Hachimoku's
Next Book

It's tough to say for sure. Of course, the majority of Hachimoku's light novels are romances, with the only current exception being the Frieren Prequel series which is, of course, a fantasy. Online reviews lead me to believe that the book was well recieved, which shows Hachimoku can write genres other than romance well. At the end of the day, though, it's what Hachimoku wants to write, and romance seems to be the main choice!

So, most likely, the next book'll be a romance, I'd give it an 85% chance. It would be interesting to see Hachimoku tackle other topics or genres, maybe a war drama like 86 (although that would be very unlikely), or maybe a fantasy-romance?

Personally (and this is just my hopes now), it would be nice to see Hachimoku do another high school romance/drama like the first few chapters of Tunnel to Summer, or more recently, Mimosa. I've really been loving The Ramparts of Ice lately, and the drama in that show is executed SO well. A Hachimoku-ified version of that would be amazing. Please. I'm begging.

On another note, he's also mentioned wanting to go to Kyoto for some kind of event/course, and also mentioned that he believes "works that are properly researched tend to be interesting almost without exception" (This tweet, translated) which I can only assume are related in some way. How this relates to the next book, if at all, I'm unsure.

Probably a oneshot. The majority of Hachimoku's works are oneshots (no, the Four Seasons are NOT a series in that regard). I would absolutely love for him to write another series, but a oneshot feels more likely to me. 

When Winter was still being written, Hachimoku tweeted about finishing a long manuscript in November 2024. Winter would eventually release in April 2025, although it was originally intended to release in January/February, looking at "leaked" (quotes cus idrk  if it truly leaked or just hidden) info.

From this data, we can expect a rough timeline or 3-6 months between Hachimoku finishing a manuscript and the book releasing.

And guess what? Hachimoku has said something about this! The image on the right roughly translates to "The longest manuscript in history has been born." and was posted on July 3rd, 2026. Assuming a similar timeline to Winter's release, then Hachimoku's next book may release between October-January. This is all speculation, though, so please don't take this as fact!

However, there's a chance it may take longer, as this new book isn't part of any existing series (Four Seasons, Mimosa, Frieren), so Hachimoku might want to take more time to perfect it, etc.

UPDATE 4th October 2026: Hachimoku has recently tweeted "This month is... somehow... packed with... meetings!" on Oct 1st. We obviously don't know what the meetings are about, I mean hell even an anime adaptation is a possibility. But with all of the other evidence of things he's tweeted, it's fair to say this lines up with book release preparation! 

There's nothing saying that Kukka won't draw the art for his next book. However, I have concerns that Kukka was rushed/overworked for Winter's release. The art quality in a lot of Winter's illustrations were really just not that great. They felt very rushed, even the coloured illustrations (cover/front pages) took a hit. That could potentially impact whether she'll be doing the art going forward.

Of course, if Kukka has more time this time around, that won't be so much of an issue, however I've noticed over the past 5 or so yearsthat she's started shifting more and more towards animation. Her animations are really good, by the way! She's super talented. The issue, though, is that she's been slowly simplifying her art style over the years to draw less each frame. This has presumably impacted her illustrations in Hachimoku's books too. 

I'm definitely nitpicking here, but if you compare the way light is drawn in the cover/insert illustrations in Tunnel to Summer against Endless Winter, yeah, you can see what happened. There's way more detail in her old stuff than new.

Kukka definitely has cemented her art as being "Mei Hachimoku" for me. But if she continues to draw subpar quality art, I'd wanna see an artist change, which sucks because she's super talented :( I really hope it's just a time issue and not a skill loss...