Manga fans will be able to finally preview Masashi Kishimoto's new work Samurai 8: Hachimaruden in next week's issue of Weekly Shonen Jump. Kishimoto, of course, created none other than a little manga called Naruto. Since finishing serialization towards the end of 2015, the only manga he released was a single volume Naruto epilogue centered around the Boruto gang. At the most recent Jump Festa last December, his new manga was finally announced. This time illustrated by his long time assistant Akira Okubo, once again Kishimoto would be in the pages of Jump. However, since then no news about Samurai 8 dropped. Until now, that is.

The most recent issue of weekly Jump tells us Samurai 8: Hachimaruden will preview in the last Jump of the Heisei Era. The magazine also announced Samurai 8's full serialization will be the first new Jump manga of the Heiwa era. They didn't say that Samurai 8 will start right when the Reiwa era begins, so it still may be a bit longer until we can read this manga. It's certainly one of the most anticipated manga coming out this year.

Going from ninjas to samurai almost seems too on the nose. Though the Samurai in Samurai 8: Hachimaruden seem to largely be Cyborgs. Instead of being another fictionalized period piece from the past like Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto will be creating a Sci-Fi manga which is new territory for the author. One can't help but notice that Samurai 8 sure sounds a lot like Seven Samurai, the iconic film from Akira Kurosawa. This is conjecture only, but it's possible the new manga will have been influenced by that beloved Japanese film. We'll just have to wait until the preview drops to have more of an idea what the manga will really be like.

Samurai 8: Hachimaruden will run a preview in next week's Weekly Shonen Jump. There's no word whether Viz Media will be bringing that preview to their US app.