Kingdom (manga)

• 1. Introduction

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  Kingdom is a Japanese manga by Yasuhisa Hara, and by January 2026 more than 120 million copies of it were in circulation. That places it among the best-selling manga series of all time. Its hero is Xin, a war orphan from a poor village, who sets out to become the greatest general under the heavens. The setting is ancient China, in an age when rival states fought one another without pause. Hara has drawn the story for Weekly Young Jump, a magazine from the publisher Shueisha, since January 2006.

  How does a tale of ancient battles hold readers across so many volumes? Who stands beside Xin, and who stands in his way? And what happens when a manga's own fans are handed the pencil?

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• 2. Two Orphans and a Double

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  Xin and Piao begin as servants in a poor village in the kingdom of Qin, and both are war orphans. Each day they train, because they share one dream. They want to become Great Generals of the Heavens.

  Then a minister takes Piao to the palace for a purpose nobody explains, and Xin is left behind. A few months later Piao stumbles back into the village, close to death. He urges Xin to go to another village.

  There Xin meets a boy who looks almost exactly like Piao. The boy is Ying Zheng, the king of Qin. Xin learns that Piao had been serving as the king's body double and was mortally wounded in a struggle over the throne.

  Xin is furious at first, since the king's troubles cost him his closest friend. Then he changes course. He decides to seize the chance that Piao's death has opened, and he helps Ying Zheng drive out the king's younger half-brother Cheng Jiao and reclaim the Qin throne.

  That victory launches Xin's career, first as a Qin soldier and later as a commander on the battlefields of the warring states. His aim stays fixed on being the greatest general in the world. Along the way he helps Zheng pursue his own dream, which is to unify the land and end the endless fighting.

  One detail sits oddly beside all this history. Piao, the friend whose death starts everything, never existed. The author invented him.

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• 3. History and Invention

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  In 221 BC, Ying Zheng, king of Qin, finished conquering the other states and unified China. That ending anchors the whole series, which retells the Warring States period as fiction. The unification Xin fights toward would be China's first in 500 years.

  Names in the story can be confusing. Some characters carry the names of real people, while others appear under quite different ones. Often the cause is that Japanese kanji grew out of Chinese characters, and some Chinese names have no matching kanji. That is why Xin is called Shin in the Japanese version.

  Wang Qi, the veteran general, is based on a real Qin general named Wang Yi. In the story he is the last survivor of the Six Great Generals from the time of King Zhaoxiang of Qin.

  Ying Zheng himself is the 31st king of Qin, yet he has not been crowned, so his power is limited. He says he will unify all of China, but he has only a few years to do it. Enemy states such as Zhao, Wei and Chu wait beyond his borders. Inside the court, the minister Lü Buwei plots to take the throne, and the Queen Dowager is another rival.

  Xin settles the question of where he stands with a single declaration. He tells the king that he will be his sword in the unification of China.

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• 4. The Fei Xin Unit

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  Xin is impulsive by nature, and yet he has a gift for inspiring the people around him. After he proves his determination in the Qin army, General Wang Qi gives him command of a special unit of 100 men. Wang Qi names it the Fei Xin Unit. Xin picks Qiang Lei and Yuan as his lieutenants and rides with Wang Qi to attack the State of Zhao.

  The unit grows with its commander. After the invasion of the Wei State, Xin is given charge of a unit of 1,000 men.

  He Liao Diao is one of the first to join him. She is the last descendant of a mountain tribe, and she hides who she is by dressing as a boy. After she watches Wang Qi and Xin fight Zhao, she announces that she will join the Qin army, and Xin only laughs. She is taken on as an apprentice in strategic warfare and later becomes the strategist of the Fei Xin Unit. The story hints that she has feelings for Xin, but he thinks of her more like a sister.

