in November 2026 means one of the franchise's active licensed spin-offs is closing out its story in the back half of that same anniversary year, rather than being timed to wrap up neatly before or after it. Nothing in the reporting suggests the ending was deliberately scheduled around the anniversary one way or the other — again, no reason for the conclusion has been given at all — but the coincidence of timing is notable given how much else Champion RED has built around the 40th-anniversary push this year.
The merchandising side backs up how big a year this is
There's useful corroborating color here from a completely different corner of the franchise: Bandai's Tamashii Nations line, under its Saint Cloth Myth EX banner, is releasing "40th Anniversary Ver." figures this November — specifically Alpha Dubhe Siegfried and Beta Merak Hagen, both from the franchise's Asgard arc. Those figures are dated for the same month Dark Wing and Garagarapom wrap in Champion RED. That's not evidence of any coordinated single campaign tying the manga ending to the figure releases; Bandai's merchandising calendar and Akita Shoten's magazine scheduling are run by entirely separate companies. But it does underline just how much Saint Seiya-branded activity is clustering around November 2026, between the manga conclusion and the anniversary figure line hitting shelves in the same window.
What's actually confirmed versus what isn't
To be clear about where the solid ground ends: it's confirmed that Dark Wing and Garagarapom both end in Champion RED's January 2027 issue, releasing November 19, 2026. It's confirmed that no reason was given for either ending. It's confirmed that Dark Wing has run since December 2020 across 50-plus chapters and 8 volumes, with an active English release from Titan Comics that began in September 2025. And it's confirmed that 2026 is Saint Seiya's 40th anniversary year, with Champion RED running six separate franchise projects tied to that milestone.
What isn't confirmed is any causal link between the ending and the anniversary, any explanation for why either series is wrapping now rather than continuing, or any detail about how Dark Wing's remaining three uncollected chapters actually resolve the Hades-versus-Athena split its story has been built around. Those are the honest gaps in what's been reported so far, and nothing here should be read as filling them in.
Three chapters of Dark Wing remain uncollected as of the announcement, so expect a final tankōbon volume gathering those plus whatever runs between now and the January 2027 issue on November 19, 2026. Also worth watching: whether Titan Comics' English release, which only started with Volume 1 in September 2025, gets any kind of accelerated schedule now that the Japanese original has a firm end date, and whether Champion RED says anything more specific about its remaining 40th-anniversary Saint Seiya projects once Dark Wing wraps.