  Qiang Lei has the darker past. She was a member of the Chi You, a group of female assassins. Her older sister Qiang Xiang died in a rigged series of deathmatches, and Qiang Lei swore revenge on the woman who killed her. She joins the unit as a vice commander and hides that she is a woman. She is naive about daily life but sharper than Xin, who leans on her both for her sword and for battle plans. After Xin discovers the truth, she grows warmer toward him and calls the unit her home.

  The rest of the unit learns her secret only when she is badly wounded in the battle against Wei. Xin is not the only young commander chasing a general's rank, though.

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• 5. Rivals and Enemies

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  Wang Ben and Meng Tian are the two commanders who race Xin toward the title of great general. Wang Ben is the son of the Qin great general Wang Jian and the future heir of the Wang family. He is strict, skilled with the spear, and leads the Ye Feng Unit of cavalrymen from noble families.

  Meng Tian is his opposite. He is the son of the Six Great General Meng Wu, he wears flamboyant clothes into battle, and his Ye Hua Unit copies his joking style. Once fighting starts, he proves a real swordsman and a gifted planner who sometimes draws up battle plans for Xin and Wang Ben.

  The court holds a different kind of threat in Lü Buwei, who began as a trader from Zhao. He helped a Qin prince escape captivity, and when that prince became King Zhuangxiang, Lü Buwei became his Minister of the Right. He bribed anyone he could and even offered his own fiancee to the king. Over time he made himself chancellor and began struggling for power with Ying Zheng. Standing against him is Lord Changwen, a former warrior who rose to chancellor and stays fiercely loyal to the young king.

  Yang Duan He, the Mountain King, is harder to place. She distrusts Xin and Zheng at first, because Qin had ignored her tribes after a treaty of coexistence lapsed for 400 years. Zheng's ambitions and his promise of better relations win her over, and she is revealed to be a woman.

  Among Qin's enemies, Lian Po is a Zhao general stripped of command by a new king, Daoxiang. He rebelled, fled into exile in Wei, and was later asked by the Wei king to lead the whole Wei army against Qin. He failed and was exiled again, this time to Chu.

  Li Mu is the most dangerous of the Three Greats of Zhao. He seems aloof and jovial, then shows himself to be a first-rate strategist. At the battle on the Mayang plains, his planning leads to the death of Wang Qi.

  Wang Qi had faced Pang Nuan, another Zhao general, who had murdered his fiancee. Before Wang Qi could finish the duel, an arrow struck him from behind and Pang Nuan drove a blade into his heart. He kept fighting and retreated with Xin. Away from the battle, he handed Xin his glaive and then died.

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• 6. Anime Seasons

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  On the 4th of June 2012, the studio Pierrot began broadcasting the first Kingdom anime on NHK BS Premium. Its 38 episodes ran until the 25th of February 2013. Jun Kamiya directed, Naruhisa Arakawa wrote the scripts, and Minako Seki composed the music.

  A second season of 39 episodes ran from the 8th of June 2013 to the 1st of March 2014. Seki and Arakawa returned, but Akira Iwanaga took over as director. Outside Asia, Funimation held the English license. After Sony acquired Crunchyroll, the series moved there.

  The third season, announced on the 8th of November 2019, came with an entirely new production team. Kenichi Imaizumi directed at Pierrot and its subsidiary Studio Signpost, and the season covered the Coalition Invasion arc. Unlike the first two seasons, which used CGI, it was made with traditional 2D animation.

  Hara personally requested that Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto compose the music. In meetings with them, Imaizumi chose to skip traditional Chinese instruments, even though the story is set in China. They went with modern instrumentation instead.

  The season premiered on the 6th of April 2020. On the 26th of April 2020, the production committee announced that episode 5 and later would be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Broadcasting restarted from the first episode on the 5th of April 2021 and finished on the 18th of October with 26 episodes.

  A fourth season of 26 episodes aired from the 10th of April to the 2nd of October 2022 with the cast returning. The fifth was planned for the 7th of January 2024 but slipped a week because channel coverage of the Noto earthquake took priority. It aired 13 episodes from the 14th of January to the 31st of March.

  A sixth season, announced in April 2025, ran from the 5th of October to the 28th of December that year. When it ended, a sequel was announced.

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• 7. Live Action and Games

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  On the 25th of November 2010, a beat 'em up game called Kingdom Ikki Tousen No Tsurugi arrived on the PlayStation Portable, in Japan only. Mobile games followed. Kingdom: Seven Flags was released in Japan on the 24th of October 2016, and Kingdom Ran came out on the 22nd of February 2018.

  Live action started small. On the 17th of April 2016, Shueisha posted a promotional short film online to mark the manga's tenth anniversary. It was filmed at Hengdian World Studios in China.

  In April 2018, Hara revealed that a full-length live-action film had been green-lit. He said he took part in script meetings and praised the 'satisfying' screenplay, the 'unprecedented' budget and the 'ultra-grand' cast. Kento Yamazaki starred and Shinsuke Sato directed.

  The film opened on the 19th of April 2019. It earned 5.73 billion yen at the box office in Japan and 50.57 million dollars worldwide.

  Sato returned for a sequel, Kingdom 2: Far and Away, which was announced on the 28th of May 2020. It premiered on the 15th of July 2022 and took 5.16 billion yen in Japan. Kingdom 3: The Flame of Destiny followed on the 28th of July 2023, earning 5.6 billion yen.

  The fourth film, Kingdom 4: Return of the Great General, opened on the 12th of July 2024 and earned 8.03 billion yen in Japan, the largest total of the run. A fifth film, Kingdom: Decisive Battle of the Soul, is set to premiere on the 17th of July 2026.

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• 8. Print and Prizes

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  Before Kingdom existed as a serial, Hara published four one-shot chapters. They were "Kongo" on the 18th of November 2003, "Uma Shuhei San-hyaku" on the 15th of January 2004, "Li Mu" on the 1st of April 2004, and "Meng Wu and Chu Zi" on the 2nd of December 2004. A two-volume Kingdom Omnibus collected them in June 2012.

  The serial began on the 26th of January 2006, and the first volume came out on the 19th of May 2006. By April 2017 more than 30 million copies were in circulation. By December 2020 the figure had passed 70 million, and the 60th volume became the first with a first printing of 1 million copies. The total passed 100 million in November 2023 and 110 million in December 2024.

  The yearly sales charts tell a steadier story. Kingdom was the fifth best-selling manga of 2015, with over 8.5 million copies sold. In 2020 it was the second best-selling series, with over 8.2 million. Volume 70 received a first printing of 950,000 copies, Shueisha's fourth highest for the period from April 2023 to March 2024.

  Prizes arrived as well. In 2013 Kingdom won the grand prize of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. One judge said, "I can't remember the last time I read nearly 30 volumes (of a manga title) in a row feeling this excited." In 2017 it won the All-Time Best Section of the first Tsutaya Comic Awards. It topped the Da Vinci magazine Book of the Year list in 2019. In TV Asahi's Manga Sosenkyo poll of 2021, where 150,000 people voted, it ranked thirteenth.

  The oddest honor came on the 12th of December 2012. Guinness World Records recognized Kingdom for manga written by the most people. The cause was the Social Kingdom campaign, in which fans and other artists were asked to redraw the entire 26th volume. Participants included Eiichiro Oda of One Piece, Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto, Hirohiko Araki of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Takehiko Inoue of Slam Dunk and Hiroshi Motomiya of Salary Man Kintaro. Voice actors and ordinary fans joined in. The campaign was also a Jury Recommended Work at the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2012.

  The story itself is still running. In 2015 Hara said he planned to extend it to as many as 100 volumes, and by the 19th of May 2026 the count stood at 79. Viz Media announced in February 2025 that it would publish the series in English in North America, starting on the 11th of November that year.

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